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When Sorrow is Better Than Laughter
Dr. Monte Wilson

One of the many things that intrigue me about Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings, was how he frequently juxtaposed the joy of the elves with a degree of sadness. For example, “The face of Elrond was ageless, neither old nor young, though in it was written the memory of many things both glad and sorrowful.” However joy-filled the elves were by nature, there was always a degree of sadness: sadness over what Middle Earth had lost since its creation, as well as for the fact that they were as yet to reach the grey havens. They were defined by joy, not by sadness…nevertheless, there were things and memories that elicited sorrow.

The reason this intrigues me is that I believe it is a useful metaphor for life on this earth.

Years ago, I use to hangout with some Christians who believed sadness was an evidence of a lack of faith. As this was the year Elvis was rocking in Hawaii in front of a worldwide audience of one billion people, the Miami Dolphins had completed their undefeated season with a win over the Redskins, and Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords, ending US involvement in the Vietnam War, it was fairly easy for me to fit in with these folks. But then Elvis divorced Priscilla and started stuffing his mouth with burgers, Csonka, Kiick and Warfield went to the World Football League, gutting the Dolphin’s offense, and, infinitely worse than this, after our troops were withdrawn from Vietnam, tens of thousands of people were left defenseless and, consequently, were slaughtered. Maybe life wasn’t going to be all that happy after all.

Seriously, when my “happiness” was stripped from me I thought there was something wrong with me, that I did lack faith. However, after a time of reflection I realized that the lack of some sadness from time to time was evidence of being deaf, dumb and blind. Actually, I don’t believe these people were dumb, only willfully deaf and blind: deaf to the cries of the suffering, blind to the destruction of creation as God intended it to be.

The world is not as it should be. And no matter how much Truth, Goodness and Beauty we may experience in this world, in this life, it will never be heaven.

Now I am not referring here to melancholy or moroseness. “Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad” (Victor Hugo); moroseness feeds on death. The sadness that I am writing about is that experience that comes when we see that all is not as it should be. Sickness, poverty, ugliness, death.

Sadness turns to melancholy or moroseness when we fail to embrace all that is possible in this life through God’s grace. Sadness becomes a sickness when we resist that grace and refuse God’s comfort and healing. On the other hand, a happiness that acts as if suffering and ugliness do not exist, or at least does not allow the self to be touched by the sorrows of this world, is trite and shallow…if not downright callous.

There is nothing wrong with being sad: after all, as Solomon wrote, “Sorrow is better than laughter, for by a sad countenance the heart is made better.” (Ecclesiastes 7: 3) How is the heart made better? When we face and embrace reality—the reality that all is not right in the world, not right in my world—we begin the process of making things right, or as right as they can be in this world. But we cannot begin that process by skipping over reality and acting as if the ideal has already been attained.

Jesus had to suffer and die before he was resurrected. We cannot experience whatever “resurrection life” is possible this side of heaven by skipping over our own crosses. We cannot make things right by pretending that things are right. We cannot seek to reshape our worlds into the image that God intended until we deal with the fact that our worlds are filled with some ugly and painful stuff.