Joy
The Third Sunday of Advent we celebrate this year is Joy.
What is Joy? One thing we should be clear of, as we answer that question, is that joy is not a synonym for happiness. Unfortunately, our culture seems to have gotten itself into a rut of genuflecting to the god of Happiness. If we've learned one thing, after living in over 65 years of peace and prosperity, it's that our most important aim in life is to be happy.
C.S. Lewis, on the subject, wrote,
The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.
Yet what do we find in America, today? Wanting? In Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Smith & Denton write,
However, it appears that only a minority of U.S. teenagers are naturally absorbing by osmosis the traditional substantive content and character of the religious traditions to which they claim to belong. For, it appears to us, another popular religious faith, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, is colonizing many historical religious traditions and, almost without anyone noticing, converting believers in the old faiths to its alternative religious vision of divinely underwritten personal happiness and interpersonal niceness...
Christianity posits something much, much more vicious than personal happiness and interpersonal niceness. Namely, the Son of God became Man, fulfilling the covenant God made with Abraham - indeed, with Adam - that He would bless all the peoples of earth, that He would redeem all those with whom He finds favor.
This is not a pathway grounded on personal happiness. Again, from Lewis,
Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness? While it lasts, the religion of worshipping oneself is the best.
...As you perhaps know, I haven't always been a Christian. I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity.
So... what of Joy?
Joy to the World,
the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.
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