Reasons to rejoice: Christian joy in a secularized world - "Turn to God - Rejoice in Hope": Unfolding the Eighth Assembly Theme

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 1998 by Arne Fritzson

Perhaps it would be too obvious to begin an article about the Christian perception of rejoicing by quoting Philippians 4:4: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice". Perhaps it would be better to start by quoting that old song by Duke Ellington, "It Don't Mean a Thing, If It Ain't Got That Swing" and offering this as a metaphor for what joy means for Christian faith. It may appear to trivialize the meaning of Christian faith to say that it must be joyful to be meaningful -- but that is exactly the idea I want to pursue in this article. Christian faith is not all about joy, by no means; but joy is a crucial aspect, one which cannot be excluded from the total picture of what faith is, and if it is excluded then the picture will deviate seriously from what the Bible tells us about that faith.

Christian faith has a fundamentally positive way of perceiving life in God's world. As Christians we are glad for the life God has given us and want to "sing a loud" of God's mercy every morning (Psalm 59:16). The encounter with the living and triune God gives joy because it comes from, is rooted in, love. This has its foundation in the creed, which speaks about God as the creator and giver of life. The Old Testament texts which describe how God creates the cosmos are songs of praise. Job 38 speaks of an act of creation in ecstatic joy. It is almost as if the world is a result of a volcanic outburst of joy from God. "When the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy!" (Job 38:7). We meet the same atmosphere in Psalm 104, where God's act of creation and the care that God gives the creation are pictured for us as harmonious, something that gives pleasure both to God and the creatures God has made.

God created humanity in God's image, male and female; that in itself says that humanity was created for relationship. It is "not good" that the man is alone, says God. As God is a communion of the three persons in the Godhead, so human beings must live in communion. We are social creatures, created to live in the joy that good relationships bring. Joy is something that we feel together with others. It has intrinsically something to do with relations, and we find it odd to see someone sitting alone and laughing.

God created human beings to live together, and indeed one can not become a human being alone. That means that to be human is not only to be in relationship with others, but to be fundamentally dependent on others. God created us to live in good relationships with God, with each other, with ourselves and with the rest of the creation. To live in those four good relationships is to live in peace, in God's shalom. Peace in its biblical meaning is something much more than simply the absence of war, as we see in the prophecy in Isaiah 65:25. The picture there seems romantic, unrealistic: do not wolves stop being wolves on the day they feed peacefully together with lambs? But this image shatters our expectations, telling us about a harmonious state that goes beyond perceptions of what is "normal".

Another biblical image of peace which must be understood in terms of relationship is the benediction in Numbers 6:24-25: "the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace". It is when we meet face to face with God that peace, God's shalom, is given to us. It is when we see a face turned to us, when we can meet someone in acceptance and appreciation, that we experience ourselves as whole human beings; and this experience speaks to us about God's intention in creating us.

This means that from the Christian perspective life is not something neutral, either good or bad depending on the content we give to it. No, as Christians we believe that life is in itself a gift from God, a blessing, an outflowing of God's love.

This does not mean Christian faith is unrealistic, unaware of the hardships and evils of life; but it sees these as something abnormal, something that has perverted God's creation. The "normal" status of the creation is reflected in Genesis 1:31, where it is said that God "saw everything that he had made and, indeed, it was very good". That is the basic rationale for Christian joy. It is something primal, as is the joy a child may experience when playing, a spontaneous expression of the joy inherent in the creation. Done without calculation, a child's play comes directly from the happiness of being alive. Here Christian faith can recognize creation as God intends, not perverted by evils present in this world.

But exactly that perversion by evil means that this happy picture does not encompass the full meaning of joy in the Christian faith. What sin means is that the good relationships are torn apart, and humankind no longer lives in God's shalom. Peace is taken away from us and the reasons and scope for joy are reduced. The ultimate sign of the evil in the world is death, which tears apart permanently the relation between human beings.

Because the evils of sin and death have invaded God's creation, the joy lying within the creation itself is restrained; and we experience the fact that we can not alter our situation by ourselves. In a world where there is death humanity finds that it cannot, by itself, escape consequences of evil in the world. We need someone from "outside" to save us; we experience our need for salvation, the second article of the Christian faith.