Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Over 13 million people have watched the recent Netflix celebrity roast of comedian Kevin Hart.

Now, irreverent insults are always part of roasting, but the recent series of celebrity roast has featured increasingly

outrageous and often profane jokes, from mocking abortions to vilifying women. However,

Hart's Roast has won the prize for the vilest yet. The extremely inappropriate comments

made at this roast include about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, for

example. And it demonstrates just how debased mainstream comedy has become. Even worse, in a social

media context, comedy's captive to likes and shares, so the desire to provoke and to shock is

ever escalating. So what is the proper approach to comedy? Can the current state of comedy be redeemed?

Sociologist Philip Reef coined a unique term for understanding many elements of modern culture, including this kind of debased comedy.

Cultures produce artifacts, but cultures without a moral center produce what he called deathworks,

cultural artifacts that don't build up,

but only tear down the sacred orders of a civilization. Roast, like the one for heart or a death

work, leveraging humor for no constructive, noble, or redeeming purpose. It's just about degradation,

or to borrow Carl Truman's term, it's about desecration all the way down.

Humor is a unique human characteristic that reflects the creativity and the world making

for which humans were made by God. As such, it should rise above mere profane and childishness.

Now, a Christian worldview can offer the kind of moral framework that humor needs, including the ability to discern between what one should laugh at and what one should not laugh at.

However, if nothing is sacred, then nothing's off limits.

Truly creative comedy operates within a worldview that identifies what is humorous while recognizing and respecting

what is sacred. But simply, if everything's funny, then nothing's sacred. Now, a notable exception

...