Fruitful Politics: Joy

How can godly JOY, second among Paul's listing of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, have anything to do with politics?

I wondered this myself until I stumbled across The Politics of Long Joy, a piece by Alan Jacobs at Books & Culture. I'd encourage you to read it in its entirety, but allow me to excerpt this paragraph that explains the phrase, "long joy":

"The politics of long joy" is an odd phrase, but a rich one. Fish derives it from another moment in Paradise Lost, when the archangel Michael reveals to Adam a vision of "Just men" who "all their study bent / To worship God aright," who then are approached by a "bevy of fair women" and determine to marry them. Adam likes this vision; two earlier ones had shown pain and death, but this one seems to Adam to portend "peaceful days," harmony among peoples. But Michael immediately corrects him. This is in fact a vision of the events described in Genesis 6, in which, after the "sons of God" become enamored with the "daughters of man," God discerns that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." "Judge not what is best / By pleasure," Michael warns Adam, "though to nature seeming meet." Instead, Adam should judge according to the "nobler end" for which he was created: "conformity divine," that is, obedience to God. And when Adam hears this rebuke Milton tells us that he was "of short joy bereft." Of short joy bereft: for the joy which comes from judging according to appearances and immediate circumstances, according to what we now like to call "outcomes," is always short. Only the joy of conforming our will to God's is long.

Jacobs goes on to explain the application of this "long joy" principle to his job as a cultural critic. We would do well to consider its implications for our involvement, as Christians, in politics.

First, we are free to express our opinions on political topics, free to support and even campaign for our chosen candidates, and free to speak clearly about how we see political ideas and politicians in light of the truths of God and the interests of His people.

We're also free to keep our mouths shut and keep our opinions to ourselves. As I've said many times, there is no biblical imperative to have an opinion on every topic, nor is there any mandate to always share what opinions we do have. Our mandate is to be extreme and consistent in our love and to pursue God's mission above all else.

If we're bubbling over with the fruit of joy, we're also going to be guided by a fruitful perspective on the implications and impact of political elections and cultural changes.

It's so easy to get caught up in the "short joy" of putting all our eggs into the basket of a particular candidate's victory, or in the passing of a particular bill, or the nomination of a particular breed of supreme court justices.

By our frantic reaction to every event (or pseudo-event) during the campaign season, we're declaring to the world that our joy as Christians is dependent upon the shifting sands of national politics. We telegraph our fear of the "wrong" candidate and the "wrong" policies to our children, to the believers who look to us as mentors, and to both both seekers and skeptics who look to the Christians around them for a display of the "long joy" and confidence that comes from Jesus.

On November 8th - and the days following - will your family and friends and flock see you angry, distraught, or panicky if your candidate loses? Or will they barely see your disappointment because they're blinded by your dazzling "long joy"?

The world is indeed a mess. It has been since Adam and Eve first corrupted the glory of the garden. America isn't a godly nation. It never was, not to the extreme some would pretend. We are surrounded and have always been surrounded by sin, by wrongness, by failure.

Quoting Alan Jacobs again:

The truth of who we are, given the extremes of divine image and savage depravity, is hard to discern; perhaps we can only achieve it in brief moments; perhaps we only catch rumors of the glory that is, and is to be. But even those rumors can sustain us as we walk the pilgrim path.