Joy, Church, and the Neglected Face of God - An 11-Day PlanНамуна

 The Low-Joy Life

The human brain was designed to look for and run on joy. My joy drops when I sense few faces shining on me and few people happy to be with me. I may start believing that God is no longer happy to be with me. I am isolated and lonely. If my community is not in the habit of expressing what God sees as special in each of us, our eyes do not meet and our faces do not shine when we see each other. Our soil becomes depleted. When we do not understand how joy works, we miss the treasure before our eyes.

Since joy helps us regulate painful emotions, when it runs low, we will look to non-relational sources to stop the pain. Soil that is low on joy is primed for growing addictions. When our brain looks for joy and does not find it, we become vulnerable to “pseudo-joys.” These are substances and experiences that trick our brain to temporarily shut off the unpleasant emotions, but they are non-relational and ultimately unsatisfying. 

Joy substitutes can appear on the surface to be normal things, like food, social media, and shopping. The more obvious pseudo-joys are alcohol, drugs, sugar, and porn. Low-joy cultures will see an increase in these pseudo-joy addictions. Increasing our joy will naturally calm our cravings for pseudo-joys, and building joy should be an integrated part of any addiction program.

When we ignore the importance of joy in our churches, we leave an important variable to chance. When our joy is running low, much of life does not function. Imagine that you are on the support team for a Formula One race car. You are going through your pre-race checklist right before a race. You diligently check the oil, tires, and fluids, but an important item is not on your checklist. There is no line item to ensure the gas tank is filled. If you skip checking the gas tank, your car may work well or not. It depends on whether someone remembered to fill the tank. 

As a pastor, this analogy explains a mistake I made. I led discipleship trainings that did not take joy into account. What I saw was inconsistency. I was left scratching my head, wondering what was going wrong. The training worked well for some people and not for others. This made sense when I learned the function of joy. If half of the people arrive to my training with their tanks already full, and the other half arrive on empty, what would you expect? I had failed to make sure everyone was fueled up for the training. 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:

1. Have you ever had a time in life when few faces were shining on you (happy to be with you)? Share that experience with someone this week.

2. What Pseudo-joys do you find yourself craving?