Here’s the thing about earnestness. Our culture discounts it; but the people are yearning for it. Jeffrey Zaslow, author and columnist for The Wall Street Journal

I’m sure that earnest is not a household word for most of us. It’s not the kind of word you casually drop into conversations or dust off for those times when you seek to impress. Earnest seems like it might live in the lexicon of some fussy, old-fashioned matron who sits stolidly on her divan contemplating the state of the world. A matron who might brandish such a word as she lectures her nieces and nephews on the virtue of character. Above all, live your lives earnestly, she might say as she pours tea from her grandmother’s china teapot.

If you look up the definition of earnest, you will find something like this: characterized by or proceeding from an intense and serious state of mind; grave or important. Herein lies the problem. Proceeding from an intense and serious state of mind is not really fashionable today. It’s fashionable to be cool, to act as though you don’t really care, to perfect a respectable state of aloofness. It’s stylish to refrain from excessive displays of emotion, particularly joy and wonder. It’s très chic to live in a world of intense irony.

American novelist Lauren Groff writes:

I feel like in American fiction we’re moving out of a period of intense irony, and I’ve very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but it shouldn’t be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that the best way I can describe it. I’m a fan of earnestness. I feel like there is a new wave of earnestness and I’d be happy if I’m some small part of that.

I’d like to write Ms. Groff and tell her that I, too, am a fan of earnestness. Actually, I’m a card-carrying member of the earnestness fan club. I’ve long tired of the ironic world view which flattens all that is serious and intense, all that purports to feel.

Writers Matt Ashby and Brendon Carol argue that Lazy cynicism has replaced thoughtful conviction as the mark of an educated worldview. They lament that fact that this cynicism has permeated our culture and has influenced contemporary literature and art through post-modernism. Jeffrey Laslow agrees that our culture discounts earnestness, but he claims that the people are yearning for it.

I’m yearning for it. Which is why I have developed a keen eye and ear for it. And I didn’t have to look far to find a lovely example. The photo above of my grandson, Griffin, is a typical photo. When asked to smile for the camera, he routinely looks away or looks directly into the camera with serious intensity. Griff is an earnest kid. I’ve watched him in his kindergarten classroom as he goes about his business. What some may perceive as indifference or reluctance to engage is really a serious intensity that often prompts him to watch from the edge of the rug. While others are eager to share, he frequently looks on, considering how he will proceed. Earnestness in a five-year old is unexpected and often misunderstood. In a classroom of kids who have clearly learned to do school, Griff’s earnestness distinguishes him, and I’d like him to know that there are those who value its virtue.

Novelist Gillian Flynn writes: Ironic people always dissolve when confronted with earnestness, it’s their kryptonite. As a fan of earnestness, I can attest that I have seen it bring ironic people to their proverbial knees. In a graduate poetry class, my classmates and I were asked to bring a poem we admired and be prepared to share it with the class. The first student to share read a poem I will never forget: Outside my window, a sparrow chirps. That was it. Short and sweet. And what? When asked to comment on his choice, the student ventured that it was so short that it was deep, wasn’t it? Here was the ironic worldview at its best–or worst. There was really nothing in this poem, and therefore it was deep? When my father, the professor, asked him earnestly how the poem was deep, it was this confrontation that dissolved him. There was nothing much in this poem, and the emperor had no clothes. For the remainder of the class, he sat silently as others read poems that were unabashedly earnest.

Poet, playwright, and religious writer, English woman Hannah Moore writes: Prayer is no eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech but earnestness of soul. As one who has felt herself prayer-disabled for years, I, too, have come to know prayer as earnestness and not necessarily eloquence. Earnestness cuts to the chase, to the heart. It doesn’t bother with figures of speech or fancy words. It is the language of God’s heart, and it is with this serious intensity that we pour out our fears, our sins, and deepest longings.

I say let’s dust off our old-fashioned notions of earnestness. Let’s make it fashionable and preferred. Let’s speak, act, and pray in earnest. And if we do, perhaps we can send the ironic worldview packing.