This blog is an excerpt from Fellowship of the Suffering: How Hardship Shapes Us for Ministry and Mission (coauthored by Dave Ripper and myself and released by InterVarsity Press in May 2018). Copies are available at from InterVarsity Press or on Amazon.
Read Part I of this blog series here.
HAPPINESS (OR IS IT JOY?) IS A CHOICE
Many years ago, Hannah Whitall Smith wrote a book entitled The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. Her basic premise was that no matter what occurs in our lives, the Christian – by the power of God at work in us – can choose happiness.
Though I agree with the idea behind her premise, I think I would prefer to say that joy (not happiness per se) is a choice. The word happinessis itself derived from circumstances – an emotional response to the things that happen. Happiness sounds glib to me, but a joy that transcends circumstances fits better with the biblical pictures we get:
- Joseph served faithfully more than two decades in spite of the fact that he was betrayed by family and sold into Egyptian slavery (Genesis 37, 39-50).
- Paul and Silas sang in prison even as they recovered from beatings (Acts 16:25).
- Paul in the Philippian jail chose to rejoice in the Lord (Philippians 4:4).
- Paul summarized his sufferings but wrote “we know sorrow, but our joy is inextinguishable” (2 Corinthians 6:10).
- Jesus, because of the joy set before him, chose to endure the cross (Hebrews 12:1-3).
In short, God allows things (e.g., experiences, relationships, hardships) in our lives that we might never choose for ourselves, but we can choose to participate in the impact of those actions by the choices we make in response.
Dr. E. Stanley Jones served faithfully as a Methodist missionary in India for many years in the Twentieth Century. He was known for his keen wit, perceptive insights into Indian culture, and his effervescent approach to evangelism. In the latter years of his life, he suffered a debilitating stroke that left him unable to speak or walk.
Rather than giving up and choosing to wither away into death, Dr. Jones made a decision: to claim Jesus as the “Divine Yes” of life and move ahead. He looked to the future through the lens of 2 Corinthians 1:20-22:
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what it to God.
2 Corinthians 1:20-22
Jones decided to say “Yes” to Jesus and allow him to empower him to confront this stroke. Through a long and challenging recovery, Stanley Jones wrote a book (The Divine Yes), taught himself to walk and speak again, and returned to his beloved India to preach more than fifty times in the last year of his 80+-year old life. Dr Jones writes:
“It isn’t what happens to us that matters, but what we do with what happens to us that counts.”
Stanley Jones, The Divine Yes (p. 127)
Dr. Viktor Frankl, known for his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, survived Nazi concentration camps in World War II, including Auschwitz. Perhaps his most famous quotation related to his observations in the concentration camps of why some survived – even to the point of generosity in caring for other prisoners – and others shriveled in their personal corner of suffering and died. He wrote of those who walked through the concentration camp huts:
“comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
Dr. Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
In his book Creative Suffering, Christian psychologist Paul Tournier cites a study entitled “Orphans Lead the World.” The author of the study had reviewed the lives of 300 historical leaders who were partly or fully orphaned in their childhood. Some we see as great leaders, like biblical Moses or military leaders like Alexander the Great or George Washington. Others we regard as inhuman tyrants – like Hitler, Stalin and Lenin. Tournier observes:
“the insecurity consequent upon emotional deprivation must have aroused in these children an exceptional will to power.”
Paul Tournier, Creative Suffering (p. 2-3)
Tournier uses the study to lay the foundation between deprivation and creativity and to introduce the major premise of his book: when suffering comes, how will we respond? What choices will we make?
The bottom line with hardship and suffering as it pertains to growth and transformation is that we have a choice. To borrow a simplistic phrase, suffering can make us bitter or it can make us better. It depends on the long-term choices we make in response to the tough times to come our way.
In no way do we want to convey the idea that this is an easy process. Words like struggle, ordeal, battle, and challenge all describe the long-term (sometimes lifetime) process of working through our pains.
Words like struggle, ordeal, battle, and challenge all describe the long-term (sometimes lifetime) process of working through our pains.
The third and final blog in this series will deal with our process of working through pain.
