"SURPRISED BY JOY": JOY IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND IN CHRISTIAN SCHOLARSHIP

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 2004 by Howard, David M Jr

Our terminal earnestness can include many things, such as "doing church" right, having the latest programs from the most successful churches, including their orders of service and just the right worship band. It can include keeping up with all the unwritten rules and regulations of whatever evangelical subculture to which we belong.58 We can become almost like the Pharisees in Jesus' day, who worried so much about keeping the law that they ended up practicing absurdities and losing sight of their God. For example, their concerns led to an entire tractate of the Talmud (Shabbath) devoted just to regulations about keeping the Sabbath!59

Such worrying can come from well-motivated impulses. The almost absurd regulations that eventuated in the tractate Shabbath came from the Pharisees' sincere desires to know what it meant to keep the Sabbath commandment. In the process of trying to work this out, many Jews lost sight of the focus of the commandment-which was rest and remembrance, rooted in creation (Exodus 20) and in the exodus (Deuteronomy 5)-and they only saw the "doing": the rules, the regulations, the constraints. They lost any sense of joy in the keeping and remembering.

So, too, in many of our evangelical subcultures we become so obsessed with "doing church" right that we squeeze any life of the Spirit out of our churches. We become so worried that we won't have read the latest Barna poll, the most recent Willow Creek leadership materials, or the latest Sunday School materials from our denominational presses that we spend all our time reading secondary literature and surfing the Internet for the latest in church-related materials. We end up reading the Bible in a very cursory fashion, or not at all. We end up not spending quality time in prayer, and not listening to God in quiet meditation. We end up missing the presence of the Spirit in our lives-indeed, sometimes even quenching him.

We as laypeople are so worried about getting the "right" books on Christian marriage, parenting, dieting, exercise, ecology, relationships, Bible study, financial management, business practices-"Christian yoga," even!-that we miss tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. In some circles, we worry so much about proper dress or clothing; going to movies, plays, dances; smoking, drinking, doing drugs; or any of a thousand other "vices," that we miss any sense of joy in our lives.

But, the problems are not just with us as "misguided" laypeople. The problem also lies with us as Christian scholars. We scholars deal every day with eternal verities-truths with eternal consequences and of the utmost import. Because of this we naturally-and rightly so!-do our utmost to "get it right." We do this in our classes, and in our articles and our books. We do it in our papers and our discussions here in the Society. We spend our days, our months, our years studying the Scriptures, plumbing them for all the treasures therein. Sometimes the process itself can be a great joy. We have the joy of discovery. We have joy of seeing and learning. We have the joy of teaching others, watching them learn, develop, and grow in their knowledge of the Scriptures and of the Lord.