Mockery

One

Good Humor vs. the Sin of Derision

Everybody knows it’s important to have a sense of humor. It’s a sign of sanity, a sign of insight, and often enough, a sign of humility. But everybody also knows that certain jokes are not okay morally. In fact, the Catholic moral tradition condemns the sin of derision, or what the Catechism calls, “irony aimed at disparaging someone by maliciously caricaturing some aspect of his behavior.” (#2481) 

And we know there are other jokes that are blasphemous, or totally inappropriate in other ways.

So how do you distinguish humor that’s healthy, “all in good fun,” from jokes that should be off limits for a Christian?

Two

What it means for something to be funny

The first thing to understand is exactly what’s going on when we tell a joke, or when we find something funny. Something is humorous or comical when it combines three ingredients:

First, something surprising

Second, something unimportant

Third, something incongruous, or out of place

So, for example, a guy stepping on a rake and bonking himself in the head might be funny because it’s unexpected, it’s relatively unimportant. It’s not going to ruin anybody’s life to bonk themselves with a rake-handle. And also, something is obviously out of place. That’s not what rakes are for.

So what are the kinds of things you can think of that way?

Three

Don’t “make light” of serious things

So we only find things funny to the extent that we don’t feel as though they’re important. That’s why we’re uncomfortable when people joke about current wars, but we’re more comfortable if someone makes a dumb joke about how the French really lose their heads when they start revolting – because the French Revolution happened so long ago that we don’t feel it as serious.

So this is important: it means we shouldn’t make fun of those things we should feel serious about. So we’d better not ridicule heavenly things: God, the saints, the sacraments, the Church. Don’t you dare act like those things are not important. If those things aren’t important, nothing is important, and human life is utterly meaningless.

Or, to take another example, we shouldn’t take our grave sins lightly. Grave evil means serious evil: and you shouldn’t take serious evil lightly. So don’t pretend your serious sins are funny, especially the sins you haven’t fully overcome yet.

It is a sin against truth to pretend that what is really serious is actually unserious. And that’s true whether we’re talking about the greatest goods like God Himself or our own serious faults.

So don’t make fun of that stuff. 

Four

Making fun of someone else

What about making fun of other people? There are a lot of relationships, spouses, siblings, and especially male friendships, that really seem to thrive on mutual ribbing, friendly teasing. 

Well, remember, when you make fun of somebody, you are highlighting something incongruous about them, something out-of-place. You’re drawing attention to something that is not excellent about them, or at least something you think is weird. So if you’re going to make fun of somebody in some way, you’d better have a relationship with that person where your respect for that person is so established, so clear, that nobody could doubt it. Otherwise, the person you’re making fun of, or third parties who are listening, might think that you only think of them in terms of the defect or the incongruity you’re pointing out.

That’s why, for example, it’s a lot safer to make ethnic jokes about someone who has the same ethnicity as you do, because then it’s obvious that you don’t reduce the other person to generalizations connected to their race, since you’re the same race yourself.

Strangely enough, joking about someone you love can be a great way of expressing your love since you’re only willing to make that joke because the love and respect between you is so firmly and unquestionably established. But if it’s not, it’s probably better to hold off. Don’t make the joke if your love and respect aren’t obvious to everybody.

Five

Taking yourself lightly

The best use of humor is nearly always directed towards yourself. Because the greatest sin is pride, where we act like we’re more excellent than we are. And, as the great philosopher Bergson says, there’s really no vice that’s so funny as pride in someone else.

Many of us are trying to show off virtues and skills and excellences we simply do not have. Humor is a great reality-check for the delusion of pride. And if you can be proactive in identifying and delighting in your little foibles, your little goofy incompetencies, then you can make a lot of people happy – because it is funny. And you can take the stress off yourself, the stress of trying to make yourself out as some superman or superwoman.

Humor should be about something you don’t take seriously. And we all have the tendency to take ourselves too seriously. Nothing is more unpleasant than taking yourself too seriously. 

So delight in your smallness, in your littleness. And be happier.