Joy, Church, and the Neglected Face of God - An 11-Day PlanSample

Joy and the Neglected Face of God

When I met Jim Wilder, I realized that I was a half-brained Christian. It might sound like an insult if we confuse half-brained with harebrained. I don’t believe that most Christians are harebrained, although some undoubtedly are. You might think that half-brained implies that Christians are stupid. We use only half of our brains. That is not the meaning either. Thinking about Christians and their brains was new for me. I was eager to know everything I could about how God designed our whole brain to grow us into the image of Christ.

Jim Wilder calls himself a neurotheologian. He studies the intersection of spiritual formation and how our brain works. I was fascinated and decided to learn all I could. I found out from Jim that God designed our brains to run on joy like a car runs on fuel. Jim said, “Our brains desire joy more than any other thing.” As we go through our day, our right brains are scanning our surroundings, looking for people who are happy to be with us. 

I read through the Bible looking for joy, and I found it everywhere. I already shared that 2 Corinthians 4:6 talks about the light of God shining in the face of Jesus. Numbers 6:24–26 is a blessing that God taught to Israel. It became a regular prayer of blessing for the Jewish nation.

When I read “the Lord make his face shine on you” and “the Lord turn his face toward you,” this sounded like the neurological definition of joy. This blessing falls under the definition of joy that Dr. Schore discovered from his research on the brain. We don’t know his beliefs, but the professor was discovering what God knew all along. God designed our brains for joy, and He wants us to live in the glow of His delight. This blessing expresses a joy that can be paraphrased, “May you feel the joy of God’s face shining on you because He is happy to be with you!”

Joy is both misunderstood and neglected in the modern church. Jim mentioned that in his many years of education in theology and psychology, he was never taught about the importance of joy. I have a master’s degree from a seminary and was never exposed to more than a rote explanation of joy. One reason for the lack of a coherent theology of joy is word choices translators make in some Bible versions. When translating the original languages of the Bible, joy sometimes disappears in modern languages. We see it clearly in the Hebrew, but it gets lost in translation. An example is Psalm 89:15. The NIV translates this, “Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, Lord.” In the Hebrew, “in the light of your presence” is literally “in the light of your face.” This is not an isolated example. Over and over I discovered the neglected face of God.

God’s face is connected with joy in the Bible. One of the first Scriptures I memorized when I was a new Christian was Psalm 16:11, “In Your presence is fullness of joy.” However, the original Hebrew renders this verse, “abundance of joy with your face.” Psalm 21 lists the blessings of God for the king of Israel. In verse 6, he proclaims, “You make him joyful with gladness in Your presence.” The word-for-word rendering of the Hebrew is, “You make him happy with joy with your face.” In Scripture, we see that the face of God brings us joy, but God’s face gets erased in translation.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:

1. How does the idea of “God’s face lighting up with joy” affect you? 

2. Why do you think that joy is neglected in many churches?