Why So Serious?

“Joy in the Lord” is a phrase Christians use with regularity. But I’m not sure this regular usage means we fully understand it, though. I’m not even referring to the puritanical, sourpuss, killjoy Christians—I don’t think they have any understanding of joy at all. I mean the Christians who titter nervously at jokes, unsure of whether they should be laughing and suffer angst at the thought of too much enjoyment of “worldly” pleasures. This sort of emotional turmoil in the name of “joy” is no joy at all.

God didn’t create the world for us not to enjoy it. He made it good, by His own claim, and gave it to man to cultivate and enjoy. And then sin happened and the world fell. But a fallen world is not a world of utter evil. That is, the world did not go from all good to all bad. It went from all good to tainted, but with all sorts of real goodness spread throughout. The good is so easy to see. Just look around at the beauty of art and nature, the richness of relationships and laughter, and the sensory pleasure of food and drink—these are genuinely good. So why are we so afraid to revel in these pleasures?

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