蜜芽传媒

Good morning.

I normally find stand-up comedy rather disappointing - more conformist than genuinely edgy. So a few years ago I was glad to find one comedian who was edgy about sex and race and other moral issues in a deeper, more self-critical way- the American comedy star Louis CK. Last week he went the way of Weinstein - he admitted to acts of indecency - the old-fashioned word is still useful, especially at this time in the morning. Admitting his wrongdoing, he said: 鈥淚 have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.鈥�

He summed up his job well - speaking with extreme freedom, defying normal constraints. The cultish popularity of edgy comedians is partly because they show us how free speech can be in our culture.

But of course our love of freedom is not absolute. We also want to condemn indecency, or 鈥榠nappropriateness鈥� - puritanical instincts, you might say, which are now rightly expressed in terms of protecting people from harm, including the harm of feeling disrespected. We might reject stuffy old rules about decency - but we can鈥檛 do without stuffy new rules about appropriateness.

It might seem obvious which side religion is on in this tension between freedom and moral rules. It issues old-fashioned moral rules, doesn鈥檛 it? Well no, not quite.

From the 16th century, the impulse to criticize moral conventions was central to one strand of Protestantism, though of course other religious and nonreligious traditions have also developed it in their terms. Instead of old rules, the Protestants wanted to be guided by the pure spirit of love. 鈥楾o the pure, all things are pure鈥�.

Look at St Paul鈥檚 letters, they said - the central message is that no moral or ritual law has sacred force. We have to move beyond rules, and pursue the good in a more radical, anarchic way - expose ourselves, in a sense, to a fuller idea of God鈥檚 will. 鈥楢ll things are permitted鈥� said Paul - adding - 鈥榖ut not all things are beneficial鈥�.

I鈥檓 suggesting that there is an echo of St Paul in the best stand-up comedy, which is the preaching of our day. It questions all our moral habits and assumptions. It implies there is hope in a spirit of radical honesty and iconoclasm.

Is it something to celebrate - the breaking of taboos, the rejection of moral rules? That rather depends on whether we are motivated by moral idealism or mere cynicism. Are we striving to go beyond moral rules, in the direction of a fuller moral vision - or are we just having a laugh?

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