joy vs. happiness. What is the difference?
Published: Mon, 05/23/22
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Sessions Include:Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #1 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #2 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #3 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #4 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #5 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #6 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #7 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #8 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #9 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #10 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #11 Count it Joy (Philippians) / Lesson #12 |
A pastor friend wrote to tell me why it would be a big mistake to write a book about happiness: “Happiness changes from moment to moment and is reflected by our moods and emotions. Joy is a spiritual peace and contentment that only comes from God and is strong even during times of sadness. God’s desire is not to make us happy in this life but to fill our lives with joy as a result of our relationship with Christ.” Since many readers have been taught to think the same way as my pastor friend, I’ll start the conversation now, then finish it in part 4. WHY USE THE TERM HAPPINESS RATHER THAN JOY? First, happiness covers more ground —it’s the broader, more familiar term, used in philosophy, theology, and common speech. Second, an ungrounded, dangerous separation of joy from happiness has infiltrated the Christian community. In this book, I’m trying to do my part to reclaim the territory Christians have relinquished in the conversation about happiness, which is vitally important in any worldview. Third, the word happiness has historically had a common meaning for both believers and unbelievers —and for many it still does. Until recent decades, it’s been a bridge between the church and world —one we can’t afford to burn. Joy is a perfectly good word, and I use it frequently. But there are other equally good words with overlapping meanings, including happiness, gladness, merriment, delight, and pleasure. John Piper writes, “If you have nice little categories for ‘joy is what Christians have’ and ‘happiness is what the world has,’ you can scrap those when you go to the Bible, because the Bible is indiscriminate in its uses of the language of happiness and joy and contentment and satisfaction.”[1] The Bible often employs parallelisms: words with similar meanings used in close proximity to reinforce their meaning. We do the same. If someone says, “I expected the party to be fun and exciting, but it turned out dull and boring,” the words fun and exciting are synonyms, as are dull and boring; they reinforce each other. To demonstrate the close relationship between joy and happiness, I’ve chosen a small sampling of the more than one hundred verses in various translations that use joy and happiness together. None of these versions are paraphrases; each was translated by highly skilled teams of Hebrew and Greek scholars who finally agreed on the wording of each verse. As you read, note that joy and happiness in these passages are clearly synonyms. In each case I’ve italicized these words for emphasis: New International Version
Holman Christian Standard Bible
New Living Translation
God’s Word Translation
New English Translation
Alcorn, Randy. 2015. Happiness. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. Check out our Bible Study on the book of Philippians, using David's Jeremiah's book, Count It All Joy as a guide. It is on Amazon as well as part of the Good Questions Have Groups Talking subscription service. Like Netflix for Bible Lessons, one low subscription gives you access to all our lessons--thousands of them. For a medium-sized church, lessons are as little as $10 per teacher per year.
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