The Birmingham Buzz: This Joy Is No Laughing Matter

I thought it very appropriate that I should wake up with a migraine the morning after Jamey and I spent the evening discussing the nature of joy. What better way to test a theory than to set it all up nice and straight--and then detonate a bomb in the middle of it?

The conversation began the night before when I finally confessed that I had a gaping hole where that particular fruit of the spirit was supposed to be.

My joy was missing--not all the time, but often, and I wanted to find it.

I must admit, my mental picture of joy came from years of being around lovely church ladies with their cheerful spirits, ready laughter, and endless gift for seeing and meeting needs with grace and good will.

There were entire ladies Sunday School classes at some churches that seemed to overflow with joyful hilarity.

Shrieks of laughter! Funny skits! Hugs all around!

Being a natural introvert, I never actually attended any of those classes, since I felt I could not reliably live up to the standard of ebullient joyfulness that seemed to pour from these women of God, and frankly, I didn't want to feel like Eeyore at the Optimist Club.

But I did look in wistfully as I walked by the door. And I wondered why flowers and bubbles never seemed to follow me around like that...

Over the years, I also noticed that women's conferences and ladies retreats were invariably led by women of great charisma and enthusiasm.

Joy, I thought! There it is! It flowed from them like water.

It was earnest, and real, and attractive, but instead of catching the vision, I usually left with the same feeling I had in high school as I watched the cheerleaders from my corner of the pep band, peering out wistfully from behind my bass drum--a little bit jealous and no closer to being able to pull off what they had just demonstrated out there under the lights than when I had walked in.

So I brought it up with Jamey, and we talked it over.

Hopefully I'm not just concocting a theory to make myself feel better, but maybe the problem was in my definition of joy. I'm going to study it more, but after our initial discussion, here is what I am thinking :

We ought not confuse being an extrovert with being joyful (although they often do it well).

Joy CAN, but does not have to, encompass happiness.

Joy is not dogged cheerfulness in the face of tragedy, grief, or adversity (that, I believe, is called "denial").

Joy can be quiet or charismatic. It can exist alongside tears or in the midst of struggle just as well as it can in moments of supreme satisfaction.

Joy is more of a decision than an emotion.

The definition I found that best fits with what I see in Scripture is from a book by Kay Warren. The book is called Choose Joy, and I have a few quibbles her exegesis in places, but I did like her idea that joy is "the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be all right, and the determined choice to praise God in all things."

She undoes some of the power of the definition by spending too much time trying to prove that Jesus was joyful in the "cheerleader" sense of the word--that his clever punchlines kept the crowds coming back and that he was, in her words, "a party guy"--charismatic, witty, and loads of fun to be around.

Maybe he was! But the proof texts she offers up are less than compelling.

"Blind guides!" Jesus warns the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:24, "You strain your water so you won't accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!"

She calls that passage "great, edgy humor", but since it was delivered right before he called his audience "whitewashed tombs" and "a brood of vipers" and "hypocrites" (over and over and over)--and since He ended that speech by cursing them with the guilt from every drop of righteous blood ever shed, I'm pretty sure no one was laughing very hard.

Her other examples were also pretty stretched, and I'm not saying this to be critical. There is much to praise in her book, but when we adopt the idea that "joy" equals "church face" or the reputation for being a "party guy", I think we do a disservice to the true meaning of the word as it appears Scripture.

I think the story of Christ sleeping contentedly in the middle of a life-threatening storm would have been a more powerful example to bring up.

That is what joy looks like! There's the "quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be all right"!

The picture of Him standing silently, and peacefully before Pilate as false charges are piled upon Him is an example of joy. Surely it was joy that flowed from "the settled assurance that God was in control of all the details" of His life.

The story of Paul and Silas in jail has always moved me. Did they sing because they felt giddy? Because it was funny to be sitting in filth and darkness? Or because they had made "the determined choice to praise God in all things"--a decision to use song to push against the real, pressing, vivid pain of their circumstances?

This idea of joy makes so much more sense to me in the context of Scripture. The command to "rejoice always" seems odd when you put it with the idea of taking up your cross daily--unless it is understood as something much deeper than a happy face or a jovial attitude.

We know that we have in Christ's perfect example, a vision for what it looks like to "rejoice in the Lord always".

We know we have in David's "heart after God's own heart" a template for joy in adversity.

Even Job with his proclamation, "though he slay me, yet I will hope in Him" (Job 13:15) throws a rock at our narrow interpretation of joy.

Like love, joy seems to be an attribute that thrives in unlikely places, and doesn't always look the way the world thinks it should.

And, as usual, it seems to be a much bigger picture than the one we like to draw. Love is every intoxicating thing about the Song of Solomon. It is also the bloody face of Christ pleading for the forgiveness of the ones who were killing Him.

In the same way, joy is the whole earth, shouting it's praises to the Lord of heaven (Psalm 98:4), but it is also found in the surety of the words "nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done" in the midst of sweat that fell like blood. (Luke 22:42)

So when I am struck with an inconveniently persistent migraine at the start of a busy day, I can dispense with the bravado and fakery. It hurts. I can barely hear anything over my inner whimper, but I REALLY DO have the settled assurance that God is in control. I REALLY KNOW that ultimately everything is going to be all right. And I REALLY WILL praise Him, no matter how I feel inside.

In this moment, the JOY of the LORD is not my bouncy step, or my perma-smile, or my ringing laughter.

It is the strength to get out of bed (maybe) and to do the next thing (if He allows it), and my ability to wait peacefully, no matter what, for the lesson God has for me here.

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