NOT A COCONUT:JOY

Written By: Jerry Rowe -

This article is going to say a few things that might surprise or shock or even upset a Christian, at least at first. But read the entire article, especially the words from the Bible, before making a judgment. Hopefully, by the end, you will feel more encouraged by the word of God than ever before.

What Joy Is 

And who can experience it

Joy, in the Bible, is a feeling: the experience of gladness, delight, or cheer. The Greek χαρά (or chara) is where the English word “charisma” comes from: it’s the thing that puts a smile on your face, Because it is a feeling, joy is as morally neutral as pain, anger, sadness, or the color green. 

This definition will sound strange to some. Joy is mentioned when discussing the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), so some people think joy must be a special thing that has to come only from the Holy Spirit, and only comes to a believer. But joy is not something that only believers experience: Jesus said that even false converts experience joy (Matthew 13:20), and Solomon said that foolishness gives joy to people who have no understanding (Proverbs 15:21). Everyone can experience joy: believers and unbelievers, adults and children. 

The Purpose of Joy 

And the pain of its absence

Like any feeling that God made a part of the human experience, joy is there to help us navigate the world. For comparison, consider another feeling: pain. Pain is obviously not pleasant. But right now, pain shows us what is destructive. Never feeling pain is the principal symptom of leprosy, and people who have leprosy destroy their own bodies because they can’t tell that they are hurting themselves. Joy serves a similar function: its presence (or absence) can let a person know what is happening inside of themselves. 

Before considering what the presence or absence of joy might mean, it is important to first understand the parallel role of sadness. Sometimes, people regard the presence of sorrow as the absence of joy. Which makes sense, because sometimes, it is. 

Joy and sadness are often mentioned together in scripture as opposites, with God saying that one should be replaced with the other, depending on the situation (Isaiah 61:3, James 4:9). It isn’t possible to be happy and sad about the same thing in the same way at the same time, but it is possible to have both joy and sorrow at the same time. Jesus was a man of sorrows (Isaiah 53:3), but he has tremendous joy (John 15:11). Paul said he was constantly sad (Romans 9:2), but also that he had joy (Phillipians 1:14, 2:17). Solomon says that God gives the righteous wisdom and knowledge (which brings sadness), but also gives them joy (Ecclesiastes 1:18, 2:4). The presence of sorrow should never be surprising in a fallen world. That’s the natural reaction to tragedy. Nobody should feel they lack the fruit of the Spirit when they are sad about something that has happened. 

So like pleasure and pain, the presence of joy usually (but not always) indicates when things are going well for us, and the lack of joy usually (but not always) indicates when things are not going well for us. Drugs and alcohol can make some feel pleasure, but that doesn’t mean things are going well. And childbirth might be tremendously painful, but that doesn’t mean things aren’t going well. There is nuance in the reasons for the presence or absence of joy, and so that’s what we need to consider next.

You’d Better be Joyful

Right now. Or else. That’s an order.

(That is a joke. Mostly.)

Perhaps the most surprising feature of joy in the Bible is that God commands people to feel joy (Nehemiah 8:10, 1st Thessalonians 5:16). God commanding us to feel or express joy might feel unfair at first glance. It seems to make as much sense as God commanding us to feel warm or cold. How could God command a feeling, as opposed to just an act of the will?

This is why God so frequently uses the metaphor of plants and fruit when talking about humans and their relationship to him. Plants grow things naturally when they are just next to each other. It’s how plant grafting works. The grafted-in branch just needs time connected to the rootstock. This is why Jesus talks so much about it in John 15, and says that believers just need to abide. Hang out. Spend time with him. Read what he said, and think about it. Pray. Jesus makes it clear in 15:7 that abiding in him means that his words are also abiding in us. If we really are interacting with the word made flesh, we have to have that word in our own minds. Growing a healthy plant takes time, even in the best soil. We shouldn't be too surprised if it takes us a while to grow up into Christ. Don't forget that an acorn looks nothing like a full grown oak. 

The presence of fruit happens naturally as a result of just abiding in Christ, not some act of the will where through great effort we force joy to happen from our own selves. God’s command to be joyful is a way to help us realize that we cannot produce joy (or anything else good) on our own, but have to rely on him entirely for everything (1st Corinthians 4:7, James 1:17).

What a Lack of Joy Can Mean

And what to do about it

When someone has a pain in their knee, it could be from any number of reasons. Similarly, when it comes to the pain from a lack of joy, it could be from several possible causes:

1. Some people lack joy because they are in the middle of persecution or temptation. But nobody should expect to feel joy while they experience tremendous pain that is unjustly put on them. This was true for the apostles (Acts 5:20), and it was true for Jesus (Hebrews 12:2) – their joy came after their pain, not during it. Nobody should feel guilty for not feeling joy during their misery. This is why the Bible reminds believers to count it as joy when suffering like this, since we don't always see how much God cares about our suffering (Hebrews 6:10, James 1:2, 1st Peter 4:12, Matthew 5:12). It might not feel joyful right then, but in retrospect, we will regard it as a source of great joy. 

2. Some people lack joy because God is correcting them. Similar to persecution, nobody should expect to experience joy while they are undergoing God’s discipline (Hebrews 12:11). But there are some important differences between this reason and the previous one: persecution is what the world does to people, and it is not deserved. Correction from God is what God does to a believer, and it is deserved. God’s correction is so the backslider can go back to their (new) natural state of abiding in Jesus and being like him. Jesus made sure to include this in his many gardening metaphors (John 15:2). When God corrects his children, they are still his children, even if they don’t feel like it at the time (Luke 15:11-24,2nd Peter 1:9). None of us ever earn forgiveness; we just need to humble ourselves before God, and he promises to repair the relationship (James 4:9-10).

3. Some people lack joy because they are false converts. This is a serious issue that Jesus pointed out so frequently that three different biographers recorded his mention of it (Matthew 13:20, Mark 4:16, Luke 8:13). Thankfully, Jesus continues the plant / fruit metaphor. These are the “stony ground” hearers, who immediately had joy when they ‘came forward’ or ‘made a profession of faith,’ but there was never any real repentance for these people. They might have felt different for a while, but their minds never changed. 

4. Some people lack joy because they have been prioritizing other things above God. And as a natural consequence of nurturing those other things, those things grow, and the things of God don’t. This is why joy as a painful indicator is valuable – people might not notice if they didn’t feel that pain. 

Importantly, it isn’t just the most horrible examples we can think of that make thorny ground hearers (like chemical abuse or large-scale economic oppression). It can be caring more about a TV show or sports than the souls of the people around us. It can be being so preoccupied with the (terrible) news of the day, or the scramble of day-to-day activities that Pinstagram has told us we need to do, that we don’t spend any time in prayer or getting our daily bread from the Bible that he has given us. 

It is even possible to mess up our priorities with trying to serve God. This happened when Jesus was physically present. Luke records a time that Martha was so caught up in “serving Jesus” that Jesus had to remind her to reprioritize (10:41). Jesus didn’t need Martha to do chores; Martha needed to spend time listening to Jesus. Her preoccupation with “serving” kept her from what she actually needed. The solution is obvious, though: Spend some time listening to Jesus (by reading that very nice collection of books he persevered for us: the Bible). There is no reason to worry about anything else  (Matthew 6:25, Luke 12:26). Jesus guarantees that he will connect with us if we let him (Revelation 3:20, James 4:8).

The Bigger Picture

The Lasting Purpose of Joy

Apple orchards aren't planted because people don't want weeds. They're planted so there can be more delicious apples and apple-related food. Similarly, God doesn't just give us joy so we can notice the bad things when they're missing. It is so we can all have good things.

When Paul talks about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, he doesn’t present joy as optional. It’s fruit, singular, because it is one cohesive whole. Love without joy is as impossible as peace without patience. The experience of joy is not a ‘bonus’ reserved for optimists. It’s not extra credit. It’s part of the package deal. If the fruit of the Spirit is present in a person, joy is present in a person. It’s a key feature of the kingdom that God wants to give everyone who will humble themselves (Luke 12:32, Romans 14:17).

Just like how fruit comes in seasons, so does our joy. No plant on earth constantly produces fruit; everything that produces fruit goes through cycles. We shouldn’t expect joy all the time, but we should expect seasons of joy. When those times come, we should rejoice. And when the harder days come, we should do what Solomon said we should do: think about how God is the goal of all existence, there is nothing beyond him (Ecclesiastes 7:14).