JUNK FOOD JOYS VS THE SATISFYING JOY OF CHRIST
Doritos. Skittles. A can of Coke. These delights—and others like them—have their place in many of our lives. They are what some would call “JUNK FOOD.”
When eaten occasionally and in moderation, junk food does not affect us enormously. But when eaten regularly and without constraint, junk food leads to all kinds of ruin and destruction to our bodies and minds—robbing years from our lives and energy to our days.
I believe that many of us make the same mistake when pursuing joy. We give our hearts and lives to “junk food joys”–joys that give us a temporary thrill or buzz, but leave us empty. Instead, we ought to feast upon the far more nourishing and satisfying joy offered to us in Christ.
JUNK FOOD JOYS
A junk food joy is attempting to find ultimate joy in a thing that can only offer temporary pleasure. It is a joy, if consumed to excess, which leads to emptiness, a withering of our souls and a coldness toward God. (I can testify to this first-hand).
These joys might be something overtly sinful, neutral, or good. They can be the pleasure of a ‘like’ on social media, success in our jobs, achieving a certain level of physical fitness, the performance of our children’s athletics, a ‘perfect’ day off, a ‘well-executed’ dinner, dessert at our favorite ice cream shop. In the affluent suburb where I live in, I think the junk food joys that seduce most are comfort, career, children’s success, and convenience. These things become junk food joys if we greedily attempt to satisfy our soul upon them and find our ultimate happiness in them, instead of receiving them as gifts from a generous God—who gives and takes away in His supreme wisdom.
Junk food joys—like actual junk food—leave us hungering for more. And if the pursuit becomes regular and continual, these junk food joys become idols.
Augustine once said that we are to enjoy God and use everything else (“Doctrine of Christianity”). He meant that God is to be supreme in our hearts, affections, and lives.
THE SUPERIOR JOY OF CHRIST
Jesus is not a junk food joy. We were created by God to find our joy in Him. Joy in him is a good and right thing. It is something that Christ calls us to when he says, ‘Come to me all who thirsty, let him come to me and drink,’ (John 7:37).
Our souls were made to feast and drink deeply of the joy offered to us in Christ. This is the satisfying joy that becomes ours through the gospel. We trade in broken cisterns full of filthy water and drink deeply of Christ. To know Christ is eternal life (John 17:3).
May God grant us the grace to turn from giving out hearts to junk food joys and instead pursue the deeper and more satisfying joy offered to us in knowing Christ.
(Lewis made this same argument I am making in his essay “The Eternal Weight of Glory” and compared it silly children choosing to make mud pies on the beach over an amazing vacation offered to them at the sea. I think his essay [and imbibing much John Piper over the years] led me to this analogy of junk food joys]).
