When is it okay to joke about a Christian scandal?

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A Christian figure has just had a scandal. Can I make a joke about it?

This is something I think about quite a bit. To put it simply, I think humor can function as a sort of accountability. But situations are different, jokes are different, and the right thing is not always clear, at least to me.

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The Bible has a lot to say about how we should treat our fellow believers, and it generally appears in two ways: as top-down, corporate church instructions, and as horizontal, peer-to-peer instructions.

There are a couple of roles that cut across these guidelines at odd angles, and create uncertainty:

• Christian journalists, writers, and podcasters who are trusted to speak objectively about the Church

• Comedians

Humor, in particular, is confounding. The Bible tells us to avoid coarse joking, which I suppose *must* be interpreted on an individual level, because no two believers are ever going to agree on what “coarse joking” precisely means. And if you try to shoehorn humor through the 1 Corinthians 8 test and never tell a joke that might offend the weaker brother’s conscience, humor would essentially cease to exist. There will always be a Christian who is offended by the joke; you and I have both been to their church.¹

So, bluntly, I don’t always know. I fully admit that I don’t have this issue figured out. I’d love to read what you all think in the comments. It’s fair to say that I usually err on the side of telling the joke, but I still think carefully about it. There are times when I hold my tongue.

To get to a decision, these are the questions I try to ask myself: