“Is ‘Holy Laughter’ Biblical?

In many ‘Charismatic’ Churches today we are seeing a phenomenon described as ‘Holy Laughter’ whereby people are said to be overtaken by the Holy Spirit and begin laughing uncontrollably, right in the middle of a church service or during the preaching!  This is said to be evidence of the ‘filling of the Holy Spirit’.   Is anything such as this taught in the Bible?

I do not believe so for the following reasons.  First of all, The Bible tells us to test all things against Scripture (1 Thessalonians 5:21; Acts 17:11).  If it doesn’t line up with what the Bible says, we are to reject it, no matter what someone’s ‘experience’ might be!  Would you agree with that?  Now if you look in the Bible from cover to cover, you will not see anything whatsoever resembling ‘Holy Laughter’ even remotely!  The Bible speaks alot about JOY and HAPPINESS, but nowhere do you see people in the Bible breaking out spontaneously into ‘laughter’ where the person has NO CONTROL over themselves!  In fact, one fruit of the Holy Spirit is SELF-CONTROL (Galatians 5:23).  The only examples I see in the Bible where people are ‘out of control’ is where there is demonic involvement! An example coming to mind would be the madman from Gadara.  In these Charismatic circles, I’ve heard of people breaking out in laughter right in the middle of the preaching, when there was nothing funny to laugh about, disrupting the service.  Can you imagine if the Holy Spirit was dealing with someone during the preaching, to have such a distraction as someone breaking out into laughter?  I’ve even heard of ‘Holy Laughter’ occurring when the preacher was preaching on hell!  I’ve been in services where someone has jumped up in the middle of a service and started dancing a little ‘holy’ jig around the auditorium!  You can imagine what everybody in that room was doing…the same thing I was doing…watching the one dancing a jig!  No one was listening to the preacher for several minutes? Was this ‘distraction’ from the ‘Holy Spirit’?   I don’t think so, do you?  The Bible does say in 1 Corinthians 14:40 that in God’s work, especially in the local church and its ministry, everything should be done decently and in order.  It also says in 1 Corinthians 14:33 that God is not the author of confusion…now if God is not the author of confusion, who is?  Satan likes nothing more than to cause confusion, and folks, I believe a lot of what is going on in churches all across America and being portrayed as ‘spiritual’ is not spiritual at all!   You look your Bible through and you never see one verse even hinting at such a thing as ‘Holy Laughter’ and anyone citing verses on ‘joy’ to back this ‘holy laughter’ are reading something into the text that is simply not there.  We don’t see Jesus or the apostles ever doing anything even remotely resembling ‘holy laughter’ nor do we see anything like it in church history by great men and women of God!  Don’t be deceived, my friend.  Stick to the Word of God and beware of someone, or some church group, who puts ‘experience’ over Scripture when they say, “Well, I don’t care what anyone says, I’ve ‘experienced it!”  Good, sincere folks can be deceived, too!  Another hint is this: Look at the people and the churches that promote such a thing…how do they line up on other doctrinal matters?  Are they wrong on other things too?  That’s a good sign they might be wrong this too.  This same group that teaches ‘holy laughter’ also teaches a lot of other strange things too, things that are not Biblical!  These same groups also teach that Salvation can be LOST when the Bible clearly teaches that when Jesus saves us, He saves us ETERNALLY; This same group also teach that women can be pastors of churches when 1 Timothy 2:12 and 3:2 clearly teaches that in the local New Testament Church only MEN are to be Pastors;  These same groups also are in ERROR on their teaching on Spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues, Faith healers, and being ‘slain in the spirit’.   These groups claim to have the ‘full gospel’ but I believe they’ve added a lot of things that are not in the Bible at all!