If It Makes You Happy

What if God is uninterested in my happiness but eternally committed to my Christlikeness? The place of personal happiness is a current topic of hot debate in the aftermath of some comments by a high profile personality (should I say "celebrity"?) in Houston recently. Yesterday's headline from the Houston Chronicle: "Christians berate Victoria Osteen's 'cheap Christianity.'" The article goes on to say that Lakewood church's Victoria Osteen is at the center of a social media storm after daring to suggest that people should "obey" God because it will make them happy. Standing beside her husband Joel, Mrs. Osteen says, "Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy." If that doesn't get your attention, her next comment should. "When you come to church, when you worship Him, you're not doing it for God really. You're doing it for yourself, because that's what makes God happy." In response to the controversy swirling around her comments, Mrs. Osteen issued a statement Friday saying she stood by what she said and accused critics of being "ridiculous."

I'll never forget sitting with wide- eyed naïveté in missionary orientation more than twenty years ago, subconsciously convinced of my own invincibility and God's commitment to my indestructibility. I'll also always remember the jarring opening statement by one of the orientation speakers. Maurice Graham, Southern Baptist missionary to Kuwait, was one of several Americans held hostage during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August of 1990. His release came on December 9, the day Southern Baptists had been asked to pray specifically for Graham's release. He stood before all of us wet-behind-the-ears would-be missionaries and said, "God is not concerned about your personal comfort. He is committed to His glory." He went on to describe his terrible ordeal in detail, and for the first time that I can remember, the world shifted slightly away from me as its axis. I have wrestled with Graham's statement many times since then, and each time my center moves a little more in a God's direction.

Scripture is full of reassurances that God knows us, loves us, and desires for each of us an abundant life (John 10:10), but is this abundance tied to our own happiness, or is it much more connected to joy? Happiness is a momentary emotion based on an ever-shifting set of circumstances. Joy is an enduring character trait forged on the unchanging standard of the Incarnate Word, Jesus the Christ. Joy consists of the grand abundance of facing every circumstance with the character of Christ. “Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks" (Phillips Brooks). I believe Maurice Graham got it right, and only hope that I have the strength of character necessary to embrace abundance over against the tempting self-serving lure of transient happiness. 

"Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,  for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls." (1 Peter 1:8-9, NIV)

Joy

Joy always rises at the most surprising times and in the most unexpected places. Here are three unlikely proponents of joy: a comedian, a novelist, and a pope.

First, the comedian. Stephen Colbert is currently star of The Colbert Report and one of America's funniest personalities, but there's more to his story than most television viewers know.  His father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash when he was 10 years old, and he was raised primarily by his mother.  Her faith marked him for life.  He teaches Sunday school and attends mass regularly with his family.  Colbert once appeared at Fordham University with Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan to discuss "humor, joy, and the spiritual life."  He told a packed crowd that "joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God."

Next, the novelist. Frederick Buechner adds his own light to this matter of joy:

In the Gospel of John, Jesus sums up pretty much everything by saying, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (John 15:11). He said it at the supper that he knew was the last one at which he'd have a mouth to eat with. Happiness turns up more or less where you'd expect it to — a good marriage, a rewarding job, a pleasant vacation. Joy, on the other hand, is as notoriously unpredictable as the one who bequeaths it (Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words).

Finally, a pope weighs in on the matter of joy. Above everything else, John Paul II embodied passion and joy in Christ.  Consider this observation: "It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal."

Joy comes from an unshakeable confidence in God and an immovable conviction that He is for us. C. S. Lewis wrote that he was "surprised by joy." Joy will always be a surprise, but it will never be an accident.

Watermarks of Joy

There is a mourning superimposed on watermarks of joy. Such is the normal human response to a loved one's release from Alzheimer's diseased effects.  I do not hesitate to admit that I already miss Poppi and anticipate the pang of family gatherings without him. My bocce compadre/adversary has been taken from me, but I cannot succumb to the hurt of absence without remembering the last time we played and how I had to remind him every turn of the rules of the game he knew so well. Looking down this week upon his shrinking frame I did not want him to go, yet silently prayed he would.  And now he has, and I appeal to Heaven that the peace that is his will soften the ragged corners of our grief.