Coincidently, I listened to my favourite Christian podcast a couple of days ago: The Free Believers Network, entitled Laughter Therapy 21st September 2010. This podcast emphasised the importance of having fun and how serious institutional Christianity can make a person. It seems that the pursuit of religion and theology above relationship with God and other people, inevitably leads to overindulgence in analysing things and absolute seriousness about so many things. It’s like Christians have trained themselves to no longer be fun and to adopt a serious persona. I suppose they do this because they don’t want to be seen as being flippant, especially when it comes to spiritual things. I like this quote from the introduction to this podcast episode, “We’ve lost our sense of humour because we’ve been pickled in a jar of seriousness our entire lives.” I also like something that Darin Hufford said in this podcast, something he has said before, “Christians believe that a good marriage should be 95 percent seriousness and 5 percent fun – but it should actually be the other way around.”
I became very serious in my pursuit of truth as a Christian. I began to look down on those things that were deemed “ungodly” and criticized those people who did not “honour God”. It all blew up in my face when, after pursuing spiritual concepts, principles and formulas for several years – I realised that my life was not changed for the better. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to map spiritual concepts to my life as a means of making my life more prosperous, happy and attractive to others – but it has not worked.
I believe that motives play a huge role in whether the pursuit of spiritual knowledge really yields any tangible benefits. In his book, Mastering Your Emotions, Pastor Colin Dye says that the basic human wants are security, significance and self-worth; we try to satisfy these wants through the pursuit of people, power and possessions. I will admit that although I convinced myself that my motives were pure, they really were tainted with security, significance and self-worth. We are all motivated by these core human needs – every single one of us; although, some experience them more than others and we all express them in various different ways.
The pursuit of a ministry empire, were you seek establish yourself as a “font of all knowledge”, is obviously an enticing trap for many people. I will admit that I wanted to become an “expert” in my new-found theology: the grace message. But when grace or “living loved” becomes something that you study with a means of teaching others who are seeking fulfilment in life – we inevitably miss it. It really is shocking just how far a person can travel down that road of studying about love and grace – without actually experiencing it.
Photo: Laughing courtesy of Anthony Kelly.
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