REJOICE IN THE LORD
I know non-believers would sniff at this and some would jeer. I understand why but I'm not trying to persuade non-believers to accept what follows [There's a section on this site mainly for non-believers]. Believers have a right and profound reasons to rejoice for what they have is more than "religion"; it's life!
Sin is always a madman’s choice. Flinging away from Jesus is always the final madness. There came a point in Judas’s life when he looked at the thirty pieces of silver in his hand and hating himself for his stupidity and treachery he hurled them to the pavement and went out into the night and ended his life. It doesn’t end so dramatically for all of us—some of us go silently to the grave or go whimpering. But however we go down, it doesn’t matter what it was that we got in return for Christ, no, not even if it was the entire world for a million years. The time will come when we’ll look at or around or in whatever we got and we’ll see it, dry as dust, lifeless, without soul or joy, not a scrap to be proud of and we’ll hear ourselves screaming in disbelief, "This? It was for this that I gave up God?"
We take pleasure in things according to how we’ve been shaped by experience and how we’re made up; we find satisfaction in them depending on how grown or immature we are. An infant can’t exult in Shakespeare, a miser can’t rejoice in the absolute delight on the face of a needy person that has just been given a generous gift. And someone sleekit person, enslaved by envy and malevolent spite, can’t know the profound pleasure that comes when he or she gives the gift of full and free forgiveness. Unless we are changed and grow we can't know the possibilities for joy and pleasure in the things we have or experience or could engage in. If we don’t change they forever remain the same and because that’s so, by and by they become a bore and a burden. If we don’t change we forever shut doors that could lead us to a mesmerising world of inexpressible joy. Even hardened criminals find a deep satisfaction in doing what is "right" according to their standards. I’m sure that however far we’ve strayed from God we’ve all experienced a time when we "did the right thing". And every so often we bring that event out to look at it again and take pleasure in knowing that at least once in our lives the man or woman in us stood up and wouldn’t bend or be controlled by darkness!
Why should it surprise us that tens of millions shrug at the name Jesus and party on? At best, multiplied millions of us find him a bore, a killer of life. The church historian Theodoret tells us that the emperor Julian, as he died, groaned out that the Galilean carpenter had conquered. The poet Swinburne adds to it in "Hymn to Proserpine" when he says, "You have conquered pale Galilean, the whole world grows grey at your breath."
We’re bored with Christ, bored with the message about him and bored with the people that represent him (even the ones worthy of him). There’s too much life to get on with and he only gets in the way. There's too much to eat, to drink, to engage in, laugh about and experience to even bid him the time of day. If he offered life maybe we’d stop and talk with him a while but as it is, who wants a ceaseless cowing and groveling even to a God? Especially if he is a God of gloom and clearly, so we’re told and so you would think if you listen to some believers—clearly Jesus was melancholy at best.
What a piece of nonsense! When bringing life to the needy and his critics jumped on him for it (Luke 15) Jesus told them he loved his work. He told them he felt like a shepherd that had found a precious sheep he had lost and wanted everyone to experience his joy. He told them he felt the way a sensitive woman feels when she finds a lost coin that has great value for her and he felt as a broken-hearted father feels when a beloved son comes back to life. On one occasion we’re told that his disciples told him of the great good they had done for the land and it filled Jesus to the brim with joy! ("Yes, but that’s what I mean. Now we’re back to mere religion." Hmmm, try telling that to Bob Geldof—no friend of religion—who once found deep joy in helping the terribly needy.)
It isn’t necessary, you understand, for Christians to pretend they enjoy all the things everyone else enjoys in order to make Christ attractive.[Isn’t it a pathetic sight when we see believers trying too hard to prove that they’re "ordinary Joes"?] Down below all the tasty things, there is life that lacks no joy and it’s found in One whose vision embraced all the harmless, pleasure-bringing joys of life. But he’s the one that told the story about a couple of men who knew greater treasure when they saw it: a farm laborer and a pearl merchant. Filled with the excitement of the find they had to have it though it meant dispensing with other lesser things. When these two men began selling all they had some might have thought they were mad but they knew that now that their eyes were opened they would be mad if they didn’t sell all. Joy drove them to it!
We’re not competing with the non-believing world at the level of entertainment. We’re bearing witness to fullness of life. Cheating nobody while we long to enrich all by the one reality that makes every good pleasure even more pleasant—Jesus Christ!
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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