Is God a killjoy?

There is a devilish lie doing the rounds. Actually, it’s been passed on and been believed for century after century. What is it? We are told that God is a killjoy. Therefore, if we sense his presence getting too close then dive for cover! Sadly, we may have encountered religious people and/or systems that have lent credence to the lie.

So, how did the lie get started? We can go back to the beginning and read about Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. Here we find our representative man and woman living in paradise – the Garden of Eden. Of the large number of fruit trees there are to feast their eyes upon and satisfy their taste buds, there is just one solitary tree from which they must not eat. All in the garden is rosy. They have everything needful for their contentment, joy and happiness: food in abundance, they had one another and, supremely, they were in touch with their creator God.

Then, along comes the devil, firstly with insinuation and then an outright lie. He takes the line that God is short-changing the man and woman; that by withholding from them the fruit of one tree, he is denying them the deeper pleasures that could be theirs. In other words, God is a killjoy. The woman, soon followed by the man, believed it. They each ate the forbidden fruit. As a result, they forfeited their ability to enjoy the peace and security which they had previously known, when they felt no need to avoid God.

Now fast forward to around 1000 years BC. King David of Israel knew from personal experience just how freely God provides for his people. David had it all: a family, power, popularity and skills in the arts.

Nevertheless, he fell for the lie that there was an additional pleasure to be taken: the lovely, but married, Bathsheba. He appears to have temporarily forgotten that the source of his life’s success story to date had been the generosity of God.

The rebuke he got from God, his Heavenly Father, started with a salutary reminder of the unique blessings he had received from his maker’s hand; blessings and pleasures which had brought him such happiness that they overflowed into the joyful poems and music that he had composed (what we know as Psalms). God finishes his rebuke with these telling words, ‘And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more’. Hardly the words of a killjoy.

So concerned is God to dispense to us joy, he gives of his own self in the form of Jesus, whose coming we celebrate at Christmas. Integral to his purpose of living on Earth as a man, was that he could show first-hand that God is no nit-picking, mean, hard task master, who is determined to curb people’s enjoyment. To those who will turn from the thought of God as a killjoy and trust themselves to Jesus, he says things like, ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’ and again, ‘I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.’

Does this mean that God wants us to live it up in whatever way we may choose? No, it means that we would do well to recognise that our very Creator knows what sort of things ultimately harm us and what will give us real, lasting joy.

‘Fear not! said he; for mighty dread

Had seized their troubled mind:

Glad tidings of great joy I bring

To you and all mankind.

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