I wish I had a loonie (Canadian dollar) for every time someone asked my "Why do Christians always look so sober and grumpy?" Usually this question comes up after coming to church and seeing everyone sitting properly in rows, looking ahead, quiet and afraid to create any noise. Should a child make noise, all the person visiting sees is the child getting an elbow in the ribs to hush, or if the child is lucky a peppermint to keep them quiet, or really if they're really unlucky and mom or dad is grumpy that morning, they get marched out the back and downstairs where the child often becomes even louder. As one young man I was discipling told me, "Why would I ever want to become like them?" To be honest, I've sometimes thought the same thing after witnessing well meaning followers of Jesus who are passionate about God but so sober about life and seemingly scared of fun. Faith often seems to be all about seriousness and little about joy.
So then comes along Paul, a rather serious guy himself by all accounts, and he tells us that the second part of growing the fruit of the Spirit in us is growing joy! The website Theopedia describes joy this way, "Joy is a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. It is a settled state of contentment, confidence and hope. It is something or someone that provides a source of happiness. It appears 88 times in the Old Testament in 22 books; 57 times in the New Testament in 18 books.... Greek dictionary definition: chara, khar-ah'; cheerfulness, i.e., calm delight:--gladness" When you define joy this way, it makes sense considering who Jesus is and that he took our sin to the cross on our behalf so that our relationship with God the Father is made right again. We should be the most joyful people on earth and this should come out in how we approach life and the people in our life.
Joy comes from knowing that God is in charge and we are not. It comes from knowing that Jesus loves us more than we can ever know. It comes from knowing that no matter what happens, the Holy Spirit is with us, understands what is going on and will never abandon us. It doesn't mean that God is going to make everything work out all the time the way we think things should work out, or that we won't experience suffering or pain; these things come with life, but we know that we don't face these things alone. Joy comes from having a faith community of people committed to following Jesus who have also committed to journeying through life together, looking out for each other, picking each other up when we fall, challenging us when we need to be challenged and encouraged when we need words of hope and grace. Joy comes from cultivating a spirit of contentment, seeing that everything we have has been given to us by God instead of concentrating on what we don't have. It's about learning to be grateful for all that we have and have been given. This is all about learning to see life through the eyes of God and in relationship with Jesus, meaning joy is something you can grow inside yourself; so grow it.
I think it's because people put disproportionate emphasis on the part in James'letter where the apostle wrote that believers should their laughter to mourning, and all that sort of thing. It's only one book out 27, but it sounds as a real damper on people's spirits, and for some reason that's all people pay attention to. Maybe because religious people are joyless people. Remember what Jesus said about the Pharisees?
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