What is Joy? The Same Sentence Appears in Two of My Books—Here are Excerpts
I just noticed that the same sentence, asking the same big question, identically appears in two of my books. That question: “What is joy?”
Happiness and joy are different. This theme speaks to me, apparently. It has appeared in various posts to this blog. And as I’ve now noticed, the theme is a thread of continuity running from one of my books into the latest one.
Relevant passages out of the two books actually somewhat fit together in exploring this question. What follows, then, is an essay built out of excerpts from different books.
From The Ten Commandments, chapter 5:
What is joy? Joy and happiness are actually two different things, and the distinction is profound. [...] In this life, happiness is the fleeting substitute we pursue when joy is lacking. Indeed, happiness must be pursued. (The U.S. Constitution’s phrase, “the pursuit of happiness,” seems to appreciate this point.) We race after happiness as quickly as it fades. By contrast, joy is something we have. It is a fruit of the Spirit, a possession of the heart. Rather than trying to get happiness out of life, obtain joy from its source—the love of God—and channel that joy out into life. This reversal reorients the believer’s very understanding of the nature of fulfillment and personal freedom.
From You Did Not Choose Me, But I Chose You, chapter 17:
To begin to confront the personal struggle inherent in Christian faith, start here: The way of the Spirit is not a way of happiness.
Christians are rarely told this fact bluntly. They should be. The way of the Spirit is a way of joy, but happiness and joy are different.
Jesus shows us this. Jesus surely was a man of joy, because joy is a fruit of the Spirit of God (Galatians 5:22). Yet nothing about the portrayal we have of Jesus in any of the four gospels suggests a man who was happy. Nothing we see of him in the gospels suggests a man who kept himself carefree, who delighted in accolades, who filled his time with pleasures. Nothing about him suggests an irrepressible grin. Such a grin is an expression of satisfaction with this world, whereas Jesus was a man of the other world. His thoughts were elsewhere; his understanding was elsewhere. He knew more.
His knowledge gave him eyes to see, an awareness that was not averted. Jesus knew what death had done in the world and what it was still doing. Far from laughing, scripture tells us that Jesus wept.
From You Did Not Choose Me, But I Chose You, chapter 20:
What is joy?
An easier starting point is this: What is happiness? If the two are different, then it helps to explore this question.
We can be happy. Start there. Happiness and joy are different, but they are not opposed. Happiness and joy can exist together. It is just that the one is fleeting. Happiness is the enjoyment of an attainment, pleasure, or prize—a feeling that always ends. A life of joy might include much happiness, and in fact, joy makes happiness easier. With joy, we can watch happiness pass away without desperation in seeing it go.
Because happiness always does pass away. This is its nature. The nature of happiness is that it is hostage to the futility that rules the world. Happiness must be pursued to be kept, must be chased to be held, because another attainment or pleasure is always needed to restore happiness or keep it aloft. Much energy is wasted on the seduction that life can be found through this chasing.
Joy, by contrast, is not pursued, but instead is trusted. Joy is not a feeling to ride, but a foundation on which to stand. Thus, joy leaves room for any feeling within the experience of it. The person who knows joy can be sad. Sadness might even facilitate joy, because a sadness that is sufficiently draining can break us from burning up energy on happiness’s pursuit. A great portion of one’s life can be spent on running away from hurt or fear by seeking happiness after happiness so we can feel, for scant moments at a time, that we live in a world where the fear or hurt is absent. Joy is a different answer. Joy says the fear and hurt are present, but it is they that are momentary. They are fleeting. The fear and hurt are real, but we know something bigger than these feelings, something eternal. We know the Spirit of God, the Spirit that even now blows where it will. And joy is part of the fruit of this Spirit moving through us, moving through you, the fruit of being in the place or doing the thing that the Spirit would join you in doing.