When I offend someone with a joke

I don’t know what to do when I offend someone with a joke.

Which is a bit inconvenient, because I am apparently pretty good at offending people with jokes.

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The Bible contains a lot of verses about dealing with conflicts, whether it be interpersonal¹ or in a church setting². Basically, we are instructed to humble ourselves, apologize/forgive, and try to avoid tripping each other up.

Does that apply to humor, though? I struggle with this question. On an existential level, humor is something like a lie. Or, if you don’t like that definition, a surprise. Either the words, the context, or the delivery are not to be taken at face value. That’s the transaction; that’s what makes it different. That’s what makes it funny.

So what do you do, as a believer, when you tell a joke and someone gets offended?

As best I understand it, there are three paths to take. I’ve taken them all, and I still don’t know which one is right.

The Biblical Way

A few years ago, Casey and I made a joke on our podcast that involved a third person. We were both friendly with this person online but had never met them in real life. After the episode aired, this person became very upset and demanded that we pull the episode down. To this day, I do not understand why they were hurt; I suspect the joke touched on something that was already there, something that I could not see. Maybe not. Maybe I was wrong. I doubt that I will ever know.

In the moment, I had to make a decision. The podcast episode was being listened to by more people with each passing hour, so I felt pressure to figure out a response. Ultimately, I fell back on the biblical framework: I privately apologized and edited the person’s name out of the episode. They never spoke to me again.

When I get stuck, I generally default to the Golden Rule: if the roles were reversed, how would I want to be treated? Generally, I think this is the correct strategy. But in this instance, it left me feeling uneasy. Apologizing with biblical humility for a joke felt like hammering a square peg through a round hole. Do I have to do that for every joke? If I have a big enough audience, won’t someone always be offended? And as someone who is trying to be funny, where does that leave me?

In theory, if you follow this approach, the edges will invariably be sanded off your humor until you are totally sterile and saccharine. Is that even a bad thing? How funny, exactly, is a Christian allowed to be? These thoughts probably deserve their own article at some point. For now, I will say that I am still wrestling with them.

The Half Measure

My mother walked into my living room, hand in hand with her boyfriend. They called me, my wife, and our children into the room and breathlessly announced that God had told them to get married. Also, they wanted my blessing, since I was my mother’s oldest son.

I will spare you the intricacies of my Appalachian bloodline’s internecine conflicts, where we hoard perceived slights and wallow in conflict like a shampooed dog trying to disguise its scent by rolling around in something gross. I’ll just say that the situation was complicated. And in that moment, with everyone staring at me, waiting to see if I would bless the marriage, I wanted to create space and time for myself to think.

So, I told a joke. I turned to my 67-year old mother and deadpanned the following:

“Are you pregnant? Is that what this is about?”