Life’s a Party

Party

Life is a party

Life is a party. God created for joy, for fun. What happened, then, that everything is so serious, so violent, so exclusive and full of conflict? What is joy? I do not mean simply ‘pleasure’ because that could be connected to a masochist hurting for pleasure or self-gratifying activities like masturbation but I think both of these pleasures are possible in joy, properly defined. Joy is presence. “I am” without any end to the predicate is joy. “What are you doing?” I am ‘amming’ could be my answer to provide some colloquial reason that demands an activity or at least a state of being beyond, just, ‘I am’. Look at the birds: according to biologists, they show ‘a demonstrative value of being’ without doing, knowing or having anything.

‘I am’ comes before ‘I do’ or ‘I know’ and well before ‘I have’. Logically, without being there is no one to do, know or possess? Yet we have idolised the latter at the expense of the foundation of life. Only when we restore ‘being’ to the primary role in our lives will we enjoy life as a party. ‘Knowing’ and ‘doing’ are less than ‘being’. They are secondary actors as we agree that life is a party. The key test is to ask the legitimate question, when we are alone and honest and spend time on the Augustinian reversal:

· “It is not that we should use God to enjoy the world but that we should use the world to enjoy God”
Religious people are more openly flagrant users of God to enjoy the world. By our prayers, telling God what to do, we have become demonic consumers. In our madness, we claim God’s healing with personal orders so that we can enjoy the world. “Please God heal my spouse, I’m tired of doing the dishes!” From this doing and knowing global village, it is a logical extension to see inactivity as wrong or a sin. ‘Being’ implies doing nothing. The growth economics law, another demon, demands that we work harder and every year so that we can grow! What is the goal of modern economics ‘so that one day you can retire and do nothing’ but we are doing that already without getting a hernia.

The opposite of joy is godlessness, or not being present! Look at the cross to see the meaning of the absence of joy, the only real place of godlessness, literally demonstrating that God was not present. As Moltmann the theologian put it, God killed God on the cross. Yet it also provides comfort for those who suffer that the presence of that crucified person can give hope that a resurrection in their suffering may and does happen. However, I want to suggest that because of that once-only event, the cross, joy is permanently here. The resurrection declares that God is always present and powerful so that joy is infectious.

Worldwide, the gospel is producing fruit. We may not notice it, especially if we are carriers of the joy by the power of the Spirit, we are too busy infecting all around us with joy. The possible failure in our action is in not telling others, outside of our comfort zone. We do not tell others that heaven is free and they too should enjoy God in a new relationship of grace. Laws, rules and ideology are disguising this fact that we are free. Laws depress us and joy seems far away, a silly mistake brought about by our own misunderstanding. We do not think that God wants to party!