Is it Biblically possible to take life too seriously?

seoulsearch said:

Hi @SilverBigBack,

Great to see you! Happy to see you posting again and don't worry about taking time to respond. We're all busy and come and go as we can.

This is a great topic. I'm not sure if this will apply, but I immediately thought of some people I've run into while growing up in the church and fit the description, "Don't be so heavenly minded that you're of no earthly good."

I apologize if this is not what you're trying to get at, so feel free to correct me. A friend and I were just talking about it the other day, because we both feel strongly called by God to try to DO something to help rather than just saying, "Blessings and prayers" to people.

Sure, there are several times I've done that myself because I had nothing else to give. But I'm thinking of people who, when encountering a single mother in the church, do nothing but lecture her about having a child out of wedlock (which she already knows, as she had her baby before becoming a Christian,) rather than doing something practical like offering to buy her a pack of diapers.

I understand that the ultimate goal is our spiritual status and getting other people on board the heavenly faith train, but I have met so many people who seem to believe being a Christian is reciting Scripture and nothing else. Jesus didn't just teach -- He also fed people and helped meet their immediate needs through healings, etc.

I feel uneasy around Christians who only leave walls of Scripture and nothing else.

What is being a Christian to them? Simply preaching to people? If I had to go by their examples, it would leave me thinking about what being a Christian is not:

It's not getting dirty and offering to help someone with a chore; it's not offering to listen and encourage and not lecture; it's not pulling out your wallet and trying to help them with a real, tangible, and immediate need -- even online, one can send a gift card fairly easily. But for some, I guess they see being a Christian as simply to blast out all the applicable Scriptures and then walk away or log off.

And I understand that maybe this is their calling. But I don't feel comfortable around such people, and they don't like me because I'm not "spiritual" enough for them -- and I'm ok with that. We all have to find our own callings, and sometimes personalities and approaches will clash.

For people called to discuss things like Apologetics and discuss the Bible in all it's original languages and interpretations, I can only sit back and admire them. It's a skill I will never obtain in this lifetime, and I enjoy reading well thought-out, compassionate responses from people who specialize in this.

But when someone is telling me about the trauma of trying to get past childhood abuse and doesn't understand why a loving God would allow a Christian-claiming adult to take advantage of them with no way out, I personally don't find all the translations and original languages study in the world to be of much help to me in my calling at that moment.

But this is just me, and we all have to find and go after whatever tools God wants us to pick up, study, and practice with to use in our purpose.

I find spiritual teachers to be a lot like other teachers -- you can have someone who knows the material forwards and backwards, but only knows the field language and can't explain it to regular people, then expects everyone else to rise to their level of intellectualism to be deemed worthy of such knowledge. To me, this is someone who takes things too seriously.

You have some people who try to be teachers and have seemingly great personalities, but don't really know what they're talking about, and they can't really teach you anything important. To me, this is someone who maybe doesn't take things seriously enough.

And then there is the rare unicorn, someone who knows their stuff, can explain it in normal human terms and not all field-specific language in a personable way, or recruits someone who understand what they mean and can "translate" it to others while treating them as a fellow part of the Body of Christ who has something equally valuable to give.

I am always on the hunt for such people, and when I find one, well, I have a hard time letting go.

God bless you @SilverBigBack and hope to see more posts and threads from you!

Click to expand...

cinder said:

I see I have been summoned. Anyway thoughts:

Joy is part of the fruit of the spirit, but there are some Christians that make you think the fruit of the spirit is lemon.

Joy and rejoicing are part of the Biblical commands and the christian life; if you can't do that you need to ask yourself why you can't obey those commands from God.

But day to day, it's more about being appropriate to the situation and about having firm boundaries.

Beyond that, there are times when humor helps us talk about overwhelmingly heavy things that we just can't talk about otherwise. But then there's mocking people or their experiences in a way that belittles and isolates them. There's turning the serious thing into a joke itself when it's no laughing matter. And there's humor that exalts immorality. And humor also depends upon familiarity to some degree. There are jokes I repeat to my family that I would never bring up in a church group. Doesn't mean the joke isn't funny just means there's an appropriate and an inappropriate audience.

Personally I find some pretty morbid things funny. Right now I'm thinking about the computer game where the happy sunflower computer interface starts singing about how much fun torturing people is, I think it's funny but I'm not going to link it on a christian forum. I think the dead puppies aren't much fun song is hilarious, but I'm not going to be listening to it for quite a while after my dog passes (hopefully that's still several years away). And one of the most interesting examples of humor and christianity meeting in my life was when I was at a christian thing as a teen, and we were all watching the princess bride and got to the battle of wits (here's the clip if you haven't seen it)

There was a big group guffaw when vizzini keels over, and then one of the leaders asked in a fake serious voice "What if he wasn't saved?" Laughter was appropriate at that moment, deep serious soul searching over the salvation of a fictional character was not.

One thing I am pretty sure of, is that Jesus didn't spend a lot of time wondering if he was being joyful enough or serious enough. I'm betting he didn't laugh in Gethsemane or weep at the wedding at Cana. But we know he wept, and we're pretty sure he smiled and laughed too. So what do you think Jesus did when the fishermen in his group started telling slightly crude jokes (these were men in the society of other men, do you think that never happened?)? What if there was joke about a roman, a jew, and a samaritan walked into a bar..... ? And I imagine that for some of those jokes Jesus did laugh, then he told a story where the samaritan was the hero and spoke with a lonely hurting samaritan woman at a well (and stayed with the samartians for several days at the end of that story). And he saw through the hypocrisy of the men who pushed him to punish a woman caught in the act of adultery while letting the man get away without any exposure and showed her mercy.

And I think that's the best non-answer answer I have.

Click to expand...

cinder said:

Well I will refer that back to the illustration in one of my favorite christian books.

There's a boy who's grown up in an angry family where everyone is always putting each other down. Every night he excuses himself after dinner to go down the street and hide under the porch of a happy family enjoying their dinner so he can listen to the happy family. Then one night the father of that family finds him and invites him in to join them at the dinner table. Joy is taking a place at that table, even though your angry family and all your problems are still waiting back home.

But that takes discipline and work because we're wired to survive and that means looking for what's going wrong rather than what's going right. So after a bad day at work, an unexpected setback, seeing someone get a new car or house and wishing you could upgrade your own right now too, seeing all the happy couples out for vday and feeling lonely, etc ; you've gotta make the choice to look at what you have that God has given, to remember that if you live in America you're better off than the majority of people in the world and thank God for what you do have rather than pining after what you don't. That's the kind of rejoicing god is calling us to. After all, we're his and that's a huge win any day of the week.

Click to expand...