Good News Quote #44

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

[Job's three friends] did better when they did nothing. That's a hard lesson to learn, but it's indispensable for anyone who really wants to comfort the afflicted. Sometimes there is nothing we can do to comfort them, and this itself is a form of suffering that is hard for us to bear. But it is also a way that we enter into their suffering and share it. It is essential to the work of sympathy and compassion -- both of which are old words meaning to suffer with someone. And it is hard work to sit in silence and listen to someone we love groan and cry and say dreadful things about God. Sometimes the most we can do to relieve their suffering is just hear their awful words and bear with them patiently. This is the cross of listening, a cross Job's friends were unwilling to bear. They thought they had to do something about his awful words.

Good News Quote #43

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

One temptation we have is to blame the afflicted for upsetting our worldview. The very existence of their undeserved suffering raises questions about our theology and our faith that are hard to face. [...]


There is a whole book of the Bible that deals with the temptation to blame the afflicted for upsetting our worldview. I'm talking of course about the book of Job. [...]


Job's speeches hardly mention the literal or physical aspects of his suffering, his foul skin disease and the death of his children. Job makes it clear that his real problem is with God. [...]


But he wishes things were different: there ought to be someone in heaven who could speak up for him!


And it turns out, Job has his wish and things are as they ought to be. For the whole story began with God speaking up for Job in heaven, and that in fact is why Job is suffering -- so that God may be proved right when he speaks up for Job. But Job is in no position to know that, which is why he suffers so badly.

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.