How to Have Joy in a World Full of Problems

Written by L.C. Baker

This article is courtesy of Christian Single.

Serving others is supposed to be one of the simplest and quickest paths to joy. Leo Tolstoy even suggested that “joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service.” But the first time I went on a mission trip, I cried all the way home.

I was 16 years old, and I had spent five days in Reynosa, Mexico. It was my first taste of the poverty that is prevalent in so many parts of the world. It was the first time I’d seen people living in a garbage dump. It was my first time to be in an orphanage. Before the trip I thought the experience would give me joy. I thought I’d finish the week feeling as though I’d accomplished something beautiful. Instead, I was overwhelmed by all the need in the world. The trip didn’t make me joyful; it broke my heart.

It wasn’t fair that our church had marble floors while children in Mexico ran barefoot on garbage. It wasn’t fair that I had a closet full of clothes while that man in the village had only one shirt. It wasn’t fair for me to laugh when I remembered that little girl in the orphanage who never smiled. It seemed suddenly selfish to be happy, as though no one really has a right to joy in such a ruined world.

It took me many years to learn that real compassion cannot exist apart from joy.

Are You Serious?
Christians are sometimes tempted to be so concerned about evil and its effects that we forget joy. “Seriousness,” G.K. Chesterton wrote, “is not a virtue”; and yet there has been a persistent thread in Christianity that seems to consider it an especially virtuous thing. It’s as though we are afraid to take life too lightly, believing that in order to “mourn with those who mourn” we have to be perpetually unhappy.

But, in fact, Christians are called to be joyful: “Rejoice in the Lord always,” Paul commanded us (Philippians 4:4). But how? How can we be joyful and remain aware of the problems in the world? How can we be joyful and still remember the lost and the needy? How can we be joyful without becoming shallow and fake, simply ignoring reality?

For me, part of the problem was a misunderstanding about the nature of joy. Megan Brightwell, LPC and cofounder of Inter-Orthodox Community Outreach Network, says, “Real joy means allowing yourself to grieve, to feel the hurts of this sin-soaked world.”

True joy doesn’t mean ignoring the problems in our lives and the world. It’s more than just looking on the bright side. True joy can withstand the worst of situations because it lies beyond circumstances. This is a joy that “doesn’t require happiness,” Brightwell says; this is a joy that “only requires God.”

It also means that our focus shifts. We see the problems, but we also see beyond them. In the words of Chesterton, our “joy becomes something gigantic” while sadness is “something special and small.” As Christians, we still mourn, but we never forget that the deeper truth of the world is not sadness, but joy.
And without that, compassion always falls short. When we try to serve out of sadness instead of a Christ-centered joy, our strength to serve will always run out. Even Jesus, after all, endured the cross because He kept in mind “the joy that lay before Him” (Hebrews 12:2).

It took me years of struggling with unhappiness, even depression, to learn the importance of joy. Long after I came back from Mexico, long after I went into full-time ministry serving the youth of my church and people in need all over the world, I still struggled through the tension of reconciling joy with the realities of life. There were many nights when I would lie in bed, unable to sleep, because of a conversation I’d had or something that had happened in the news that day. Eventually, the weight of trying to carry all these things on my own broke me, and it was then that I discovered the secret of joy.

Joy, though it’s absolutely necessary for our spiritual lives, is not something we can create for ourselves. It’s something we receive as a gift from God. For a long time, even though I never enjoyed my tears, I felt an unconscious duty to sorrow. I had this idea that I ought to be carrying the heaviness of the world myself. It wasn’t that I wanted to be unhappy; it was just that I didn’t think I, or anyone as privileged as I was, had a right to joy.

But that mentality, just as much as a shallow acceptance of happiness would be, was still focused on me. And focusing on yourself, for whatever reason, always precludes joy.

The Pursuit of Happy
And so it turns out, there’s a great deal of truth in Tolstoy’s connection between serving others and living in joy.
Seth Earl of Atlanta believes that’s because “you can’t be joyful while being self-centered. Joy can only be experienced when you’re seeing others as more important than yourself.”

For some, that means more actively serving. For others, it means accepting that we cannot do everything ourselves. Joy doesn’t come by continually acting in our own strength; it comes though continuing dependence on God.

Maybe that’s why joy is described as a part of the “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22). We often think of joy as something we need to seek, something that we have to somehow gain for ourselves. But the best analogy for joy is not the pursuit we often think of; real joy is more like a plant.

I will never forget the amazement I felt when I first started gardening. I put seeds in the ground, and by a miracle I could never understand, shoots came up and then whole plants formed. Even more amazing was the day when the plants grew fruit, and there, out of nowhere, bright red tomatoes dotted the green stalks. Joy, in my experience, is much like that: You can only get it by taking care of everything else. You care for the soil and you water the plant, and the fruit comes like a miracle.

For me, joy came when I wasn’t looking. Not because I wanted it or because I searched for it, but simply as a gift, unexpected and undeserved. I’m sure there will always be times when the problems of the world overwhelm me and that life on earth will be seasoned with tears; but the beautiful thing about being a Christian is that neither sorrow nor joy ever has to overpower us because we don’t have to take ourselves too seriously.

Chesterton said that “man is more himself … when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.” By that belief, we have room for both joy and grief, in turns and sometimes in stages. But in the end, joy wins.

L.C. Baker is a full-time freelance writer in Atlanta, Ga. When she’s unhappy, she rediscovers joy by reading authors such as C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton.

Share your thoughts with other readers:  Post Comments   Rate this Article