True joy

Our societies with its culture of performance drive us to search for recognition, awards and praise from others. And we are misrable without it. Our world focusses strongly on merit and performance. We feel good and experience joy when we are rewarded or praised for having excelled in some way or other. We feel deeply depressed when we think that we are not accepted by others or are being regarded as inferior.

The irony is that people who excell or who is praised a lot, also have their misrable times.

Spirituality nurtures a completely different attitude than this desire for rewards and recognition. Spirituality authors help us to understand why praise and rewards for our performance do not really give us more joy and fulfillment. And they help us to realise that pure joy can be experienced in the simplest times of our existence.

Thomas a Kempis writes about true joy in book 2 chapter 6 of his Imitation of Christ. A good conscience will reward one with true joy, even in adversity. One can glory in tribulation, for example, because one then glories in the cross of Christ. Here he takes up Galatioans 6:14 where Paul writes, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”

Praise and glory from other people provide only brief joy.

Real joy can be found only in God. To have joy in God means that one understands the true role and place of temporal things in your spiritual life. They are truly “temporal.”

In contrast, God is eternal. The person who finds happiness in temporal matters is someone who still has to learn to love God. Such a person has not yet discovered what is truly fulfilling and enduring. Thomas continues, “S/he has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for praises nor the fault-finding of people. S/he will easily be content and pacified, whose conscience is pure.”

He then adds this special remark, “You are not holier if you are praised; not the more worthless if you are found fault with... neither by words can you be made greater than what you are in the sight of God.”

We are great in the sight of God. In our spiritual journey this precious experience gives us real joy. God accepts us for who we are. There are not more or less important people in God's sight.