Only a "hair shirt" theology would impugn joy—suggesting that even the unselfish happiness of our lives is a sin and that virtue is to be found only in suffering. The human spirit naturally rebels at such a cruel notion. Although this relic of false religious teaching may still have a subtle influence in humanity's thinking, a joyless approach to life doesn't help anyone in working out one's own salvation.
But, you say, there can't be many people who actually wear hair shirts anymore. That's probably true. (In fact, I recently surveyed some of the Journal staff, and apparently nobody here even has one hanging in the closet.) Still, if we've ever felt uneasy or guilty about our right to normal happiness, this may be partly an imposition of the mistaken theology of man's fall from grace. The centuries-old misconception would try to maintain a foothold in human consciousness even in the twentieth century. And it would tend to deaden our hopes for progress, falsely claiming that man was born a sinner and isn't yet worthy—or can't ever be worthy—to feel entirely free to enjoy God's blessings.
The truth, however, is that you are deserving of God's love and benedictions. As strange, and wonderfully liberating, as it may seem the first time one considers it, our real nature is not that of a hopeless sinner. We are not mortals, mere finite beings, here today and gone tomorrow. Rather we have a divine right to know the fullness of spiritual joy because, in reality, each of us is God's beloved child, the pure image and likeness of divine Spirit. As the Bible says, "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." Rom. 8:16, 17.
