THE JOY HALL OF FAME [R, 11-6-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE JOY HALL OF FAME [R, 11-6-25]

 

Charlie Nelms is being inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. It’s because of his many significant achievements in the field of higher education. He is already in the JOY HOF.

Well, I guess there is no JOY HOF, but there should be. I say that Charlie should be in it because, despite the difficulties of growing up as a poor black boy in Arkansas in the worst days of segregation and lynching, perhaps because of growing up in those desperate times, he has always known that joy is a form of resistance, resistance to those who run the oppressor system, to those who want to control us by fear.

We can live our life in joy, or we can live it in fear. What the oppressors and fear-mongers fear most is joy. They can’t control joy.

What do we fear?

Anyone who is different from ourselves.

People who make us uncomfortable because they are not intimidated by our status.

People who speak a language we can’t understand.

Anyone who is weak but demands to be taken seriously. That’s not right. “Beggars can’t be choosers.” Who do they think they are, anyway, equal citizens? Human beings? Children of God?

Anyone who has always been a second-class citizen and aspires to be treated like a first-class person. We think they are uppity. They should “stay in their place.”

Sex and race are the most basic human qualities, so it’s easiest for the oppressors and fear-mongers to generate fear about people who are trans or gay or black.

The fear-mongers have no joy. They don’t even have humor. They rarely laugh, and when they do, it’s with a sneer, after they have made some rude remark about someone, ridiculed or humiliated someone, usually someone who is too weak to retaliate.

I wanted to go to the recent No Kings rally. I’m a Christian. I believe in no kings but King Jesus, no lords but Lord Jesus. I used to go to rallies and demonstrations all the time. In fact, I started a lot of them. But to go to a rally now, I have to be able to use one of those squiggly squares on the computer screen to say I’m coming, and then I have to be able to drive, and then find a parking spot, and then back into it because some idiot has decided that downtown angle parking should be back-in instead of pull-in, and then walk, and then stand, and then march, and then yell…

Well, I did my own rally. I stayed home and sang, “Joyful, joyful, we adore thee…” It was a joyful time.

Joy is the silver bullet to fear.

Who would you nominate for the JOY HOF?

John Robert McFarland