joy v. happiness

OK, so in the last class that I taught (which I didn't know was the last) we spoke about joy. The Bible often brings up this concept as being a proper and fitting attitude for believers. Jesus spoke of this outlook in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:10-12). The book of James also points to "pure joy" as the right way to confront life (1:2). The difficulty in implementing the biblical view of joy is that it is pretty much misread in one of two ways.

First, there are those who see this as a "pie-in-the-sky" religious ideal that can never be achieved. These are the folks who dismiss constant joy and never actually try to attain it.

Then there are those who confuse joy with happiness and try to make every moment of their life an emotional high as though a smile on the face were directly proportionate to a more spiritual walk. This, I believe, has been one of the dominant forces behind popular-level Christianity which is (as Swindoll once described) 4000 miles wide and about 1 inch deep. Indeed, entire churches are actually built around this philosophy of happiness.

Now, don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with Christians experiencing (yes, displaying) happiness. Certainly, there is enough of this lacking today. But doesn't Ecclesiastes tell us that there is a seaon appropriate for everything? In all of these seasons, we are still reminded to have joy. All of this can be easily understood if we would just remind ourselves of the fundamental difference between joy and happiness. While happiness is a fleeting emotion that is a fickle as our humanness, joy is that God-given worldview that characterizes our entire lives because of the neverending hope that lies within us.

When we come to God, our problems don't just go away, but he does give us the joy to live out each season of our lives. By trading this incredible quality for a momentary experience that can be so easily altered, we miss out on all that he has in store for us.

Consider:
"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, folling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 26.