Have you ever noticed the number of “The Joy of …” books that are available either in hardcopy or digital formats? There are many books promising joy on all sorts of topics. The Joy of 1) Cooking, 2) Mathematics, 3) Running, 4) Sex, 5) Cookies, 6) Doing Nothing, 7) Retirement, to name just a few. Over my lifetime I have read quite a number of “The Joy of …” books. For all the topics on “joy” I have read, none has increased the level of joy in my life. Today, Jesus makes a promise to us. If we remain in him and he in us, and if we live his commandment, then we will not only have joy in our lives, we will experience “complete joy.”
So what is this commandment we must live in order to attain complete joy? It is expressed by Jesus as “love one another as I have loved you.” In 1 John, it is expressed that we must love one another because love is of God. To find complete joy we cannot focus our joy in loving only ourselves. Rather, complete joy is found in our lives only by focusing our love on someone else.
All the books that begin with the words “The Joy of …” are about only finding joy and fulfillment for ourselves. Our society is currently one in which the only person that is important is “me” to the exclusion of everyone else. This is narcissistic individualism. It breaks down the relationships that must exist for a healthy human society, including the relationships within our own families. Narcissism is not the path to complete joy, rather, it is the path to complete despair.
To find the complete joy that Jesus promises, we must love as Jesus loved, in short, focusing our love on God and on our neighbor. This act of giving our love to God and others empties ourselves of the narcissism that fills our lives. In emptying the self-conceit and self-centeredness from our lives, we will find God filling the empty space with Divine joy.
