JOY TO THE WORLD
You have given more joy to my heart than others ever knew, for all their corn and wine. Ps. 4:7, Jerusalem.
"You just can't make a case against liquor from the Bible!" Her telephone voice carried urgency and conviction, suggesting important personal reasons why she had to hold that point of view about alcoholic beverages. Rather than trying to defend the Scriptures, I asked her why she felt it was so important to defend liquor, especially since I knew she had been raised a nondrinker. "What do you seek to accomplish by it?" I asked.
"I feel better able to handle stress, to mingle with people, and to enjoy myself," she explained. "It just gives me a good feeling after I've had a little wine." We spoke for a while about the difference between the actual, real world and a chemically altered perception of the world. I expressed my conviction that Jesus gives us strength and perspective to face life as it is, rather than "granting us permission" to pretend to escape from the demands of life through a chemical numbing of the brain.
But I could tell she was more than just philosophical about the matter. She was frightened. She was terrified about facing life's demands without the comforting illusions of adequacy that the bottle promised. At the root of it all, she simply doubted that God could enrich her life with a quality of joy and confidence that was superior to her chemical buzz. It was a crisis of faith, a concrete battle with the object of her trust. But she thought she had already heard all the "religious answers." She was one of the most talented, promising, and attractive of my schoolmates, and I was grieved to hear, several years later, that she had committed suicide.
Could it be that many people are drawn to the illusory joys of an increasingly drugged world because they have never tasted (as had David) of the kind of joy that God imparts? Worse yet, could it be that many Christians don't know that God intends that they should know such joy? When the angels sang, "Joy to the world," they meant it! They were announcing that we should even now know the joy of being intensely loved, freely forgiven, personally guided, and richly enabled by our Father. He pervades our problematic world with such hope and meaning that each succeeding conflict with the forces of darkness brings us new springs of joy.
You have given more joy to my heart than others ever knew, for all their corn and wine. Ps. 4:7, Jerusalem.
"You just can't make a case against liquor from the Bible!" Her telephone voice carried urgency and conviction, suggesting important personal reasons why she had to hold that point of view about alcoholic beverages. Rather than trying to defend the Scriptures, I asked her why she felt it was so important to defend liquor, especially since I knew she had been raised a nondrinker. "What do you seek to accomplish by it?" I asked.
"I feel better able to handle stress, to mingle with people, and to enjoy myself," she explained. "It just gives me a good feeling after I've had a little wine." We spoke for a while about the difference between the actual, real world and a chemically altered perception of the world. I expressed my conviction that Jesus gives us strength and perspective to face life as it is, rather than "granting us permission" to pretend to escape from the demands of life through a chemical numbing of the brain.
But I could tell she was more than just philosophical about the matter. She was frightened. She was terrified about facing life's demands without the comforting illusions of adequacy that the bottle promised. At the root of it all, she simply doubted that God could enrich her life with a quality of joy and confidence that was superior to her chemical buzz. It was a crisis of faith, a concrete battle with the object of her trust. But she thought she had already heard all the "religious answers." She was one of the most talented, promising, and attractive of my schoolmates, and I was grieved to hear, several years later, that she had committed suicide.
Could it be that many people are drawn to the illusory joys of an increasingly drugged world because they have never tasted (as had David) of the kind of joy that God imparts? Worse yet, could it be that many Christians don't know that God intends that they should know such joy? When the angels sang, "Joy to the world," they meant it! They were announcing that we should even now know the joy of being intensely loved, freely forgiven, personally guided, and richly enabled by our Father. He pervades our problematic world with such hope and meaning that each succeeding conflict with the forces of darkness brings us new springs of joy.
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