~We’re supposed to be content with whatever situation we find ourselves in.~Angels singing and trumpets playing are not a morose or serious picture.
~Daniel and David are the people most after God’s heart, and they’re the happiest as well.
~Dennis Prager claims that unhappiness is a powerful testimony to the falsehood of a religion because the unhappy person is either a good practitioner of a religion which doesn’t work or else a poor practitioner of a religion which does but is apparently so hard to do right that it’s adherents can’t do it. If he’s right, and Christians are supposed to be bringing others into Christianity, then wouldn’t that make unhappiness a sin? It either turns people off to Christ or to you as His representative, right?
~Joy is a fruit of the Spirit
~Sadness is just lack of faith in a God who is supposed to meet all our real needs.
~Only circumstances can make you sad, and why are you so concerned with circumstances?
~Worry is a major cause of sadness, and Jesus tells us specifically not to worry.
~Fear is a major cause of sadness, and we are repeatedly told to not fear.
~If you know Jesus, how can you ever be sad?
~There won’t be any tears in heaven, and we should be trying to emulate that now, shouldn’t we?
~Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.
~The main thing that produces sorrow is sin, why should we let sin control us?
~The Catholic church, following Aquinas, taught that sloth is the laziness that keeps us from meditating on God’s goodness and doing the works that flow from loving Him, and this term Acedia was originally translated as sadness, especially the sadness at failing to fully manifest the fruit of the spirit, which led to inactivity: sloth.
Post-Show Thoughts: Jesus wept. Have you read the book of Psalms? God keeps a bottle of the tears of the saints. In the Old Testament, when people hear God's Word read to them, they regularly respond by ripping their clothes and putting on sackcloth and ashes...out of happiness? Far from believing the nonsense that sadness is a sin, I actually believe that someone who never feels sadness is probably sinning because it means either that he is not sufficiently attached to any other people or else is not sufficiently aware of his own sinful nature compared to what God expects of him: both of which are excellent foundations for at least occasional grief.
Links on sadness:
Bible References: passages with the words Sadness, Sorrow, Wept, Weep
Being happy, even in sadness by DesiringGod.org
Spiritual acedia, torpor and sadness by Catholic.net
Sloth by NewAdvent.org
Is sloth a sin? by NewAdvent.org
No comments:
Post a Comment