The Real Surprise about Joy

Much is said today about joy in the Christian life - finding it, keeping it, fighting for it. No doubt this is mostly due to the efforts of John Piper, which many have found extremely helpful on the subject. But Piper would be the first to admit the debt he owes to C. S. Lewis in the formation of his ideas about Joy.

Lewis' autobiography, Surprised by Joy, has as it's central background story his experiences of and search for Joy - which he defines as 'a deep seated longing for something that is supremely desirable'. It's not happiness, nor pleasure - these are temporary, immediate gratifications. Joy is something much more, yet something much harder to find, and nigh impossible to hold on to for more than a moment. I guess not everyone would take this definition, but as usual he seems to have put his finger on something that many people would relate to.

But what I find most striking is how he concludes that the experience of Joy operates. As with love or hope, the most important part of Joy is it's attention to it's object. That is, if we seek Joy by looking for it itself, we shall miss it. So again, with love, 'to cease thinking about and attending to the woman, is to cease loving' - to start to concentrate on the feeling/emotion/state of 'love' itself, causes it to dissolve. 'You cannot hope [or love] while thinking about hoping [or loving] at the same time'.

And so the conclusion to Surprised by Joy is this:

"But what, in conclusion, of Joy? for that, after all, is what the story has mainly been about. To tell you the truth, the subject has lost nearly all interest for me since I became a Christian."

If we would have Joy in our Christian lives, the answer isn't to look for Joy itself, as I'm so often tempted to. The answer is to look more at the object of our joy - namely Jesus, and the rescue he accomplished for us. It's like something we can see out of the corner of our eye, but when we turn to look right at it, it's not there anymore. If we live looking straight at Jesus instead, Joy will always be there, unseen, yet unmistakable.


PS. Much of this thought was prompted by an article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society which can be found at http://www.etsjets.org/jets/journal/47/47-1/47-1-pp003-018_JETS.pdf.