BEING A GOOD PERSON (V)
How ‘human progression’ steals, kills, and destroys the produce of healthy, Holy fruit
Being a GOOD PERSON – Part 5 – Haribo’s and Strawberries
If you’re still with me, you will recall that in the previous part, I described a possible interpretation of the Galatians 5 Holy fruit as:
(i) eight components constructing one fruit: LOVE.
This love is the kind that’s completely sacrificial, indiscriminate, and bearing no grudges. It loves both friend and enemy alike, recognising the higher calling of grace/favour/forgiveness/empathy, that trumps personal favouritism or preference.
(ii) The other possible interpretation, is nine different fruit.
The end application is practically the same, regardless of the interpretation one chooses.
This fruit is a by-product of abiding in God; a natural produce of surrender and obedience to Christ as Lord and Saviour.
It cannot be coerced, manipulated, forced, or worn though there will be some people–without Christ in their lives–who appear to have an inherent inclination, exhibiting one or more components of the fruit.
There could be many reasons for this inheritance, but in the end, we’re all God’s creation; some of us will take on God’s likeness even though we may never have known Jesus.
For the sake of this article, I will go with the former interpretation, looking at joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and temperance as the eight attributes that comprise the ability to LOVE people the way God loves them.
Let’s start with how joy can be defined.
Defining joy, I would suggest that it’s a natural form of contentment, rooted in knowing that things will work out for good even in the hardest situations.
I think a solid example that I witnessed was when I attended my first Christian funeral a few years ago.
The man—whose mother had passed away—was joyful.
This surprised me.
I realised from his demeanour, tone, and speech that the reason he expressed joy, was because his conviction specified that his mother was now in a much better place.
The man wasn’t ‘wearing’ his happiness like some sort of psychological shield or mask. He was sincerely contented.
This inspired me as I saw this man’s confidence in Christ’s words, exhibited through his emotional response of joy during a difficult time.
The funeral atmosphere seemed more like a celebration than the standard sombre air I’d seen at such tragic events previously.
For Christians, the only way we’re able to uphold joy in unpleasant circumstances is by believing in Christ.
This means believing Jesus is God, the Son of God, and that every word He said in the Bible is true.
What makes this belief so powerful is that it’s built on a stable foundation: God’s holy will for our welfare never changes. (2 Peter 3:9)
The outward expression of a person’s confidence and contentment in Jesus is a joyful disposition, completely natural, not requiring force or coercion.
It’s an emotional response, fuelled consistently by fresh encounters with the Holy Spirit.
These kinds of ‘highs’ don’t cost the recipient anything and can emerge by simply reading the Word of God.
There’s nothing in this world that holds the consistency, stability, and raw honesty of Christ, and if we really believe in what He says, it’s no wonder that people like my Christian brother—whose mother passed—are able to exhibit joy in the face of what would normally be considered a tragic situation.
If we decide to rely on anything else in this world for our joy, we’re looking at a changeable entity that could fluctuate without notice, meaning our joyful disposition could waver.
This source of joy could be a person, a job, money, drink, drugs, social media, food; but whatever the source, these are all changeable entities and so our joy will shift with them.
Jesus is the only stable place where unshakeable confidence can emerge, because He doesn’t change.
However, this kind of consistent joy—through thick and thin—like any fruit, requires cultivation.
This is where technology can pose a problem.
How can dependence on technology impact joy?
I would suggest that the main way joy is stolen is through counterfeit versions, that interrupt the cultivation of joy.
Here are several examples:
– Changing social media profile image regularly and receiving recognition/admiration repeatedly in the form of comments and likes
– Consumerism in the form of regular Amazon Prime deliveries
– Regular Deliveroo takeaways
– Regular indulgence in Netflix
– Pornography
All of the above are technology’s gift of convenience, providing consistent hits of dopamine.
They’re moments of pleasure rooted in instability; investment of time in things that don’t guarantee long-term joy and worse, can harm us too.
They’re all habitual in today’s society; highly addictive because of the dopamine rush.
Due to dopamine’s powerful impact on our chemical disposition, we will struggle to even know what REAL JOY looks like.
The period of time that exposed the above to me was abstinence.
When I deactivated my Facebook and Whatsapp profile, I recall the survival thought-process that whispered, I’d be lost and forgotten without those programmes. It was a strong and highly convincing voice.
However, going without the programmes for over a year, I saw a freedom that otherwise would’ve alluded my senses.
I realised that a great deal of contemporary life’s anxieties, stress, sadness and insomnia came from these social media apps, their addictive qualities, and their power to become gods over our hearts.
I remember the comical yet disturbing Three commercial “phones are good,” that added a deliberate flicker saying phones are ‘god’ at the very end.
That deliberate flicker was perhaps the only truth about the great deception devouring western society, that I could see in the entire advertisement.
Phones have become our gods as we move dangerously close to absolute surrender to them.
So…how can a person know inner joy if they’re receiving moments of fleeting happiness in abundance?
How can they know what joy even looks like with so many distracting instants of pleasure?
Is it possible to have both the hits of pleasure and the steadfast, cultivated joy?
The best example I can give is the concept of Haribo Strawbs and Strawberries.
Haribo Giant Strawb sweets 
Natural Strawberries
The Haribo’s provide that guilty, seductive sweetness – that manufactured pleasure, perfected by man’s ingenuity.
A pack of these sweets temporarily sedate our desires, but our bodies remain undernourished. Their high calorific value and lack of nourishment begin to do their work as we crave more.
The problem is, with excessive refined sugar hitting our pleasure centres, we forget the gratification gained by natural sweetness with all its nutritional benefits.
We not only can’t taste the natural strawberry’s sweetness, we don’t want it.
Now, I ask, how can one know real sincere inner joy if they’re constantly receiving dopamine hits through their activity on technology’s delightful interfaces?
Do delicious strawberries taste as good after Haribo Giant Strawbs? Or, an even sweeter confectionary, after Haribo Rainbow Strips?
(I mention these two Haribo types because they’re a couple of my favourites that have enticed me from time to time).
The universal answer to this question is “no.”
When we’ve had synthesised sugar that’s manufactured to meet our pleasure centres in a diabolically perfect way, natural sugar is no longer desirable.
Yet as we know, the natural product provides much greater nourishment and health benefit than its sweeter counterpart.
This is the same with joy and pleasure.
A deep sense of joy in a person is attractive, inspirational, and especially encouraging when in hard situations. Having a person around that exudes sincere confidence in moments of turmoil, lifts our spirits with their integrity and pleasant disposition.
A person who relishes the pleasures of technology regularly, satisfying themselves alone, contributes nothing to others. Their over-indulgence in phone apps may even affect their mental health, given prolonged exposure.
As for when an unfavourable scenario occurs, it’s likely–though not guaranteed–that the ‘technology hedonist’ will react in the typical fashion, displaying anxiety or stress, unable to aid the problem.
Unlike the fruit of joy in a person, the fruit of temporary pleasure cannot be enjoyed by everyone; we therefore watch helplessly as a beautiful attribute of humanity withers away and technology’s promise of increased convenience dominates…
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