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Joy
and despair, happiness and depression; ALOVE
takes a look at how we can be real about life’s
ups and downs but still keep hold of God’s
promises.
I once spoke at the funeral of a thirteen
year-old girl who had been killed in a car
accident. She was an only child, filled with
beauty and promise, and her parents were quite
understandably overwhelmed with grief. They
had just recently become Christians, and were
now having to come to terms with this most
devastating of losses. What could a person
possibly say to give them any comfort in a
time like this?
I decided to speak about joy. I spoke about
David dancing like a madman in front of the
Ark. I spoke about Stephen praising God as
he was being executed. I spoke about Paul’s
absurd statement that the present sufferings
of these two grieving parents were nothing
compared to the glory that would soon be revealed
in them.
I affirmed their right and their need to mourn,
because death and pain and grief are all very
real. But then I promised that, in spite of
all the day's available evidence, faith and
hope and love would last longer than the despair,
because those things are stronger.
It was not an easy message to give, and I
hoped they would believe it.
Joy and despair; both are realities for every
human, and both are responsible for much of
human behaviour. A healthy human tends to
pursue those things that bring him or her
joy, and to avoid those things that cause
him or her despair.
So then should our guiding philosophy be:
“If it feels good do it”?
Not really, because joy cannot be simply equated
with feeling good, just as despair cannot
be simply equated with feeling bad. A lot
of Christians make that mistake. We think
we must be feeling happy at all times, or
else we jeopardize our effective Christian
witness. “You cannot possibly be sad
when you have Jesus in your heart! Now get
smiling!” This results in a kind of
crazed, forced, Christian happy-clappyness
that is often parodied in the media and is
profoundly irritating when encountered in
real life.
I distinctly remember a song I learned in
Sunday School that went like this:
“There’s
a sweet sweet bird, singing in my heart, singing
such a happy little song” (repeat)
“When all the world seems way down in
the dumps, way down in the dumps! Cheerio-oh-oh!”
“There’s a sweet sweet bird, etc…”
(ad nauseum).
This is only one of many Christian songs reinforcing
the notion that continual happiness is to
be our lot in life. The trouble with this
approach, is that it is not really honest.
Sure, there may be some people out there who
never experience a singular moment of sadness,
their life being an uninterrupted succession
of enough happy moments to make Walt Disney
gag, but I’ve never met any of them.
I’m not suggesting that Christians should
go around looking miserable, or that we should
dwell on the things that cause us pain. This
would be making the opposite mistake, allowing
our lives to be tyrannized not by the emotion
of happiness but by the emotion of sadness.
Emotions are important and real, but they
should not run our lives.
The key I think is to recognise that we do
feel pain just like everyone else, and that
sometimes our sadness is hard for us to deal
with. It is a lot messier than claiming that
we are above all those yucky human emotions,
but then I think faith is a lot messier than
we generally care to admit. Admitting pain
also allows us to enter into the pain of other
people, remembering that we are called to
mourn with those who mourn, not to just pat
them on the back and tell them Jesus will
make it all better.
The true power of Christianity is that in
the midst of real pain we can still choose
to put our faith in One who went through every
pain and trial and sadness that we could ever
hope to avoid, and yet came out the other
side in victory. No promise of an easy life
here, free of sadness or trial or temptation.
Just a word that God understands, a promise
that are present sufferings are nothing compared
with the glory we are going to see, and a
responsibility to ease the suffering of those
around us.
No, Christians are not called to a life of
unabated happiness, but rather to a life of
joy. That means that we do not have to staple
a smile on our faces every second of the day.
But it also means that we must hold onto the
hope that Jesus won for us on the cross, no
matter how bad life’s circumstances
may get. That is joy. On the flip side, we
are allowed to be sad, to feel pain, to grieve
and mourn. Those things are part of life.
But they are different from despair. To despair
is to give up on the promises of God, and
that we are not permitted to do.
The two parents whose daughter was lost in
that car accident are still grieving, several
years later, and will continue to do so for
many years. The pain will never entirely go
away. They are also, however, still Christians,
still believing that joy is stronger than
despair, and still waiting in expectation
for that glory to be revealed in them that
will outshine all the sufferings of this world. |
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Youthwork -
The Partnership ...
ALOVE,
Youthwork Magazine, Youth For Christ, Spring Harvest and
Oasis are working together to equip and resource the Church
for effective youth work and ministry. |
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