Fruits of the Flesh - Happiness
This is the third installment in the series "Fruits of the Flesh". Here is the original post.
The second Fruit of the Spirit is Joy. The second Fruit of the Flesh is Happiness.
I wrote at some length about Love vs. Romance, but for Joy vs. Happiness I'll be brief.
One response to the original post was about the denigration of the word "happiness", and the fact that the Greek and Hebrew words most often translated "blessed" in the Scriptures are just as accurately translated "happy". Such as in the Psalm 1:1 "Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked," or Matthew 5:7, "Happy are the merciful."
The most common approach to Joy vs. Happiness is that Joy is deep and resilient, whereas Happiness is temporary and circumstantial. I have no qualms about that view. But is there a chance we're giving Happiness the short-shrift?
One of the primary post-modern criticisms of Christianity attacks the naive, happy-clappy, see-no-evil disposition. It bothers me, too. But is happiness the culprit, or the victim here? It would be a funny thing to translate Matthew 5:4, "Happy are those who mourn". Mourning people aren't happy, they're sad.
The second fruit of the flesh is a Happiness that is sought in and of itself. But much like Romance, and the other Fruits of the Flesh, Happiness needs to be a by-product of the Spirit, and becomes an evil thing when it is sought directly. Joy, on the contrary, can be sought directly, because we cannot have it without a whole-hearted trust in God. Happiness is an emotion, but Joy is a commitment.
And no matter what emotions joy may lead us through in this life, happy is the one who joyfully perseveres to the end, where happiness is not the exception, but the rule.
Labels: bible, culture, fruits of the flesh, words
Posted at 11:21 AM
View 3 comments made so far
Add a comment
Links to this post
3 Comments:
John Piper has contributed enormously to this discussion and has influenced my view significantly. He criticizes the distinction between joy and happiness as mere word play, but I'm with you that connotation is extremely important. He makes the point that God commands happiness a number of times in Scripture ("Delight yourself in the Lord," for example... an imperative). However--and I'm not sure, but I think he would agree--I don't believe this mandates that we must be unceasingly happy. Rather, we must be regularly characterized by happiness as we delight not in our circumstances, but in the Lord, even while still here on this earth. I, too, am put off by the "happy-clappies", because I perceive that they're faking it because they think they're supposed to look happy. When happiness in a person isn't looked upon in contrast to real struggles and sorrow, I believe it seriously damages our witness for Christ, not to mention our relationship with him.
RIGHT ON with this post.
I'm with you beloved on not hairsplitting the joy and happiness question. Seems like I've read some wise thoughts before on the distinction of a true deep joy that supports you even when everything is going wrong. Either I'm not mature enough yet to let go of the silly side of joy/happiness, or it really is just one homogenous package that ranges from tickling to passing through the valley of the shadow of death without getting down.
I spose if I had to engineer a good counterfit to joy (not that I regularly do that) I would call it laughter. And I know jesus says "Blessed are you who weep now for you shall laugh." So I guess I'm still hairsplitting. I'm thinking of the sinister hollow sort of laugh though. You know, the kind of laugh people have in movies when the lead character in the story has gotten into a life of excess and hanging out with the wrong crowd, and as the screen fades out on the party you just hear that laughter, which suggests almost a delusional sort of glee that is bound to crash soon. I'm thinking of Solomon's description of laughter, where it's sort of an external thing you can try on: "I said of laughter, it is madness".
It seems like some ideas are neutral, and others sort of have a good or evil connotation attached to them. Happiness usually has to be qualified as being the happiness of the rightous or the sinner, which mostly has to do with whether they are happy now or later. In that way, even "happy are they who mourn" makes sense. One idea that used to give me fits as I read the bible is just "woman". There are so many dire verses that involve women. Even when Jesus says to Mary "Woman, what do I have to do with you?" would sound totally different if he had said "Mother" or even in a more spiritual way "Sister" or "Dear" or "Friend". Finally I decided the word woman is automatically qualified in an evil way because it suggests an independence that wasn't intended originally. Eve was made from the rib of Adam, so it is just natural that a woman is in a more healthy case when she is spoken of with respect to a man: wife, mother, sister, even friend. So just the word woman sort of has a ring to it. When a child calls their parent by his/her first name it has a bad ring. There's nothing wrong with the name, but it suggests disrespect automatically. And I think laughter is sort of the same way. It's just understood that if you're happy you should laugh. So to actually say "laughter" sort of suggests that it is an independent phenomena, as though somebody wanted to imitate joy so they grabbed the most outward, obvious facet of it: laughter.
In fact, now that I think about it I just read a quote by Dostoyevsky on the bulletin board in Big Mama's. It was something like "If you know nothing else about a man except his laugh, and you like the laugh, he is probably a good man". It sort of makes sense. Hopefully he is a joyful man. The first way you would know would be his laugh, because that is the most superficial part, the part Satan can most easily duplicate.
Sorry to run on so long.
My first thought was Billy Joel's line: "I'd rather laugh with the sinners the cry with the saints."
Here are some other alternatives for shallow happiness: (take your pick)
Fun
Cheer
Perkiness
Naive Optimism
Patronizing
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home