In his seminal work, Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton wrote:
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. … The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. … There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
We associate mirth with silliness and a lack of appropriate seriousness, but the fact that Jesus feasted in pubs while condemning the hypocrisy of the Pharisees ought to disabuse of this notion. Have you ever been in a bar filled where laughter wasn’t everywhere? Jesus did criticize, but it wasn’t the heart of what He did.
It is kind of the opposite of a hot take to say that the world has gotten crazy. But how do we keep from going crazy with it? Both the political left and right are filled with rage at the moment; some of it may even be justified. But if we are not to become what we hate, we must not live from hate.
As Christians, we know the conflicts of today end in the triumph of Jesus… so we can live from the same mirth that empowered Jesus.
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