About a year after starting my job at Starbucks, I heard about a Christian writers’ conference in Seattle and decided to go. When I arrived, the speaker was talking about how to write a good “elevator speech,” a 30-second pitch for your book that compels the listener to ask for more. “Being a little controversial always helps,” he said. Suddenly I had an idea. I wrote it down and played with it a bit. I reread it and chuckled. “I can’t say that, can I?” When the speaker invited a few people to share their elevator speech, I raised my hand. He called on me, and I stood up and said, “The world tells us to live for today, and the church tells us to live for eternity. They’re both wrong…and they’re both right.”
Judging by the total silence in the room, I guessed I’d gotten the controversial part down okay. Finally the speaker said, “Yep, that’s the idea. I was offended—but I want to know more.” I was able to offend and intrigue several more people at the conference, most notably an editor from Harvest House. Thanks to his interest and support, Harvest House later decided to publish this book. That was a good weekend.
Yes, the world tells us to live for today. YOLO (You Only Live Once) is a current buzz phrase used to justify all sorts of questionable decisions. Popular culture encourages us to focus on today without thinking about the long-term consequences, let alone the eternal ones.
The church often tells us to live for eternity, exhorting us to scorn the joys of this life in favor of spiritual things. I recently read a sermon that said we should be alarmed if we desired any pleasure more than prayer and enjoyed any book more than the Bible. A popular devotional suggests that we should trust God so much that we no longer want his blessings, only God himself. A bestselling book mentions a woman who didn’t want to be at the theater because she wanted to be at home praying instead. I had no problem with that until the book called her example “convicting.”
Are those examples the high-water mark of Christianity? Have we really arrived when praying is more fun than going to a show, reading the Bible is more enjoyable than watching a football game, and a day at church is better than a day at Disneyland?
These two extremes are both wrong—we don’t have to choose between living for this life or the next. But they are both right. The closer we get to God, the more robustly we can enjoy both earthly and spiritual things.
To the Joy of the Saints
Joy is one of the central themes of the Bible. When I was doing research for this book, I did an extensive study on the word joy and its synonyms, including happiness, pleasure, and delight.1 I trimmed the list down to the 730 most applicable verses containing those words. That’s a lot of verses—more than the number of verses that contain words like peace, grace, or even love.
I printed out all of these verses in ten-point type and set the margins at half an inch, but the list was still 48 pages long. After I printed it, I just sat and thumbed through all those pages, feeling their weight in my hand. Just seeing and feeling how much the Bible had to say about joy changed my theology. For Christians to be so easily and accurately caricatured as joyless is inexcusable. As a result of the months I spent analyzing those verses one by one, I began to sign my letters, “To the glory of God and the joy of the saints.” That has become my life mission—I want the words Christians and joyless to become antonyms.
A Compartmentalized Life
My dad was in the National Guard when I was a kid, so two weeks every year he’d go to Eastern Washington to drive a tank. We always looked forward to his return, hoping he’d bring home some MREs. These nonperishable Meals Ready to Eat are wrapped in a thick brown plastic and include several pouches of foodlike substances. My favorite was the ultra-dense cracker covered in cheese goo. My brother liked the Chicken à la King paste, and I seem to remember my sister enjoying the freeze-dried apples.
Monday morning after his return, the three of us would take an MRE and my dad’s mess kit and go hide out under a large rhododendron bush that served as our fort. We’d fight over the mess kit, and I usually won because I was the oldest. I loved the way the handle folded up so neatly over the lid. When opened, the lid became the plate, with a high ridge that divided it into two separate compartments.
I’ve spent most of my life like that mess kit. In my mind, the spiritual and earthly compartments were ever separated. On the spiritual side were all the things I felt I was supposed to do, and on the earthly side were all the things I actually enjoyed doing.
I didn’t think the things in my earthly compartment were bad; they just weren’t spiritual, and spiritual is always better, right? That’s what I believed before my study of joy.
After printing out those verses about joy, I began to go through each one, making note of who was experiencing joy, whether the Bible approved, and whether the joy seemed to me to be earthly or spiritual. I entered the results into a database and started to analyze the results.2
The first surprise was finding that verses about joy occur evenly throughout the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament isn’t all fire and brimstone after all. I was even more surprised to discover that roughly 75 percent of the Old Testament references were to things that I considered earthly joys. In the New Testament, the emphasis shifts almost exclusively to finding joy in things I considered spiritual. That doesn’t mean God changed his mind about earthly joy between the Old and New Testaments. As I said in chapter 4, the New Testament was written with the assumption that we’d keep reading and applying the Old. Together they give a complete picture of the life God desires, enjoying all things regardless of whether we think they’re earthly or spiritual.
The Old and New Testaments endorse earthly joys once for every two times they endorse spiritual joys. Think about that—if you were to tally up all of the sermons, books, and articles you’ve heard and seen about seeking spiritual joy, then compare that to the number pertaining to earthly joy, what would the ratio be?
My point is that if God wants us to keep our eyes only on heavenly things, if he wants us to seek only him and not his blessings, if he thinks earthly delights are second best to spiritual ones, then he sure has a funny way of showing it. One hundred sixty-five verses reference unabashed enjoyment of earthly things.
• Entire psalms are dedicated to thanking God for earthly things, such as a good harvest, protection from an enemy, and the restoration of one’s health and fortunes.3
• We are commanded to enjoy our spouse and delight in each other sexually.4
• The Torah commands multiple festivals—huge parties filled with eating and drinking.5
• Have you ever felt a thrill when you can make that perfect, witty remark? That’s biblical too.6
• Paul acknowledges that God richly gives us everything for our enjoyment.7
To put it bluntly, God shouldn’t be your only happiness. Not because he wouldn’t be enough—he’s beyond sufficient for an eternity of delight—but because he doesn’t want to be. He has filled this world with many things that he longs for us to enjoy, just as any father longs for his children to enjoy good things.
A couple years ago, a friend of mine got a new swing set for his kids and gave me the pieces of the old one. With blood, sweat, tears, and help from a couple friends, I got it set up in my backyard. As we worked on it, Grace and Sarah kept running around us, asking when it would be ready. As soon as we were done, I told them they could play on it. How would I have felt if they’d said, “Oh, that’s okay, Daddy. We just want you instead.”
I might have said, “I’m glad you love me so much. I love you too, very much. Now get over there and play on the swing set!” Far from being pleased with their maturity, I would have been disappointed that they didn’t understand how much I wanted them to enjoy the gift. Do you think maybe God feels disappointed when we fail to delight in his earthly gifts to us?
Of course, that isn’t what Grace and Sarah did that day. Before I finished saying, “It’s ready,” they were already swarming over it with their friends. Scarcely a day goes by (rain or shine) that they’re not out there playing on it, and seldom does it fail to elicit a smile from me.
God really likes earthly things. He declared this world very good, and about 80 percent of the biblical references to God enjoying or delighting in something have to do with things he has made (including us) rather than things we think of as more spiritual. More importantly, he became a man and enjoyed created things himself. Jesus is our great example of someone who perfectly enjoyed and indulged in the things of this life without being distracted from his purpose. And through his death, he made it possible for us to enjoy them to the fullest without the sin that corrupts them. We’ll get to that soon.
A Unified Life
As I’ve studied what the Bible has to say about joy and the way it flows so easily between my earthly and spiritual compartments, I’ve started to view life less like the lid of my dad’s mess kit. I see it more like the other side, which was just one big pan. I no longer believe that there are different kinds of joy, just variations of the same thing. All joy comes from God. It has different forms, but it’s all his.
Being radically normal means discovering and living a unified life, seeing God and feeling his delight in everything. You can be a spiritual person whether you’re enjoying worship or enjoying a football game. In both cases, you’re enjoying something God has made.
I’m not saying all joys are exactly the same. Going to a football game is obviously different from attending a worship service. The question isn’t which is holier, but which is more appropriate at the time. For instance, I would discourage skipping church every week to watch football. That would be like living on a steady diet of candy, chips, and Coke.
Finding a unified life is far bigger than simply being able to watch a football game without feeling guilty. If you don’t genuinely believe that God enjoys you enjoying that game or shopping with friends or reading a novel or whatever else you enjoy, then you’re far less likely to invite him to join you in those activities. And if you don’t think God is with you, you’re far more likely to do ungodly and destructive things.
Imagine being so comfortable with God’s pleasure at your pleasure that you spontaneously invite him into everything you do. Imagine being able to scream yourself hoarse for a touchdown one moment and then whisper a “thank you” prayer the next without feeling any separation between the two.
Who throws a better party, your church or your neighbors? If God were to throw a party, what do you think it would be like? As it turns out, God has actually thrown a bunch of parties, and we can learn a lot from them.