I will confess here to something that anyone who knows me already knows: I am a raging pessimist. I have a natural tendency to find what is bad or wrong or to anxiously wait for what is bad or wrong. This robs me of a lot of enjoyment in life. Frequently, people say things to me like, "Living that way steals your joy!" Steals my joy? What on earth does that even mean? Such a comment brings two doubts to mind immediately. I sincerely wonder if I have any joy to steal in the first place, and I wonder if it is possible to lose joy if you had it in the first place. Bear with me as I here attempt to dive into one of the most difficult topics in my life.
C.S. Lewis says in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, that "[he] sometimes wonder[s] whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy." This rings very true in my life. I have had a difficult time finding a true definition of joy. Some people seem to think of joy as interchangeable with happiness, or perhaps as a more advanced or long-term version of happiness. Some people tie it in with hope, focusing on some sort of expectation or longing. Even Lewis seemed inclined to some version of this. In one of his letters, he says, "All joy emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, always beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings." In Surprised by Joy, he goes into a long description of joy as an almost nostalgic feeling, a feeling of something experienced in part or as partially remembered, with expectation of experiencing it again in full. He reiterates this concept in the The Problem of Pain. This resonates with me. I think my fullest joy comes from remembering time spent with my grandfather, or with friends in Christian Challenge, or on top of a mountain with my wife. There is a deep sense of longing for those times, those relationships, those sights, sounds, and smells, but also a recognition that those memories are as much a shadow of the actual occurrence as the occurrence itself is of heaven. Like most human beings, I struggle with perspective. When I am in the midst of trials, it is harder for me to find good feelings of any sort. The same memories and hopes that produced those pangs of joy seem to be a stabbing pain now. What good are the good times to me when I have been awake for three hours in the middle of the night with a screaming infant? What good are those memories when it seems I will never see a mountain again? It almost seems as though I am being taunted rather than encouraged. Obviously, I am doing something wrong. I am looking at something incorrectly or incompletely. Years ago, a man in my small group at church spoke of a trial he faced with a business he owned. It was horribly distressing, frankly, and I think the stress would have just about given me a stroke. He couldn't sleep at all one night for the stress, so he went to his recliner and started to pray. At our church, we often use the ACTS model (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication). He had full intention of going through that, but found himself stuck on thanksgiving (in the best possible way). He started thanking God for the blessings in his life, and before he was quite aware of what was happening, was practically thanking God for his entire life story. He had come to saving faith later in life and in this time of thanksgiving, he could see God's hand in his entire life story. He could see how much he had to be thankful for and how much God had done for him, how much God had worked in his life to bring him to that moment. As he thanked God, his anxiety melted away. He found joy in God. John Piper, in a Desiring God article titled "How Do You Define Joy?" from July of 2015, speaks of human emotions as not being naturally within our control. When we see a threat, we are frightened. We see a loved one, we are happy. We see someone grieving, and we are sad. Happiness, then, is a natural response to the good things God does for us. But what about when we see a threat, or are in sad circumstances? Joy can't be a natural response to suffering, so it must, then, be either a trained response or a supernatural one. Or, perhaps, a combination thereof. The Holy Spirit enables us to do things that we couldn't do on our own. While facing difficulty, our natural tendency may be to feel anxious or frustrated. That's fine- we are allowed to have feelings. Read through the Psalms- there are a lot of feelings expressed to God in some of those prayers. But yet, the Psalmists still put their hope, their trust, their faith in God. The Holy Spirit enables us to do this through God's grace, but we have the ability to sharpen this by consciously practicing it. As my friend above did, we can consciously choose to practice gratitude. I have tried it. Around the beginning of the pandemic, I was having what would probably be diagnosed as an anxiety attack or something similar. I was quite literally fighting for every breath, which further fuels anxiety when that is one of the symptoms of a strange new disease that no one can seem to fully define (we've progressed a bit from there). I got out of bed and remembered the story I told above about my friend from small group. So, I sat at our kitchen island and started to write a prayer to God, thanking him for everything I could think of that I had to be grateful for. A little over an hour later, I was breathing normally and went back to bed. I slept peacefully for the rest of the night. Since then, when I consciously decide to express gratitude, I can have some semblance of happiness, or, at least, I can respond more graciously to my circumstances. There are times when I am awake with a screaming child that I don't do that very well, and dark thoughts and pessimistic ideas start to creep in. If you have read this blog in the past, perhaps you remember an article that I wrote regarding prayer a few weeks ago. One of the problems that I highlighted with my prayer life was great difficulty praising God. I quoted J.I. Packer as saying, "If there is little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God." I think this is another reason I struggle to be joyful. I think that I fail to fully grasp just what my God has done for me, what he has done for the world, what he is doing even now. Tim Keller famously says that "We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope." I think if I could fully grasp that reality, I would be far, far more joyful. I think too highly of myself, and that prevents me from thinking as highly of Christ as I ought to. One place that joy occasionally comes creeping in, almost paradoxically, is when faced with unthinkable sadness. Often the times that joy is hardest for me to come by is when my frustration comes over something petty. I could do a whole writeup on perspective, but I digress. When I am faced with something so sad that it stops me in my tracks, or makes me physically hurt, that feeling of longing for things to be righted is met with a quiet hope that they will be. When I say hope, I don't mean a societal definition of hope. I mean a biblical definition, an assuredness that what I long for will one day be fulfilled. A tragic death of a believer brings deep sadness and a great sense of joy, knowing they are with Christ, and that someday all believers will be reunited, though how exactly is beyond my understanding. There is joy in knowing that a life of suffering will give way to something more beautiful than could be expressed. There is joy in knowledge that this broken world, slowly dying under the weight of human brokenness, damned by the same curse that has doomed us all to pain and death and disappointment, will be restored to a pristine, safe, wonder-filled state that points us all to its maker, just as it was intended to do all along. Paul tells us in Romans 8:19-23 that all of creation is groaning or crying out in anticipation of the consummation of our adoption as sons and daughters of God, because at that time, all things will be restored in the new heaven and earth. Joy is there. I have it. I have it when I consciously look for it, but it does not come easily to me. It is far more elusive than any bucket list bird. I pray that in due time, it will come more easily. Something tells me it will. -Jameson Photo by Laura Kessler on Unsplash
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AuthorMy name is Jameson. Theology, literature, and waterfowl are my three favorite things. Archives
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