As I reread my latest blog entry about solitude, I’d like to follow it up by getting one point across: Being a Christian doesn’t mean you are boring and serious all the time. Quite the contrary. This post and my previous post may seem paradoxical, but hopefully I’ll explain how they are curiously related. The message at Seacoast last week was about joy and how our lives are transformed by the joy of knowing Christ and finding that joy in Christ alone. Having a heart of solitude doesn’t mean you never laugh or crack a smile. I fully believe that Jesus had a joyful personality that drew people to himself because he did not have the serious and pious characteristics of the religious leaders of his time. He didn’t bring people into a relationship with himself by being boring and dull. His purity and wholeness produced a joy that is unlike any other kind of humor. Whatever is poured into the heart will be spoken by the mouth.
I stumbled upon a quote by the great G.K. Chesterton:
Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s-self gravly, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article, than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally, but laughter is a leap, It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity (Orthodoxy, p. 224).
I don’t think Chesterton is suggesting that we spend our lives joking around. But I think he is encouraging us to recognize our need for lightheartedness, adventure, jest and fun. Sometimes, its exactly what we need. When it comes to humor, I find that good, clean wit and timing are much more enriching than making fun of someone or making inappropriate comments. (On a slight tangent, what has happened to comedy in movies in our culture? Most of it is trash. F bomb this.. F bomb that. That’s cheap humor. Give me some that makes me think, and then laugh. Or vice versa I don’t really care.)
So I hope you don’t read my blog and think, “Man that guy’s way too serious”. My biggest goal in doing any sort of writing is to share my thoughts about what God is teaching me in hopes that those thoughts help someone else. I’ll admit to being a touch too serious at times. It’s possible that a blog about not being serious somehow winds up being incredibly boring for you. Sorry about that. It’s most likely due to the fact that I spend so much time thinking rather than simply being. That’s one of the things I admire most about my wife; the way she laughs and finds humor in the most unlikely places. It’s a quality that I know Christ had while on earth, and its one that I seek to discover within myself.
Have a great weekend. Try to laugh a little.
-shf
