Joy

Is JOY an emotion or something else? 

In popular usage, joy often is used as a synonym for happiness or pleasure, but is it?  The root word for “happiness” is “hap”, which means “chance” or “luck” (as a noun) or  “to occur by chance” (as a verb). We desire our joy to remain alive even in an  unfavorable direction of the wind or path of the tornado. 

But can a person really have joy when she or he is in distress, in sorrow, or even while  being persecuted? Jesus says: 

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” Luke 6:22-23 

Paul writes 

“In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by  the coming of Titus.” 2 Cor 7:4-6 

Clearly Paul does not base joy on happenings. 

At Jesus’ birth the angel said to them,  

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” 

Here it seems that joy is based on good news (information), which displaces the fear and depression within disagreeable, nasty hap.  

We do have a choice to be fearless, brave, courageous, and joyful (like Paul) in spite of our hap. While joy surely has a positive emotional component, joy is ultimately a mindset. On personality tests, I score low on emotion, so joy in my life rests on contemplating the certain facts of Whose I am and who I am in Christ. I must remind myself of that when what is happening is unpleasant or even dire. When I may be unhappy (unlucky). 

Henri Nouwen in his book Lifesigns calls this kind of mindset “ecstasy”. We usually think of ecstasy as pure emotion, but in reality, the reason we are “ecstatic” because we are mindfully confident of certain facts or actions, which may be in the past or the present or are a certain hope regarding the future. For us Jesus people, the conditions and hope for our joy are expressed well by Paul in Colossians. We are joyful because we are: 

“bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of  darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we  have redemption, the forgiveness of sins…. 

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.” Col. 1:10-14,21-23 

Dean Schulz