Represent holiness and happiness as opposing (or even alternating) experiences.
"Let it be the principal part of your care and labour in all their education, to make holiness appear to them the most necessary, honourable, gainful, pleasant, delightful, amiable state of life; and to keep them from apprehending it either as needless, dishonourable, hurtful, or uncomfortable. Especially draw them to the love of it, by representing it as lovely."
Richard Baxter, 1615-1691, Baxter’s Practical Works,
The 2001 film, Chocolat, is a fable—almost a parable—of contrasting life perspectives. Set in an old-world, European village, the physical context is as much a participant in the story as the human characters.
A face-off unfolds across the cobblestones of the town square. The towering, grey-stone face of an ancient cathedral forebodingly occupies one side of the courtyard—guarded by the stern-faced, stone visage of a revered, deceased spiritual dignitary.
Opposite this edifice, the neglected shop space of a former pharmacy is pleasantly renovated, by a journey-woman and her young daughter, into a welcoming chocolaterie—a cafe of tantalizing, finely-crafted sweets.
On this stage, a heavy-handed, living spiritual dignitary and a kindly, beautiful, irreligious shopkeeper do battle for the heart of the village. Pleasure, friendship, and tender care—at the chocolaterie—compete with power, guilt, and Lenten-sacrifice—at the church—each seeking to claim the loyalties of and offer hope to needy souls.
The chocolaterie wins.
This tale effectively captures the common perception of countless people—often well-earned and reinforced by the church itself—that the conflict between religious life and "real" life is a contrast between accusation and acceptance, law and love, hypocrisy and honesty, hell and happiness.
To be clear, the gift of saving faith in Jesus is not an earthly path of unmixed spiritual, emotional and physical ease and pleasure. The deceitful prosperity gospel and hollow "happy, happy, happy, all the time" Sunday school ditties have done no service to the credibility of the Gospel and are not the life promised by grace.
Actually, life—after the fall and under the sun—according to Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes—can, from one angle, be summed up, in the words of Wesley (from Princess Bride, not the Methodist preacher): "Life is pain your Highness, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."
But that is just half of the message of Ecclesiastes—the Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, "life is meaningless" half.
Even in the Old Covenant, waiting-for-the-promise world of Solomon, the often-neglected full message of Ecclesiastes (after his long experimentation and reflection) is: remember God, fear God, obey God, and enjoy life!
Since we are living in the hope of life over the sun, the forceful command of the wisest of the wise is to stop grasping and clinging to things that pass away like a vapor, so that you can finally feel free to enjoy them as gifts from our Lord.
Clinging to earthly pleasures, it turns out, is idolatry—offering as much satisfaction as "chasing the wind." On the flip-side, enjoying your labor, your food, your wine, your strength, and the intoxicating wife of your youth—is the natural fruit of God-centeredness and it is the uninhibited freedom of the one who starts worshipping the Giver instead of the gifts.
Joy—present and future—is the rightful and reasonable possession of the holy and the heaven-bound. Satisfying or sustained joy is not the reward of shortsighted hoarders or impatient hedonists.
The hope and holiness that come from grace provide two extraordinary freedoms:
1.) Freedom from slavery and addiction to the things God made to be gifts not gods, and...
2.) Freedom to enjoy those same things with Godly gratitude and hearty delight. According to the Scriptures and the Gospel, not only can true holiness and lasting happiness coexist—they cannot exist separately!
Pharisees manipulate and mangle God's gifts - either gorging on them in hypocritical self-indulgence or gagging on them in hypercritical self-righteousness. Those who love grace, enjoy good things, because they love their extravagantly-generous Lord more than anything else.
The eternal happiness of God and the stunning discovery that God's passion is to be known for boundless grace and generosity are a perfect recipe for our stalwart joy.
Freed prisoners dance. Redeemed slaves sing. Pardoned felons clap and shout. Cured terminals laugh and cry and get downright giddy with the breathless recovery of a hope that had been staggered. We are all of these! And—next—a permanent, brilliantly perfect tomorrow awaits us.
Children of God, loved by Christ, we are the only ones with countless reasons to live and laugh and love and learn, to play and eat and tease and cheer, and to pour out our resources with abandon, so that others might be invited and welcomed to the celebration.
In the parable of the rich fool, in Luke 12, the man with extra large crops designs a plan to hide, hoard, and hold on to this unexpected windfall—to secure a hope of his own making. I doubt that his sin was, as many seem to think—his plan to eat, drink and be merry (that’s the actual command of Deuteronomy 14)—but, rather, that his plan was to carry out this celebration by himself, on his own terms, and on the basis of his self-sufficient security—without the nasty uncertainties of faith or the rich-heartedness of gratitude.
Redeemed fools, with extra large crops, don't build bigger barns. They build bigger banquet halls, so that they can eat, drink and be merry with thanksgiving, with announcements of God's goodness, and in fellowship with any friend, foe, fatherless or friendless fellow-fool they can get in the door.
Children who are raised by these kind of redeemed fools learn what it is like, passionately to love God, expectantly to trust His provision, constantly to long for more and more of His flowing generosity, and uninhibitedly to share the windfall with everyone in sight.
And they might just stop by the chocolaterie on the way home from church.
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We would love for you to listen to this week’s companion podcast episode: “The Holiness of Happy Lovers” at the link below! (Due to be posted early this week.)
This series of blogposts is being posted in conjunction with Season 2 of the “No Mere Mortals” podcast (this link is to the Apple podcast app, but NMM is also available at Spotify and in other podcast apps). Jump on over to the podcast to listen to Lisa and my conversations on grace-rooted, joy-shaped, self-righteousness-suffocating home life and relationships!
Track along with all that we are doing here at Enjoying Grace Story Co. at Don’s Instagram