Swearing like Troopers

Bluestone 42, Ephesians 5:3 & Philippians 4:8

Bluestone 42, a sitcom I wrote about a bomb disposal team in Afghanistan, is back on iPlayer. For those interested in why a Christian like me should have written a show with military-strength swearing, here is a relevant chapter from The Sacred Art of Joking.

But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. (Ephesians 5.3–4)

This passage of Scripture is not a promising manifesto for making jokes. Lots of jokes revel in obscenity, foolishness and coarseness, perhaps the vast majority in the realm of stand-up comedy and jokes told in the pub after work. The Bible says this way of talking is out of place among those who call themselves Christians. Does this put comedy off limits for the Church? Was Mary Whitehouse right all along?

Christians need to take this, and every, passage of the Bible seriously. But we should also note that Paul is being specific. He is writing about the personal conduct of Christians and the standard to which they should hold themselves. Christians really should think carefully about the jokes they tell and the words they use.

But most of the comedy we see on screens is depictions of characters who do not hold themselves to a biblical standard, even on the rare occasions these characters are written by Christians. I found myself explaining this when my aforementioned TV show,

Bluestone 42, was broadcast on BBC3 (and it is now back on iPlayer). Some Christians found it troubling that a fellow Christian had written a sitcom in which most of the characters swear liberally and with feeling. They swear literally like troopers. They tell one another to get stuffed in all manner of inventively obscene and abrupt ways. How is that okay?

Discerning voices

I’m not a character in Bluestone 42. You will note that I’m not using the expletives from the show in this book, and not even quoting them. I have preferred to used euphemisms like ‘tell one another to get stuffed in all manner of ways’ to convey the kinds of words that were used in Bluestone 42. I feel an obligation to do that because, as a Christian, Paul’s words of Ephesians 5.4 apply to me, unlike all but one of the characters in Bluestone 42. I am writing this book in my own voice so I must take heed of Ephesians 5.

I also want to tell the truth. In fact, I want to be doubly truthful. As a Christian, I want to be truthful. As a comedy writer, I know that comedy is based on truth, so if I want to be funny I have to tell the truth. Scrubbing bad language from a military situation diminishes the honesty of the story and undermines the comedy. If a bomb detonates near a soldier, he does not exclaim ‘Oh dear!’ or ‘Good heavens!’ When a sergeant barks orders under attack, he or she speaks with great emphasis and uses very salty language (and not the kind of salty language to which the Apostle Paul refers in Colossians 4.6). To portray the soldiers exclaiming ‘Fiddlesticks!’ when they’re being hit in the chest by a rocket-propelled grenade would be dishonest and silly.

Incidentally, an exception to this rule would be subverting the expectation of bad language for comedy purposes. It would be an incongruous and funny moment if you were expecting to hear cussing but heard only the mildest of expletives. In fact, Captain Nick Medhurst, played by Oliver Chris in Bluestone 42, often says, ‘Oh dear.’ During one particularly vicious battle in Series 3, Episode 1, he also pokes his head out of an armoured vehicle and says, ‘Everything all right, loves?’ The incongruity is funny, but you can’t do it all the time for every character.

Characters in comedies do and say things all the time that their creators do not agree with. Johnny Speight, the writer of Till Death Us Do Part (which became All in the Family in the USA) did not condone the racist words of Alf Garnett (or Archie Bunker in the USA). To Speight, the words he put into the mouth of Alf Garnett were so self-evidently absurd and wrong that they were funny, although the audience did not always agree on why they were funny.

Sitcom heroes and heroines are deeply flawed people doing foolish things for mixed motives, normally operating within some kind of Judeo-Christian moral framework. People make this mistake when they quote Shakespeare, as if he personally was writing down truths about life for all people in all times and all places. Some phrases have that quality to them, but these bons mots were sections of speeches said by characters in their own given fictional or quasi-historical situation. We should be rather cautious about taking life advice from Danish princes or Scottish kings.

The Philippians 4 manoeuvre

Ephesians 5 is not the only text in the Bible that can be quoted by modern-day Jorges. They could try and pull something that I call the ‘Philippians 4 manoeuvre’. If you really want a proof text to criticize anything you consider to be filthy or wrong, quote Paul’s words from his letter to the Philippians:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4.8)

Good news stories

The verse is delightful, but is it helpful? Again, we need to take these inspired words seriously. But are Christians required to apply them to all situations? In 1993, BBC News presenter Martyn Lewis spoke out against the continual diet of bad news stories. He questioned the choice of newsrooms perpetuating an agenda that relentlessly highlighted disasters and tragedies. Those who remember Lewis’s comments may also recall Trevor

MacDonald’s contribution to this debate with his ‘And finally’ stories at the end of the ITN news bulletins. They were normally upbeat, quirky or sentimental items which offered a shift in tone from the rest of the programme. Is this a Christian approach?

We should be careful about assuming that Christians should filter out bad news, or remove characters from comedies because they are not honourable, pure and lovely. Removing such characters would mean hardly a single situation comedy would survive. Perhaps the cast of Dad’s Army might make it, but there would be no Basil Fawlty, Victor Meldrew or Edina and Patsy.

The whole story

If we read the Bible from beginning to end, we see a far more nuanced picture. The verse in Philippians also becomes all the more striking because the Bible contains so many stories of

people who were dishonourable, impure and vile. The Bible is littered with stories of liars, tyrants, prostitutes, murderers and adulterers. And those are the good guys. The great prophet Moses was a killer and a coward. The forerunner of Christ, King David, was an adulterer and a murderer. Rahab was a prostitute, Noah a drunk, Jacob a fraudster, Peter a coward and Paul a Christian-killer, to say nothing of Samson, Solomon and so many others.

The only exception we find is Jesus, who was none of these things. When the Monty Python team set out to write The Life of Brian the target was originally going to be Jesus, but they found his life to be beyond reproach. But even Jesus told stories of treachery, violence and envy. In a parable recorded in Matthew 21.33–41, we read a story in which tenants seize a vineyard, beat and kill servants and then kill the vineyard owner’s own son. Elsewhere we read that a man is attacked, robbed and left for dead and ignored by hypocrites before a Good Samaritan comes along. The brother of the Prodigal Son is cold-hearted and resentful.

The Bible is not an easy read and does not come with a ‘U’ certificate. One hesitates before reading it to children, or even adults. There are many stories which involve bodily functions and words we would rather not hear read out loud in church. But do we find rude words in our Bibles? Modern translators seem to be rather prudish on that score. We need to lift the lid on biblical toilet humour.

You can do that by reading the next chapter in The Sacred Art of Joking available as a paperback, kindle or audiobook.

Watch Bluestone 42 over on iPlayer. Here’s a really cool bit: