Stephen Colbert on his faith & comedy
Recently, pop star Dua Lipa turned the table on Stephen Colbert and asked him a question. His answer has stuck with me for days and weeks after. To hear anyone speak of faith so earnestly these days is moving to me. To hear someone in his public position do it time and time again on late night TV is a whole other level. But this particular articulation is beautiful and worth the 3 minutes it’ll take you to listen…or listen again. Trust me.
Lipa started,“I think something that your viewers really connect with in your comedy and your hosting skills, especially in the past few years, is how open and honest and authentic you are about the role your faith plays in your life…(Do) your faith and your comedy ever overlap, and does one ever win out?”
Colbert answered to some degree in jest, “Ultimately, us all being mortal, the faith will win out in the end. But I certainly hope when I get to heaven, Jesus has a sense of humor.” After the laugh, he elaborated with more gravity, saying his faith is “connected to the idea of love and sacrifice being somehow related and giving yourself to other people” and that “death is not defeat.” He discussed the movie Belfast, in which his Catholic faith and a connection between humor and faith are represented. The movie is “funny and it’s sad, and it’s funny about being sad, in the same way that sadness is like a little bit of an emotional death, but not a defeat if you can find a way to laugh about it,” Colbert said. “Because that laughter keeps you from having fear of it, and fear is the thing that keeps you turning to evil devices to save you from the sadness.” He continued by quoting the American poet, Robert Hayden, who told us:
“We must not be frightened nor cajoled
into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.
We must go on struggling to be human,
though monsters of abstraction
police and threaten us."
from the poem, “Words in the Mourning Time” (1970)
Finally, Colbert concluded, “So, if there’s some relationship between my faith and my comedy, it’s that no matter what happens, you are never defeated. You must understand and see this in the light of eternity and find some way to love and laugh with each other."