Janie B. Cheaney: Personal joy

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 21st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. WORLD Commentator Janie B. Cheaney now on the word of the week, this week, in Chicago.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: You remember the Vacation Bible School song about having “Joy joy joy joy down in my heart?” The early days of the Kamala Harris campaign is like VBS on steroids, with media coverage punching the Joy button every chance it gets. Excitement over a new candidate is to be expected, especially after ditching a problematic old candidate, but this is the happy-clappiest campaign I can recall. The Associated Press picked up on it right away. Typical headline: “On the campaign trial, Harris is pushing joy while Trump paints a darker picture.” In his rollout speech as running mate, Tim Walz began his remarks with a shoutout to the top of the ticket: “Thank you for bringing back the joy.”

As a campaign strategy it just might work, but “Joy” as a catchphrase, like Barack Obama’s “Hope and Change,” won’t stand up in the rough arena of presidential politics if Harris actually becomes president. It’s a prop for getting elected, not a mandate for running a country. Joy is personal, not political. The Bible includes over 300 references to it, often in unjoyful contexts.

In Nehemiah 8, the Jewish exiles recently returned from Babylon are weeping as they hear the law read aloud—probably because they realize how far they’ve fallen from it. Nehemiah reassures them: “Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

Jesus echoes that reassurance to his disciples at the last supper, after he told them he was going away: “you have sorrow now . . . but your hearts will rejoice.” In Acts 5, the same disciples rejoiced because they were counted worthy to suffer for his name. Paul echoes that sentiment in Colossians 1:21: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.” His letter to the Philippians is full of joy and rejoicing—14 references—not the kind of prose one usually writes from prison. Peter, also, reminds his readers that even though they are going through various trials, they are filled with “joy inexpressible” in their soul’s salvation.

Christ told his disciples the same thing he tells us: “No one will take your joy from you.” No one: no persecutor, no betrayer, no slanderer.

And no devastating election results, either. All these things are temporal and of the earth. Biblical joy is everlasting and heavenly. The Greek word most often translated as “joy” in the New Testament is Chara. This should have a familiar ring. It’s related to Charis, the word most often translated as “grace.” Like grace, joy comes from above.

The joy of the Lord was the strength of the Old-Testament Jews and the New-Testament Christians, and it’s our strength too. The ginned-up joy of this election cycle may be burning out already, but ours will burn forever.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

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