Inspired by joy

I lost my Uncle Bill recently, and seeing him pass is like watching a pole star fade from my sky. Bill was one of several fixed points — people of excellent character — that helped me to navigate my early years and chart the course of my life.

The principle, “To whom much is given much shall be required,” gives me reason for pause, because I have been given much. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles conspired to guide my first steps, and to do so by leaving their own footprints. Not the least of these early mentors was this gentle man who just happened to be married to my father’s sister.

Bill played this role as a constant in my life largely because of a constant that I perceived in his, and that constant was joy. He is quite possibly the most joyful person I have ever known.

He was not merely a happy man. The happiness that we pursue is largely at the mercy of “happenstance” — in fact, the words are related — and the circumstances of happiness are largely beyond our control.

There are, of course, times to weep and times to laugh; times to mourn and times to dance, and my uncle was alive to the difference.

As Aristotle taught us, reason itself prescribes emotional responses that are appropriate to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Euphoria that is impervious to tragedy is a sign of dysfunction. Joy is not euphoria. But, as I say, unlike happiness, it is not contingent upon the fortunes of life, and so, paradoxically, it is possible to be both joyful and sad.

All of my life, I have perceived an abiding joy in this fellow, my Uncle Bill. So far as I could tell, it had its source within, and was ever-present. It is fitting that he spent many years leading others in song as a lay music director in his church, because, somehow, he seemed always on the verge of breaking out in song himself. Sometimes he did! It is an unpredictable thing, this joy.

What was his secret? Well, it was no secret at all. He was more than happy to share it with you. Philosophers will tell you that we, as humans, flourish or live the Good Life insofar as we fulfill the purpose of our existence. And one of the great confessions of the Church has it that our chief end, our Highest Good, is to “glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

Bill, quite simply, was already in the business of doing just that, and, in so doing, lived a life of human flourishing — the Good Life. He was filled with praise for his Creator and enjoyed His company. Indeed, some of the final words of this 87-year-old veteran of WWII and the “Mighty 8th” were those of the simple chorus, “Jesus Loves Me.”

We’ve all known people whose religion made them “good in the worst sense of the word,” as Mark Twain put it. And there are those whose minds are so set on heaven that they are “of no earthly good.” We are perhaps justified in the reaction, “If this is what Christianity is all about, then I want no part of it.” My uncle, on the other hand, made the whole proposition attractive, simply by the way he lived.

He was no philosopher. But his earthly life was infused with, and energized by his love of God and his hope of heaven with the result that, in him, we were afforded a glimpse of what it is all about.

I wish that you could have known him.

Some of what I have said here is taken from my eulogy for Bill, delivered at his funeral in Miamisburg, Ohio. Moments after I spoke, we laid him to rest in the field adjacent to the church that he had helped to establish before I was born. At his head was a stone that, by his and my aunt’s arrangement, has awaited him for years. That stone bears the words, “Blessed Assurance.”

This is, at once, the title of a favorite hymn, a perfect summary of a life well lived, and the secret to his joy. For joy such as his is always found in the company of hope, which looks beyond the present circumstances, whatever they may be, with an assurance that God is working all things together for good for those who love Him.

[Mark Linville holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, and is the author of “Is Everything Permitted? Moral Values in a World Without God,” published by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. He lives in Fayetteville with his wife, Lynn.]

Mark Linville

Submitted by Tug13 on Wed, 11/19/2008 - 9:45am.

I'm sorry about your uncle. My Daddy used to sit on the front porch and sing Blessed Assurance, his favorite hymn. I cry everytime I hear that song.

Good to see your column back on The Citizen!

Tug

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