I've been, well, musing, about reverence. I think many of us could spout off easily enough that "reverence is respect and love." And yet knowing that, we often use the word in ways that seem inconsistent with that definition.
Reverent does not mean quiet; it means respect and love. In some times and places, this means being quiet; at other times, this means acting like a monkey! Let me provide a real life example.
In Primary we sing a happy birthday song to the kids who will have a birthday in the coming week. To add some fun to it, I created a die they roll that has different ways to sing the song on it. Some examples of different sides are "whisper voice", "an octave higher or lower", "taped lips", etc. One of the sides says "Pretend You Are A....", and the kid gets to choice how we act while we sing him or her happy birthday. One girl rolled this and chose monkey!
So what would be the reverent thing to do here? If I was halfhearted in acting like a monkey, it could have given off the message that I thought it was a dumb or poor choice, not at all a show of respect and love. So I went all out -- not out of control, but all out. I believe she felt respected and loved, or in other words, reverenced.
Now I realize we were in the Primary room. If we had been in the chapel or perhaps a temple or other place where such behavior would be inappropriate, then it would not have been respectful or loving to the place or to her if I had behaved thus. Instead it would have been respectful to lovingly point this out and help her make a more appropriate choice... or never have created such a situation in the first place. (Some may think this was not appropriate in the Primary room - I can respect that opinion, but that's another topic.)
So then, the point of all this writing -- why do we say "we need to be more reverent when we're in the chapel" or "in the temple" or wherever else? More is a comparator, meaning we must be more reverent compared to something else. In this context, it seems we are saying we need to be more reverent than when we are in other places, but is that accurate? I think we simply need to be reverent to the situation. This terminology (which I catch myself doing frequently enough) teaches our children that reverent means quiet. Perhaps it's not a big deal, but I do think it's a disservice.
It does seem appropriate to say "we need to be more reverent than we're being." This is to say, we need to be more appropriate in showing respect and love for the situation we're in. Let's not let our children think reverent synonymous to quiet, or even worse, synonymous to boring! :)
