On Holy Optimism

Anne: Can't you even imagine you're in the depths of despair?
Marilla: No, I cannot. To despair is to turn your back on God. 

I used to laugh at this part of the movie when I was a child, but now Marilla's words ring true. I don't think Christians are supposed to be the glass-half-full types, exactly. But, I do think that a Christian's outlook on life should be pretty rosy, because Jesus is the lens, and the light, by which we see.

That entire paragraph was full of cliches and quotations from other people. I'll offer you my own thoughts now. I'm a pessimist. I'm also a Christian. Sometimes, I don't feel that these aspects of my nature are at odds with one another. But, they are. Oh, how they are! People who are bubbly, consistently positive, or over-given to smiling tend to get on my nerves--but mainly because I feel that there is something false in, or absent from, a thoroughly optimistic person. Surely a happy person is happy either because they have never suffered or because they are faking it, that's my usual explanation. This is silly though, because the truest, most real Thing is God. And God is, in his essence, perfect happiness. Do you know how profound that is? God is happy.

God is happiness in the same way that God is love. It is one of his perfections, and God is the sum of all perfections: perfect power, perfect being, perfect goodness, perfect contentment. The realization that the foundation of reality is happiness hits me like a ton of bricks. It really does. God doesn't promise a happy life in the way that I tend to define happiness. My picture of happiness tends to be anti-Boethian. Boethius (and God, too I think) says that true happiness does not come from that which can be taken away. Think about that: if you can lose it, it cannot make you happy. You can lose things, relationships with people, your own health, a home. Happiness is not in these things then. Happiness is inherent in that which is secure, perfect, and eternal. God does not promise the happiness that I think will come with adequate personal space, a fulfilling career, or meaningful and healthy relationships. God does promise, however, perfection and eternal bliss. God promises a happiness that I cannot even conceive of, and the best part is that this happiness flows from his own laughing, loving nature.

I need to dwell on this idea a little more, because it's hard for me to think of God this way. And that's just my problem: unbelief. I'm unhappy, I'm given to pessimism and despair so often, because I'm given to unbelief. It's hard for me to believe what God says about himself when it relates to my own personal well-being. It's easy for me to believe, say, that God exists; it's easy for me to believe that he is all-knowing and all-powerful. It's easy for me believe that Jesus died for the sins of the masses, for the nations, for the world, for my friends. It's hard to believe that Jesus' salvation extends to me, also. It's hard for me to believe that he is genuinely interested in my life, in my particular life. It's hard for me to believe that God is happy, and that he wants me to be happy, too.

My patterns of sinfulness begin and end in unbelief. Anxiety, worry, fear, doubt--these are all differing manifestations of the same basic lie: that life is essentially a burden and that God is essentially grim. Therefore, because I spend so much time believing a lie, I spend a great deal of time doubting the truth. Hence, despair. And in my despair, I turn toward deception, giving my back to God. Marilla is a wise woman.

It's important for me to know that God is happy. God is happy, and he has invited me to share in his own divine happiness: the glorious perfect beatitude of the Trinity.

More on this from desiringgod.org:

So often we think of God as non-enthusiastic or even gloomy. The exact opposite is true: He loves to be God, He takes great pleasure in all that He does, and He is enthusiastic about serving His people and working for their welfare. For example, God says in Jeremiah 32:41: "I will rejoice in doing them good." Jesus said in John 15:11, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you." And Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:11 of "the glorious gospel of the blessed God." Blessed means happy. So Paul is saying: "the glorious gospel of the happy God."

God is infinitely happy because he is infinitely glorious. And, the good news is that he invites us to enter into his happiness. Here is what Piper writes in The Pleasures of God (p. 26): "It is good news that God is gloriously happy. No one would want to spend eternity with an unhappy God. If God is unhappy then the goal of the gospel is not a happy goal, and that means it would be no gospel at all. But, in fact, Jesus invites us to spend eternity with a happy God when he says, ‘Enter into the joy of your master' (Matthew 25:23). Jesus lived and died that his joy-God's joy-might be in us and our joy might be full (John 15:11; 17:13). Therefore the gospel is ‘the gospel of the glory of the happy God.'"

So. The expectation for happiness is grounded in reality itself. 

Cheer up. Believe. God is happy.

And now, something to lift your spirits, courtesy of my friend, Sara:
Ignore the early 90's aesthetic and Christian materialism, pay attention to the chorus

And I Quote (In a Manner of Speaking)

Tonight, I'm sad. Inexplicably sad. This week, I feel myself descending. Today, it feels like my heart has been removed with an ice-cream scoop (have I said this before), and now there is just a hole. Waiting. The thing about life is, sometimes, people are just sad.

BUT

As Anne Lamott, or someone Anne Lamott heard or read or knew said:

"He loves us too much to let us stay like this".

Isn't that just the happiest news?



Did you really think this blog wasn't about my feelings?

Portrait of a. . .?

Don't read Henry James. There are better things to do with one's time. However, I'm reading Henry James' Portrait of a Lady just now, and his writing style does begin to grow on one. This is still not an excuse for you to read Henry James. It isn't that I don't love to picture sun-warmed stone benches and tangled rose vines in Florence, don't misunderstand me. I'd just rather fill in the details for myself and skip the pages where he tries to bend my imaginative faculty to his too-vigorous descriptions.

I'm thinking, as usual, about my life. I'm bored. I find that in trying to carefully keep the balance between prudential living and passionate adventurism I continually manage to do nothing at all. This is a problem because, like I said, I'm bored. I always admire the friends who pursue what sounds good to them--the ones who seem to discredit all the reasons against adventure. I apparently ought to marry the reasons against adventure because I love them so much. Sometimes I ask myself what I'd do if I could do whatever my heart desired. The answer doesn't seem to be so different than what I'm preparing to do: go to grad school, become fluent in French, and live abroad. But, I'd do it more carelessly perhaps. With a truer zest for life, with more expectation of goodness.

The future has almost ceased to interest me. That is, except for those moments when I'm still curious about how I'll "turn out". At 25, am I finally nearing the point when I can no longer ask such questions? At which point, exactly, will I be turned? At 30? I feel that the older I get, the more my possibilities diminish, yet I don't know what the possibilities have been or are currently. But I am getting sidetracked.

I do not like regret. I do not like it, because I believe it has no cure. In college, I denied myself many pleasures for the greater pleasure of being a good student. Do not ask me what it means to be a good student. I have asked myself that question so many times I couldn't make you a decent answer. However, the point remains. I pursued (and I'm glad of it still) academic rigor at the expense of having a good time. Well, now my academic rigors have subsided, at least for a while, and I am still not having a good time. I'm working full-time again, as I do every summer, and finding it delightful in many ways. The great difference between this year and last is that I'm not frantically reading ahead--or generally angsty about the duration of my degree.I'm finished now. This is a glorious truth which I frequently turn to ponder in my soul. It maketh the heart glad.

But, the point. I expected greater responsibilities after college. I expected to have to act like a grown-up. Although, as I've been paying for most of the costs of my maintenance for years not much has changed there.

The thing I also expected, which has turned out to be a grave disappointment, was to find waiting for me the pleasures I disdained to get all of those books read.

It isn't here. Here is a 40-hour work week and aimless free time after hours. Here are friends who live too far away or who are too busy with their marriages or careers to indulge in the pleasures of the life I've so long postponed.

Here, now, with wings finally unfurled, I find that I've not escaped the cage. It was a different place, with my wings submissively folded in, but now they are open and restless for wind. They scrape the prison bars and a few feathers are torn loose and drift to the floor.

I made a rule before graduating against parenthetical living. Parenthetical living being, of course, my only skill and glory. So I ask myself, am I waiting in vain for a time when life will be more accessible? I hope not, because that time will not come, I'm certain of this now.

A friend of mine once remarked, after spontaneously piercing her eyebrow at 25, that if you miss youthful folly when you're young, you mayn't make up for it later. It's too late then. Is it too late now?

I so want to enjoy myself. I have known keen intellectual pleasures over the past seven years, yes, but other avenues of existence have been wanting. It is time to turn down other lanes if I have not lost the way.

I want to fly.