Joy, Happiness, and the Way the World Doesn't Work

Earlier this week I attended a splendid NW Minnesota Synod Retreat and Conference whose keynote was Dr. Jacqueline Bussie, Professor Religion at Concordia College in Moorhead. She talked on hope and joy in a world of despair and grief, offering really practical suggestions for how this can impact our lives. Let me be frank, this may have been the best conference I've ever attended for its sheer usefulness to everything that I do as a pastor. These are some of my reflections, mixed with Dr. Bussie's insights, on the impact that joy can have on our lives.

We think we are all looking for happiness--that what really matters is whatever makes you happy. We tell ourselves that; we tell our children that. We retreat into the corner when something or somebody seeks to take that happiness away. I believe this is why we are not willing to talk seriously about grief and loss, because those are subjects that just sound too depressing to consider. They are contrary to the motto: Whatever makes you happy.

When I look at my own life I am not a particularly sad person, and so I often feel that same tendency to avoid grief and loss. Things are going pretty well; I have nobody close to me sick or dying, no imminent loss that I know of, nothing that should be able to deter my immediate happiness. This is my fortune, but it's not simply the case that we turn on and off feelings of grief and sorrow or, for that matter, control when they may come. All of us--if we live long enough--will experience moments of absurd suffering; moments that show our happiness to be no match for despair.

This is because happiness is actually a pretty shallow emotion. For all the face time we give to being happy it is not that momentary feeling--or state of mind--that keeps us going in times of grief. Instead, it is something else, something deeper, that persists when the foundations of our world shake.

Joy.

Joy is not the same thing as happiness, though the world tells us it is. Happiness is moment-by-moment; it is subject to the whims of the world; and it is always in conflict with sadness and despair. You can't be both happy and despairing; they are two sides of the emotional coin. Joy is something else. Joy may show itself in spurts, like happiness, but it is not quashed by sorrow. In fact, joy requires an understanding of the power that tragedy and despair have over our lives, and it protests that power, saying "No, sorrow and despair do not win. There is something stronger, something more real than loss." Happiness is internal conquest, but joy is resurrection.

Here is where that distinction becomes practical. Think about the most powerful moment of hope in your life. Think about the times that have strengthened your faith more than any other. What led to that moment? I am willing to bet there is at least a undertone of sorrow in those moments of hope. In fact, I bet that many of those moments of profoundest hope come intermixed with our most acute feeling of helplessness.

I think about the trip our youth took to Cortez, Colorado this summer and the joy we found there. We experienced intense sadness on that trip at the suffering of people whose lives we could not fix, but I think I can speak for the group and say with assurance that everyone of us had a favorable experience. What we experienced was not happiness--not as the world would define it. None of us came away content that the world was a great place for those children and families, and yet we felt a sense of wholeness in being there. It was a clear sense of joy; a power that says "This is not the end." Hunger and divorce, jailed family members and broken relationships do not destroy the human spirit that cries out in spite of their condition. Joy is always in spite.

Our youth (and adults) in Cortez

I worry that we are not joyful enough. We turn on the news and feel down because the media suggests that bombs and politics are the real story. We turn on the XBox and find contentment in mindlessness. We turn to things that are simple and make us happy: sex, alcohol, drugs. We put more importance in contests and pride--in our sports and our us-versus-them mentality--than we do in our unity and diversity. All of this is a culture that just wants to make us happy. It is a hungry beast. You keep feeding it and it will never be enough.

But I believe there is a better world out there. It is a world that discovers joy in the little things; that does not sell its soul for happiness but understands that sorrow is a natural part of life. We can learn from this. We can be bigger than our losses. We can experience true joy in the midst of things we do not understand. Joy does not conquer sadness; it lives in it. So, when the trappings of happiness fade away may you discover that there is a deeper joy that gives you hope. May you find it in the midst of things that the world considers depressing and dour. May you discover that nothing can contain the joy that is in you.

And may you share the joy that is in you with someone who needs to hear it.