"Joy" to the world

We all want to be happy.

It’s part of our DNA as Americans, right? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? And boy, we have taken to that pursuit like dogs to a meat bone, like pigs to slop, like me to a chocolate chip cookie.

When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play ball. I was happy playing football or basketball, and when those options weren’t available it was any other kind of competition we could find or create: basement basketball with tennis balls and trash cans on rainy days when we couldn’t go outside; whiffle ball with some of the most elaborate rules created to accommodate the back yard that a Yale lawyer might have trouble deciphering; choosing sides and going to war with a variety of weapons after discovering “bang bang, you’re dead” didn’t work (so we found berries that could leave a stain to prove you’d been hit; to golf-ball sized hickory nuts that increased the range of your firepower, to a misguided use of b-b guns – classic escalation theory that has put the world on edge many times over).

Then it became cars, music, movies, books, girls, concerts, clothes, tennis shoes, sporting events, houses, neighborhoods, bigger paychecks, vacations that went from off-season trips (mountains in the summer, the beach in the winter when rates were lower) to the Caribbean in winter.

Opening presents on Christmas morning. Recognition and increased demand for my work. Season tickets to sports and plays. Enough books for a small library.

But always, the games ended, the season passed, I returned home from the vacation, the curtain went down on the play, the book ended, the Christmas tree was taken down and thrown out along with the boxes and wrapping paper that, for weeks, had been so enticing.

My guess is, even if the details differ, this sounds like your life, too.

Not that I’m complaining. I’ve had a life far beyond anything I deserved. I’m happy, through the ups and downs. I’ve got great memories, and still have great expectations.

Has it been everything I dreamed? Not hardly. I had some pretty big dreams; some impossible dreams. I wanted to play in the NBA, to pitch in the major leagues, to quarterback the Atlanta Falcons to a Super Bowl title. I wanted to write books that generations would cherish. I wanted enough money to never have to worry. I wanted … more.

But even in those dreams, reality assures me that had I achieved any or all of those dreams, they’d have been fleeting, too. Eventually, athletes can no longer play the game. Having made a living as a writer, I know the pressure is always there to follow up one award-winning piece with another, to prove it wasn’t a fluke. And money – the old saying goes, “how much money is enough? One more dollar than I have.”

I also know I’m hardly alone. Wanting more is as old as Adam and Eve (“You shall be like gods”). Solomon summed it up in his work, Ecclesiastes, when he wrote, “All is vanity, a chasing after the wind.”

Philosopher after philosopher reminds us that all of us seek happiness, without exception. Some seek it through excess, some by self-denial; some seek it through danger, others by self-preservation. Even those who are so miserable they commit suicide are looking for a way out, a peace they can’t seem to find in this life.

Because down deep, we all carry the uncomfortable idea that somewhere out there, there is more.

In the end, what we’re all looking for is not happiness, but joy.

They are not the same thing. Happiness, as we know, never seems to last. But joy is a state of mind that carries you through all the anticipations and disappointments of the pursuit of happiness.

For me, that joy comes in my relationship with something outside myself. It comes from something I have never physically seen or touched or heard. It comes from something that many find so abstract as to be considered absurd.

It comes from a pursuit of God.

The Bible tells us in story after story how when we abandon ourselves, we find peace. When we die to ourselves and our wants and desires, we find satisfaction. When we turn our guilt over the wrongs we’ve done to someone else who can forgive us, we can forgive ourselves.

I may be theologically way off base, but I believe that the fall of Adam and Eve was not that they ate a fruit that gave them some supernatural knowledge of good and evil, but rather that the act of taking that fruit that God had commanded they not take gave them self-awareness, which led to self-centeredness, which led to the longing to make oneself happy.

The focus left God and centered on “self.”

Before what we call “the fall,” I imagine the first people (Adam and Eve) walked with God. They lived for those moments of his presence. They went about the responsibilities to care for the earth and the animals and each other the way God has prescribed, but it was totally with a sense of being God-focused. God loves me. God is coming to talk to me. I do this because it makes God happy. Isn’t it wonderful that God gave us nature, the animals, laughter, adventure, companionship …

And then one day, Eve and then Adam realized they could make their own choice. It was not about God anymore; it was about me and what I wanted and what I thought would make me happy.

If you remember the story in Genesis, no one told Adam and Eve they were naked. No one told them to be ashamed. But with one simple act of “self” they suddenly became aware of their own nakedness, their own faults and flaws, and became ashamed.

I always wonder, did they ask God for forgiveness? I don’t see it anywhere in the story. I doubt they even knew the concept of forgiveness because it had never been part of their consciousness before. They had never done anything to offend God. They may have never even realized forgiveness might have been possible.

But God did. And in doing so set in motion the act of ultimate forgiveness that millions of us depend on for our eternal destiny.

One thing I have learned about the pursuit of happiness – I am happiest when I’m not thinking about it. It’s like the old saying about no longer being humble once you realize how humble you are; I’m not sure happiness doesn’t start to fade the moment you realize “I’m really happy.”

Happiness is a constant pursuit. Joy, on the other hand, is defined (in at least one primary definition) as “the emotion evoked by … the prospect of possessing what one desires.” Joy is “an emotion that’s acquired by the anticipation, acquisition or even the expectation of something great or wonderful.”

C.S. Lewis once wondered “whether all pleasures are a substitute for joy.” In his book, “Surprised by Joy,” he wrote “I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.”

James wrote (1:2) “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” This helped Jesus endure the cross “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).

Paul writes to the Philippians “complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” and considered this church his “joy and crown” even though he was not with them, not physically in their presence.

In the Old Testament, Nehemiah wrote (8:10) “the joy of the LORD is your strength.” The Psalms are full of joy-phrases, like “all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy” (Psalm 5:11), and that God “put more joy in my heart” (Psalm 4:7) and in God’s “presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).

None of this “joy” has to do with present circumstances, but in the confidence that there is purpose, and that the end of the matter has been settled.

It’s not an easy concept. Jesus says as much in Luke (9:23) when he says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? …”

Denying yourself is not easy. Easy is going after all the stuff that we’re told will make us happy. But we also know there is no end to seeking happiness. On the other hand, knowing how it ends gives us the peace – and joy - to live with whatever condition we find ourselves in at any given moment.

My brother tells the story of when he was a student in seminary. He and some of his friends were playing basketball late one night, and the janitor came in to lock up but let them finish their game. While they played, he sat in the bleachers reading his Bible.

When the game was over, the seminary students came over to thank the old man for letting them finish, and asked, “What are you reading?’’

The old man said, “The book of Revelation.”

The seminary students said, “That’s a pretty involved book, what with all these signs and dragons and lamp stands and blood and imagery and allegory. Do you understand what you’re reading?”

The old man answered that he did, and of course the seminary students said (with, I’m sure, a bit of doubt in their voices), “tell us what it means” (as if this old janitor could explain a book like Revelation to these best and brightest seminary students).


“It means,’’ the old man said, “that in the end, Jesus wins.”

And that is where joy comes from, knowing that no matter what we endure today, what we’ve endured yesterday or may endure tomorrow, in the end, Jesus wins.