Joy: The Gigantic Secret of Reality

G.K. Chesterton once said, “Joy . . . is the gigantic secret of the Christian” (Orthodoxy, 231). Christianity does not deny sadness and suffering but knows them as fleeting and temporal. From its God to its gospel to its view of man, joy rests right at the bedrock of the Christian story.What are we to do with such a sweeping claim? It sounds too good to be true. Yet this is exactly what Christian Hedonism teaches: God made man for joy, a joy that reflects God’s own Trinitarian del