Good News Quote #42

From Chapter Eight, Why You Don't Always Have to Experience Joy: Or, How God Vindicates the Afflicted.

What also happens is that the biblical exhortations, such as the apostle's words, "Rejoice in the Lord always!" (Phil. 4:4) are turned into a kind of command, even a kind of condemnation. Instead of inviting us into joy, they demand that we be joyful, or else.


In this case, it's our individualism that turns invitation into condemnation. Like the passage about being filled with the Spirit discussed in chapter 1 (Eph. 5:18), this exhortation is addressed to the church in the plural. In the Greek, it's more like, "You guys! Be celebrating the Lord Jesus all the time!" It is not about how each individual is supposed to feel every hour of the day, but about how the life of the church is always to be a kind of advance celebration of the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Good News Quote #41

From Chapter Eight, Why You Don't Always Have to Experience Joy: Or, How God Vindicates the Afflicted.

It goes something like this. The Christian life is supposed to be an abundant life, a life of victory -- so you can't go around telling people that it really hurts inside. People at church may not understand if you start talking as if your life was a failure. You're not really allowed to be sad at heart, because everybody says Christians are supposed to have an inner joy deep in their hearts, which is always there beneath all the troubles of life. So it can't be that at the center of your feelings is a great ball of hurt and suffering. Not if you're a Christian! [...]


Now it's true that God has many ways of comforting us with joy in the midst of sorrow and pain. These are some of his most precious gifts, for which believers throughout the ages have raised songs of thanksgiving. But it is also true that sometimes the cross we bear means suffering without joy, without any kind of emotional consolation. For our feelings, like our bodies, remain human through and through, capable of agony and emptiness, vulnerable to crosses that can deprive them of all comfort.

Good News Quote #40

From Chapter Seven, Why You Don't Have to Keep Getting Transformed All the Time: Or, How Virtues Make a Lasting Change in Us.

We cultivate our feelings the way we cultivate a garden: we can't entirely prevent weeds from coming up, but we can take care to remove them before they do much harm. We cannot simply choose never to get angry, and we cannot fully control it when we do get angry, but the more disciplined our moral lives are, the more likely we will be able to keep our anger under some measure of control. For example, we can discipline ourselves in how we think about people in private (not cultivating a sense of resentment against them), how we talk about them behind their back (not gossiping), and how we interact with them in public (not speaking with disrespect or trying to embarrass them). These disciplines will not eliminate any poisonous feelings toward other people, but they will keep them from growing strong and overshadowing the better feelings in the garden of our souls.

Good News Quote #39

From Chapter Seven, Why You Don't Have to Keep Getting Transformed All the Time: Or, How Virtues Make a Lasting Change in Us.

Genuinely life-changing experiences lead to something more lasting. The key example is conversion to Christ, which changes our lives not because it's such an intense experience -- lots of good Christians never have an intense conversion experience -- but because it begins the life of faith, in which you are united to Christ, our Bridegroom. Conversion can be a lot like falling in love, leading to the one Christian marriage that is at the basis of all marriage: union with Christ. By the same token, just as falling in love is not necessary to a good marriage, no particular experience at all is necessary for faith in Christ. What matters is believing that his word is true, just like what matters in marriage is believing and keeping the promises you make in your wedding vows.


Nor is it especially important, in either case, to "keep the feeling alive." Feelings come and go -- that's what they're for. They change all the time, because they are about responding to the immediate situation. But over the course of a lifetime they do tend to settle into predictable patterns, such as are found in the virtues and blessings of a good marriage.

Good News Quote #38

From Chapter Seven, Why You Don't Have to Keep Getting Transformed All the Time: Or, How Virtues Make a Lasting Change in Us.

If falling in love is a kind of discovery, then it's not surprising that it happens at the beginning of many relationships. Perhaps there are exceptions, like when old friends fall in love after they've known one another for years, but even then I'd figure that's because they discover something new in each other. In any case, when you make such a discovery it's meant to point in the direction of something more lasting, like the lifetime of love in marriage and the raising of children together that comes from it. Falling in love is a perception that says, "This would be a wonderful person to share a lifetime with, to be the mother or father of my children. If I were to grow old with this person, seeing our children grow up, it would be the fulfillment of my deepest desire on earth.


If I'm right, the importance of falling in love lies not in how it feels, but in what it perceives. And as always with our feelings, the key moral issue is how truthful the perception is. That is why, as I said in chapter 4, I urge my students considering marriage to ask the questions: is this really a good person, someone good for me that I can be good to, someone with whom I could be a good parent? Falling in love is a sign that this might be someone with whom you could make a good marriage. Still, it's not enough, because the feeling is not always as perceptive as it should be. You can fall in love with people who seduce you (seductive people are good at getting you to fall in love with them) or, if you're emotionally unhealthy, you can have a repeated pattern of falling in love with people who are bad for you.

Good News Quote #37

From Chapter Seven, Why You Don't Have to Keep Getting Transformed All the Time: Or, How Virtues Make a Lasting Change in Us.

I've heard both pastors and students try to explain this by saying that love is not a feeling, it's a choice. But I'm afraid that's still consumerism talking. [...]


But love is not a choice -- or rather, it is not only a choice, just like it is not only a feeling. Love is a way of life for the long haul (again, think of love for your children) and its presence in our hearts is what Christian doctrine calls a virtue -- an enduring pattern of feeling and thought, choice and action and perception. Love involves all these things, including choices -- many, many choices over the course of a lifetime, made in light of the people and things you love. But of course it also involves feelings -- how could it not? When we look at the children we love, playing or sleeping, we are filled with tenderness and delight. What loving parent doesn't have such feelings?

Good News Quote #36

From Chapter Seven, Why You Don't Have to Keep Getting Transformed All the Time: Or, How Virtues Make a Lasting Change in Us.

In consumerist spirituality, the new stuff on order is mostly new experiences, "transformative" experiences that you're supposed to get if you don't want to miss out on something special in your spiritual life. Often there are books and videos and ministries to go with it, but the selling point is usually some experience or other. Which means, of course, that if you've never had the experience they're selling, they'll do their best to make you wonder what's wrong with you. You'll feel you're missing out on the prayer of Jabez, or being filled with the Spirit, or speaking in tongues. It's not like you have to have this experience to be saved (you will be reassured), but you'll also be told that without it you're just an ordinary, plain Christian, lacking the extraordinary power and blessing that God wants you to have in your life.