Happiness is to be forgiven,
Livin' a life that's worth the liven',
Takin' a trip that leads to heaven,
Happiness is the Lord.
As a youngster, I learned this song at AWANA meetings. At the time, the words
didn't mean much to me. In fact, I thought the song was a little silly. At the time,
I thought that everyone was happy - what's so special about all this'christian' stuff, everybody has a happy life.
In my early years, what I knew of the life of Jesus did not seem to be the formula for happiness. As time passed, I found that happiness was not the usual experience of mankind. And in spite of some books that have been published, joy is a truly scarce commodity. C.S. Lewis wrote a small autobiographical book about it.
Scripture uses the word, translated 'happy' a few times, but the more often used term is translated 'joy'. If I fire up the search tool on my Bible program I find the word 'happy' 25 times and the word 'joy' 165 times. The word 'pleasure' is found 68 times. Note that this is word usage in the KJV translation, and does not take into consideration other aspects of the original language.
There is an element of pleasure in both joy and happiness. But if you take a simple minded approach and just look at word usage, it looks like 'joy' is the quality most associated with the Biblical notion of pleasure. Sorta' begs the question, at this point, What does scripture mean by 'joy' as opposed to 'pleasure'?
In Genesis 18:12, 'pleasure' is a kind of delight or luxury. In I Kings 1:40, 'joy' is synonamous with gladness and mirth. Context shows that the experience in Genesis is one of personal physical pleasure, while in I Kings, the context is an experience of the Lord's presence. It is the joy of knowing that there is a transcendent King whose kingdom has been established through a chosen representative here on earth. Not chosen by popular vote, but by Divine appointment.
That particular experience in I Kings, is what I think of as the zenith of all historical earthly government. The zenith of all earth's history is the passage that describes the completion of Solomon's Temple, the symbolic significance being the final sacrifice offered by Jesus on the cross, and as history shows, the completion of temple sacrifice.
When I take my kids to the dollar store and buy them a piece of junk they are 'happy' for... oh about ten minutes. Video games get better mileage. But 'happiness' is just a distraction. If I can infuse them with a sense of 'joy', the experience lasts a lifetime. They still talk about the camping trip we took in the mountains over a year ago.
In the eyes of this world, pleasure is an elusive beast. Advertisement promises that you can find pleasure in smoking the right cigarette, or driving the right car, or wearing the right perfume or having the right clothes, etc., etc. If it were true that lasting pleasure was found in any of these pursuits, then why is there promise of pleasure? It is because there is an ongoing pursuit of pleasure that finds little satisfaction in any of the promises of advertisement. Yet, the subtle promise holds endless appeal.
The fact of the matter is, as it always has been, the condition of the 'heart'. Pleasure can come from a crack pipe, or pleasure can come from peace within. 'Peace' is found over 250 times in the word search. And has the inference of completeness. Now, there's a concept!
There is a saying, It's not a perfect world. It's applied generously whenever things don't go the way we want or think that they should go. Completeness and perfection go hand in hand. A perfect world would give us everything that we need and want, right? Instead, we have to confront things like Murphy's Law and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics each and every day. Don't believe me, just look in the mirror. It's no mistake to believe that there is something missing. In this world is the element of sin. When sin entered, perfection and completeness was expelled. See the passage below from the book of Genesis.
Gen 3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Gen 3:18 thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
Gen 3:19 in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
If the focus is on the material world, a search for pleasure is restricted to what we can see. You won't find lasting pleasure there. Once there is the experience of completeness, the urge to find more has met its end.
Heb 11:24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh`s daughter;
Heb 11:25 choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
Heb 11:26 accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward.
Moses refused the pleasures of sin, but notice it was for what he deemed an even greater reward. The joy of serving a transcendent King rather than the earthly Pharaoh.
What Jesus offers that the world cannot, is transcendent pleasure, that comes out of what is not seen - the life of faith, whose reward is peace, the sense of completeness.
John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.
There are the pleasures of existential merit, and there are pleasures of transcendent origin. The former are gotten and the latter are given. On the Jesus Bus, there are both, with the added benefit that it only gets better once we arrive at our destination. In fact, there is a formula known as 'Pascal's Wager' that articulates the benefit of faith in terms that appeal to his mathematical mind.
Get on the bus. Jesus paid your ticket.
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