Review:
New Year’s Eve is often associated with champagne in the
West, so the title of Mike Mason’s book seemed appropriate to read over the New
Year’s holiday! The champagne he
advocates imbibing generously is God’s gift of joy. That is God’s “champagne for the soul” (p.1).
Mason admits to be “addicted to the cheap wine of
melancholy” (p.1) for decades in his own
life. He writes to Christians whose joy
seems elusive and asks: ‘Is something missing from your Christianity?’ (p.3). His
answer is God’s gift of joy. He writes
“to demystify joy, to make it common fare for every Christian, to help people
see that happiness is taught in the Bible and that God wants us to have it,
starting now” (p.69). As part of that demystification process, he
tries to “dismantle the dichotomy or spiritualization of joy that has kept it
in the ethereal, spiritual realm without its needed spill over to what makes
for practical, happy living” (p.33). He is intentional, therefore, in applying the
practical implications of a joy-based lifestyle through a series of brief
chapters, each based on an individual scriptural text that he uses to describe
an aspect of joy or happiness.
What keeps the book from just being a theological treatise
is Mason's own 90 day experiment in joy. He started that experiment at the
prompting of God the day after two teenage boys, “the only children of our
friends” (p.5), had been killed in a car
accident. The timing of his experiment
made sense to him only after he realized that “Christian joy is rooted in
darkness, chaos, sorrow. Joy isn’t an airy ideal but a hard reality inextricably
enmeshed with conditions in the real world” (p.5). Although he understood that joy and suffering
are not mutually exclusive, to undertake his experiment he had to “change
beliefs…Believers cling to a certain degree of melancholy, thinking melancholy
is inevitable in this world and that joy is the exception rather than the
rule…An experiment in joy is a resolution to give up all doubts about God…I’m
convinced that what keeps us from a joy-filled life is a lingering resentment
of God, a latent conviction that God isn’t fair and that life is too hard” (pp.53, 109, 131). “We’re so sure we’d be happy
if only we could get free of our troubles, but going through life without
troubles is not an option. It’s one’s attitude toward trouble that makes all
the difference” (p.130).
Joy is God’s free gift to the Christian, he emphasizes, but faith
is our part in receiving it (p.174). “The
manna of joy falls in limitless supply but each day’s rations must be gathered
afresh” (p.141). “Joy is not cheap. Joy involves a sacrifice. If I am not joyful,
something is standing between me and joy.
Am I willing to give that thing up?” (p.101). “If we want joy, we will have to fight
for it deliberately and fiercely” alongside our Commander in Chief, Jesus. “He
longs for us to rise up out of our misery and apathy, to take arms against the
foe and to feel the joy of victory flowing in our veins. He’ll supply the
weapons, the courage, the power …but only we can supply the will to fight”( pg.46). “Joy is like a muscle and the more you
exercise it, the stronger it grows” (p.1).
“A decision to live in joy is a decision to overcome every earthly problem by
the power of heaven” (p.73). “To uncover
the wells of joy one must search for them.
Unless we define for ourselves the specific personal ways we experience
joy and deliberately make room for these pleasures, happiness will escape us” (p.154).
Given those convictions, Mason intentionally sought, during
his 90 experiment and in the 3 years since, to “locate the one moment in each
day that holds the most joy...By nourishing one ray of joy like a seedling, joy
takes root in me and grows and grow until it fills my heart” (p.114). He does not minimize the “struggle” it
is to succeed in living a joy-filled life.
Mason’s critiques of melancholy Christians are telling. His own effort to dig out from that mental
lifestyle is exemplary and gives hope to others who want to follow suit. And his scriptural exegesis on individual
passages about joy is thoughtful. But
his insistence that joy and happiness are inextricably linked creates some
dissonance for the reader. The word
happiness is based semantically on the root word ‘to happen.’ Thus happiness by
definition has been linked to one’s gladness when circumstances are
favorable. Using that definition of happiness, joy is separate
from happiness, not synonymous with it.
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal.5:22) and
a gift from Christ (Jn.15:11, Jn.17:13)
that transcends our circumstances. Mason tries to alleviate this disparity by
redefining happiness as “doing my best in bad circumstances, cutting myself
lots of slack, appropriating God’s grace and mercy in such a way that I don’t
feel pressured to perform” (p.26). He wants
“to demonstrate that happiness is not happenstance but…a profound spiritual
discipline” (p.24). “Happiness involves an
act of will…It is a series of choices, a series of steps taken one after
another in the same direction” (p.51). He insists that “unhappiness is based on a “fog
of lies” [about God’s character, the nature of life and our ability to overcome
whatever difficulties face us] (p.176). “Becoming unhappy is not God’s doing but the
devil’s,” he says (p.48). …People are
unhappy because they don’t believe in happiness” (p.
53).
Those points are arguable, but if such statements about
happiness and joy will challenge defeatist melancholy thinking, then Mason has
achieved part of his goal. Perhaps more
significantly, his effort to “demystify joy” and make it real in everyday life might
be experienced by others if readers tried his 90 day experiment with joy for
themselves-- using scriptural passages on joy, understanding the battle
required to continue in the experiment, and anticipating the victory and life-transforming
work of the Spirit needed to make joy their dominant life-style.
This is a challenge for the New Year worth considering. As the
Lord told Joshua after the Israelites had fought to inhabit the Promised Land:
“There are still very large areas of land
to be taken over.” (Josh.13:1).
A lifestyle of joy is one of those areas to be possessed.
- M. L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D., 1/3/12