Don’t deep it
‘She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.’ — Proverbs 31:25
‘Life is serious all the time, but living cannot be. You may have all the solemnity you wish in your neckties, but in anything important… you must have mirth or you will have madness.’ — G.K. Chesterton
There’s a motto I’ve been trying to live by recently.
Don’t deep it.
I wish I could say it comes from the Bible. It’s actually just Gen-Z slang.
Translation: stop taking life so seriously. It probably isn’t that bad. It’s not that deep.
It may sound stupid, but I think there is some deep Biblical wisdom hidden here.
Hear me out for a moment.
Laughter—the antidote to pride
My problem is that I’m naturally someone who ‘deeps’ it.
I’m a chronic over-thinker. I’m my biggest critic. I’m that guy who walks away from a party and spends the rest of the night fretting about whether that stupid joke I made now means everyone hates me.
Can you relate?
This kind of introspection has its place in the Christian life. Being self-aware is a good thing. We should be conscious of our blind spots, sensitive to how our words and actions affect others, and alert to our sinful dispositions.
The problem comes when our introspection spills over into pride.
Often, our introspection is borne out of an inflated sense of our self. We carry ourselves through life thinking that we are the centre of our worlds—that everyone around us is constantly thinking about us, analysing our every word, reflecting on every interaction they have with us.
We often take ourselves far too seriously—and we don’t take God seriously enough.
I’m afraid to say, friend, that you’re not half as important as you think you are (and neither am I). People aren’t thinking about you nearly as much as you worry they are.
It’s your pride telling you that they are.
I don’t mean that to be a discouragement. In fact, it’s an enormous encouragement.
You can stop ‘deeping it’—you can stop taking yourself so seriously.
We must be clear: take God seriously. Take His Word and prayer and gathering with His people seriously. Take your holiness and obedience to His ways seriously.
But don’t take yourself seriously. Laughter flows from humility—recognising that God is Lord of our lives, our life is a gift, and that we are not the centre of the universe.
I love how C.S. Lewis talks about humility in Mere Christianity:
‘Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays … Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.’
Humility and laughter go hand-in-hand. The more we think about God—the more we delight in Him—the less we think of ourselves.
As we fill our gaze with His glory, we learn to laugh at ourselves—our flaws, our mistakes and our quirks—rather than allowing them to define and destroy our sense of who we are.
It’s not that we are taking our sin less seriously. We must take our sin deadly seriously. But, when we are in Christ, our sin doesn’t define us any longer—His righteousness does (2 Corinthians 5:21).
And so we are able to move on when we get it wrong. We repent, we receive God’s forgiveness—and we are free to live our lives. We don’t need to fret what God thinks or what people think about us.
This is what humility looks like—self-forgetfulness, laughter, freedom.
Laughter in the face of hardship
Learning to laugh—to take ourselves less seriously as we take God seriously—is an antidote to pride.
But what about when the world around us seems so serious? When our personal circumstances and global events conspire to fill us with fear and dread?
Reflect on these words from Psalm 2:4: ‘But the one who rules in heaven laughs. The LORD scoffs at them.’
Have you ever considered that God—the Sovereign One who rules and reigns over all things—laughs?
We can rejoice—even laugh—in the face of hardship and difficulty, because we are in the hands of the God who is all-sovereign, all-powerful, and who laughs at the schemes of the wicked (see also Psalm 37:13, 59:8).
To quote G.K. Chesterton, life in this world can feel serious—to survive it, ‘you must have mirth or you will have madness.’
This ‘mirth’, this self-forgetful laughter, comes from surrender.
When we live in a futile attempt to control the uncontrollable circumstances of our lives and the events of the world around us, it will drive us to madness. It simply isn’t possible.
But when we trust in the One rules and reigns over all things—when we surrender ourselves to His sovereign plans and purposes—we experience freedom, and with it, we learn to laugh.
This laughter isn’t just ‘gallows humour’—cynicism that comes when we resign ourselves to inevitable disaster.
This is the confident, hope-filled, free-spirited laughter of those who know the One who is in control, whose identity is secure in Him, and whose future is certain.
This is the laughter of the redeemed—the laughter of those who will one day laugh together around the banqueting table of their Father in the new creation.
Today, look to Him, and laugh ‘without fear of the future’ (Proverbs 31:25). Take Him seriously, and stop taking yourself so seriously.
Don’t deep it.
With love,
Mike