Seriously Unserious

You can learn a lot about your culture by what it mocks. Mockery is a great way to teach what is to be avoided and despised. Scorn also has the advantage of avoiding explanations or argumentation. The group of laughing scoffers don’t offer reasons for why they point and laugh – it’s just assumed that their scorn is justified.

In our society, one such area of scorn is seriousness. Witness how it’s regarded as a real flaw to be “so serious”. A church service is given the thumbs-down with the comment, “It was just a bit too serious.” We picture a grey, glum and humourless man, when he’s described as “just so serious all the time.”

In secular culture, to be serious is a necessary evil for limited periods. Our newsreaders, for example, should be serious for the ten minutes they read “the news”, and then get back to smiling and joking. Even the “serious” events reported on the news need to be broken up with the relief of amusing advertisements every few minutes, not to mention the entertaining shows and music before and after.

One reason why preachers are despised, and why sacred music is spurned is that people react to those things by saying, “it’s so heavy”.

Seriousness appears to be akin to moroseness, to our culture. To be sober is to be sombre. To be serious is to be staid, stiff, and stern.

For Christians, this is more than just a passing concern. Seriousness is commanded in Scripture in many places. Here is just a sample:

Happy is the man who is always reverent, But he who hardens his heart will fall into calamity. (Proverbs 28:14)

Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. (1 Thess 5:6)

But let us who are of the day be sober … (1 Thess 5:8)

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober (1 Tim 3:2)

Likewise deacons must be reverent… Likewise, their wives must be reverent, (1 Timothy 3:8, 11)

but hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled, (Titus 1:8)

that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience; (Titus 2:2)

the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior … (Titus 2:3)

Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded, (Titus 2:6)

Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober… (1 Pet 1:13)

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Pet 5:8)

It’s no peripheral issue when seriousness is commanded of pastors, deacons, older men, older women, younger men, and all Christians not given to the slumber of worldliness and a lack of spiritual watchfulness. Apparently, seriousness is a deep and profound spiritual virtue required of all believers.

What then is biblical seriousness? What is it not? How is it cultivated, and how is it undermined? When living among people addicted to amusement, drowning in entertainment, and scornful of serious-mindedness, it’s not hard to see why Christians may view seriousness as a gloomy distortion of their faith. Ironically, though, this attitude may be a form of worldliness, not faithfulness. In this series, we’ll seek to understand biblical seriousness and think through the ways we cultivate it.

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This post first appeared on Churches Without Chests, the personal blog of David de Bruyn, who is the pastor of New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. We republish it here by permission.

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Image created by Nick Youngson for Alpha Stock Imagesand is used under a Creative Commons 3 – CC BY-SA 3.0license.