Joy Is Not Happiness: The Gift of Rejoicing

Transcript (edited for readability).

It's a great pleasure to be here with you, and to speak to you on this topic, always rejoicing: Ecclesiastes and beyond. But before I begin that and tell you why it's such a great pleasure, just some greetings. First of all, greetings from Andrew Pfeiffer, the acting bishop of the LCA, Lutheran Church of Australia, and from James Wendelich and the staff, the teaching staff of Australian Lutheran College. And thirdly, and especially, greetings from Dr. Norman Nagel, whom I've just come from visiting this morning. My confirmation text was, "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice." And I've been looking for an opportunity to speak on this topic in a comprehensive way ever since then, and you are the victims, my dear, dear fellow saints.

Now is the time for joy. Now is the time for rejoicing. Because despite the chaos and confusion and evil that surrounds us, all too obviously, the Lord Jesus is with us to bring us joy. Now is the time for rejoicing.

I want to speak first about the gift of earthly wisdom, the gift of earthly enjoyment, and the wisdom of earthly enjoyment, from the book of Ecclesiastes. A most unlikely source, because in many ways many people regard Ecclesiastes as the most dismal book in the Bible. But it's also the most joyful book in the Old Testament, perhaps. Okay, Ecclesiastes first. And then I want to go to the prophets in the Old Testament, who prophesy about the new age as the age of joy, and then I want to go to the New Testament. So in these days, I'm going to cover the whole Bible, and all your lives, and the whole of human history. Who said I was modest?

Joy is not the same as happiness. Did you hear that? Joy is not the same as happiness. They can overlap, and they do often overlap, but they are different. They coexist, and yet they differ radically from each other. More about that shortly.

One of the unique features of the USA is that you have enshrined in your constitution, God forbid, that you have the right to what? The pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, many modern Americans seem to regard it not as the pursuit of happiness, but that you have the right to happiness. Right to happiness. And that's carried over into society, and then also into the church. The goal of life is to be happy. The job of the church is to make me feel happy.

Now, there's been a shift in the meaning, the sense of happiness, in my lifetime, at least as far as I can see. It's happened quietly, and I don't think even we've noticed the difference in meaning, and it's pretty hard to pin down. It used to be, if you look at the old dictionaries, that happiness was the mental state of satisfaction and fulfillment. So you feel you have a sense in which you are fulfilled. So it has something to do with your mental attitude to life, to feeling good. So happiness now means feeling good, and not just feeling good about the world, but feeling good about what? I, me, and myself. It's self-focused. So you get bookshops, and the internet is full of advice on how not only to pursue happiness, but to guarantee that you get happiness in your life, how to live a happy life.

Now the shift is, if I can pin it down as simply as possible, from being happy — happiness is a state of being — to feeling happy. That's what grips most people in the Western world. We pursue happiness, yet the pursuit of happiness, in case you haven't noticed, is counterproductive. The more people chase happiness, the less happy they are. Why is this so? Because happiness is not an end in itself. Happiness is an incidental, secondary good. It's a mood rather than a state of being. It's the byproduct of living a good life, a byproduct rather than the goal of life.

This was something that C.S. Lewis discovered, and it was the defining experience in his life. He's written a remarkable, remarkable biography called Surprised by Joy. Now notice, I've shifted from happiness to joy. He said, from earliest childhood on — he'd been brought up in an agnostic household, he was not a Christian, he was a well-educated, young man, very bright young man — but he'd always had a glimmering that somewhere there was joy. Inklings of joy, he calls it. And so all through the first part of his life, he pursued joy. He pursued the joy that always seemed to elude him. The things that promised joy never delivered joy to him. Whenever he thought he could lay his hands on it, it evaporated, it disappeared from his grasp.

And then, to cut the long story short, he eventually became a Christian, and he says he was the most reluctant convert ever in the history of Christendom. He gave up the pursuit of joy. He gave up running his own life, and he said, "Over to you, Jesus." And then something remarkable happened. For the first time in his life, he experienced joy. True joy. The joy that came as a byproduct of faith, rather than as the goal of his life.

You see, God doesn't promise to make you happy, despite some of the bad translations of the Bible and the New Testament. The old version of the Good News Bible for "rejoice in the Lord always" is "be happy in the Lord always." At least it doesn't say "feel happy in the Lord." So you've got to be grateful for small mercies, don't you? God doesn't promise to make you happy, but he promises to give you joy. Better than that, he promises to share his own joy with you. The joy of the Lord. Joy, which differs from happiness. Joy, which owes its character, its nature, not so much to the subject, the person who has it, but to the object of his attention.

So the character of joy is defined by somebody or something outside of you rather than what is inside you. Can I say that again? Joy is given and determined by something outside you rather than what is inside you. Of course it is inside you, but it comes to you from outside, from somebody or something else. Ultimately, it comes from God, and it can't be had apart from God and his gifts.

Well, what then is the difference between happiness and joy? Very, very difficult, actually, to pin down, because they overlap and coexist, and we don't seem to have the language anymore to speak accurately about it. Well, let me have a try. Happiness happens. It happens. Happiness is a fleeting emotion that comes and goes, and it's an emotion that excludes sadness. So you can't feel happy and sad at the same time. You're either happy or you're sad.

Well, now, compared with that, joy is a lasting state of being that can and does exist with sadness, sorrow, affliction. Can I say that again? Joy can exist with sorrow. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians that he is sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Now there's a paradox for you: sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

So, joy is a state of being, as I said — a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state of being, and it has to do with the whole person. Can I say that again? It is not just emotional. It is physical. It is mental. It has to do with your mind. It is emotional. It is spiritual. It seizes and affects the whole of your being. And that means that you can be full of joy even when you are sad.

Let me give you an obvious case for us as Christians. Good Friday is the saddest day in our Christian liturgical year, yet it's also a day of joy and rejoicing. Or, more humanly speaking, have you ever noticed the difference between the funeral of a faithful Christian belonging to a faithful family and the funeral of an unbeliever? The funeral of a faithful Christian is an occasion both for deep sorrow and grief, but it's also an occasion for great rejoicing. I remember most vividly the funeral of my mother, in which our children sang, "In You Is Gladness," amid all sadness — a wonderful hymn. Sadness, gladness together.

Now, happiness — I'm still talking about the difference between happiness and joy — happiness exists here on earth and lasts only as long as life on earth lasts. So it belongs to this life, whereas joy is eternal. And all earthly joys that we experience in this life are a foretaste still of joys to come in this life, and most of all, they are foretastes of the joy to come in heaven. So Christian joy is supernatural, it's angelic, it's divine.

Now, the source of joy is always from outside you. It comes from outside you. It's external to you. It breaks in on you like the light of the sun that shines even when it's cloudy. And it shines even at nighttime. But it comes from outside you. And then, as a result of coming from outside you, there's a second remarkable quality: it takes you outside yourself. You experience ecstasy. Now, ecstasy means standing outside of yourself, being taken outside of yourself. You're taken beyond yourself and into somebody or something else.

Let's say you are very musical and you love music. When you listen to music, you forget all about yourself, and you are absorbed entirely in that piece of music. It takes you outside of yourself, and you're taken into that world that piece of music gives you. Or take love. When you love somebody, you are taken outside of yourself and, as it were, into the life of another person. So it's an experience of ecstasy, and it doesn't necessarily have to do with extreme emotions, because you can have that experience of ecstasy without being aware of it. Say, for example, take the piece of music — are you conscious of being joyful as you listen to music? Are you conscious necessarily of being joyful when you fall in love with somebody? When you fall in love, you're conscious not about yourself or how you feel, but you're conscious of the other person. When you listen to a piece of music, you are conscious, you are absorbed, in that piece of music.

Now, how about that for an introduction? That's the only theorizing I'm going to do. The rest of what I'm going to present is looking at the Bible. And my aim for us today and tomorrow is to explore two kinds of joy. There's earthly joy — the earthly joy that's available to all people, all God's sons and daughters of Adam, earthly joy that's available to every righteous, God-fearing person. And I'm talking about righteous here in the sense of civic righteousness — people who live a good, decent, moral life. And secondly, there's heavenly joy that's given to all the saints in the order of redemption, in the new covenant. Heavenly joy that never ends, that never comes to an end in this life, and that never ends even in death, but that leads us to life to come. The joy that no one can take away from us — to use Peter's memorable phrase, the unutterable and exalted joy of those who believe in the risen Lord Jesus. Actually, "exalted" is even better than that translation — the unutterable joy that is filled with glory. God's glory. The joy that brings God's glory into us and covers us with the glory of heaven.

Now, just a little bit of a pause here before I get to Ecclesiastes. I don't want this to be a one-way conversation, which is no conversation, but at any time, if you want to add anything or ask a question, please just put up your hand. I think this room is small enough for me to see you, and if I don't see you, just say, "Hey, hey, hey, hey," or something. So don't wait till the end of the session before you raise any question.

Now I want to take you and give you a bit of an introduction to the teaching of joy in Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes begins by posing a rather simple but utterly subversive question to people who live ordinary lives here on earth. All the best questions are the simplest questions, the most innocuous questions. So this is how Ecclesiastes begins its teaching. He says: "Breath of breaths," says the teacher, "all is just a breath. What is the profit for a person from all the work at which he works under the sun?" So the focus of this book is on work. Work, okay? There's nothing puzzling about that. It's ordinary. We all do it every day of our lives in one way or the other. And for many of us, it's the last place where we would expect to find anything interesting, let alone joy.

"All is just a breath. What is the profit for a person from all the work at which he works under the sun?" Now this is a riddle, and it's meant to get you thinking. It doesn't give you the answer. In fact, even the book doesn't directly give you the answer. You've got to work it out for yourself. You've got to apply it to yourself, like every good riddle. And it hinges on a vivid image, a vivid image, and that's the picture of breath — the Hebrew word hevel.

Now, in typical fashion, Western translations go from a picture to an abstraction, an abstract term. And so the old translation in the Authorized Version was "vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Now, I don't know what that means to you, but for me it means that everything is useless. That's the way I hear it. But that's not the way it was meant, by the way — it was much more concrete than that, but that's the way we hear it. The NIV says "meaninglessness" — everything is meaningless. Well, if everything's meaningless, what's the point of talking about anything whatsoever? Go back home.

Now, hevel — that's a picture, in its most concrete sense it means breath. It means what you do, particularly on a cold day — you know the way it is, you breathe out, and your breath condenses in the air, and for a moment you see your breath. But you see your breath, and then it disappears. You try and grab your breath, and it eludes you. So a breath of breaths means vapor, a breath, a vapor, a puff of air, and it can be a little gust of wind, a movement in the air. So it's either a movement of air outside your mouth, or a movement of air with the wind. It's a picture for what is transitory and fleeting, insubstantial and ephemeral. Something that is beyond human grasp and control. It's not meaningless, it's not unreal, it's quite real, but you can't grab hold of it. It's here for a moment, and then it disappears. And that's its most obvious quality — it's fleeting, it disappears. Very vivid picture.

Now, that's the proverb that he starts with — "breath of breaths, all is just a breath." Well, what's all that's just a breath? Then he talks about work: "What is the profit for a person, for all the work at which he works under the sun?" Now the picture here is of Ecclesiastes, and each one of you as auditors, and you're asked to audit your life. So audit your life — you have your investments, and you get your returns. Now, as you know, with any good business, when you balance the books, you take away the costs of what you do from the profits that you make, and you have the difference between net profit and gross profit. He's not talking about net profit, he's talking about gross profit — the bonus that you get from work.

So why is it, Ecclesiastes says, why is it that we all work so hard? Why do we bust our gut to work day and night, always? Well, it's because we want to get something from our work. We want to benefit from the profit of work, the bonus, the gain of work. What's the bonus that you get from the work that you do? Simple question. For most people, an easy answer — what's the bonus you get? You work in order to get money. Money which gets you possessions, possessions which get you happiness. So when I get the right stuff, and enough of the right stuff, then I will feel happy and contented. And the implication here is that the more I have, the more happiness I will have. What's the profit from work for you and me and all the children of Adam?

One scholar by the name of Johnson has written an excellent little essay on this book, and it was one of the seminal essays in modern times which really, I think for the first time, at least in modern times, began to make sense of this book. He entitles his essay "Confessions of a Workaholic." The confessions of a workaholic. Now, I fancy that since most of you are pastors, it means that most of you are workaholics, even if you don't notice. Just ask your wives and they'll tell you. Confessions of a workaholic.

What's the danger of living in a consumer society like North America, which is basically filled with workaholics — at least all successful people are workaholics? Well, Ecclesiastes gives us seven counsels, not for happiness, but for enjoyment. They are wise advice, these counsels, about maximizing your enjoyment in life. And the rather countercultural answer that he gives is that the mark of a wise person is a person who, guess what, enjoys life. Can I say again? The mark, not of a successful person, but the mark of a wise person, is a person who enjoys the whole of his or her life. Wisdom and joy go together. And as you know, there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. You can get knowledge from school, from college, from university, from books, but wisdom can only be gained in the school of hard knocks, the school of experience. Joy, wisdom.

Okay, now the background to this teaching on enjoyment is found in the book of Deuteronomy, where we have some very, very interesting teaching. The book of Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy, tells the people of Israel, who are about to enter the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey — he tells them that God was going to give each one of them a plot, a portion, an allotment of his land for them. And that land would be the means by which God would bless them. God would give them their livelihood and everything that they needed from him. So he would give them their land, and through the land, he would give them his blessings in the land.

Now, there are two big blessings that God gives to his people in the land. First of all, there's the food that they get from work. And then the second gift that he gives is rejoicing in the fruit of their work — not just rejoicing in their work, but rejoicing in what they achieve by their work, what they produce by their work. So God gives his people a plot of land to give them food and drink and all the other necessities of life, and as well as that, he gives them the gift of joy.

So, in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses says that the tabernacle, and the temple later on when they are in the land, is to be a place for rejoicing in God's presence, rejoicing in the face of God. So the temple is, above all else, the place of joy for the people. And they are to rejoice by eating holy meals, with holy bread, holy meat, and holy wine, as the guests of God, from the altar. So at the temple, God was their host, and he hosted a meal for them, and all the people of Israel were his honored guests. And he would give them food, meat, bread, wine, to enjoy as his guests. The food that they brought as offerings to God were sanctified by God and given back to the people, so that they could receive joy from God. So they experienced the joy of the Lord at the temple.

And God also set three great festivals in their liturgical calendar. The first one was the Feast of Passover, when all adult males were to go to the temple in order to present the offerings before God — they were to appear in the presence of God, and eat and drink in God's presence, for rejoicing. Now those three festivals were Passover, Pentecost — the Feast of Weeks — and then the Feast of Tabernacles. Interestingly, the Feast of Passover is not described as a feast for rejoicing. Only Pentecost, and then, above all, Tabernacles, were occasions for rejoicing.

Now, the Feast of Pentecost coincides with our Pentecost — it's fifty days after Easter, and those fifty days after Easter are traditionally called in the church "the fifty days of rejoicing," the fifty days of Easter to Pentecost, the fifty days of rejoicing. Now notice that connection between Pentecost and joy. But by far the greatest occasion in the liturgical calendar was the Feast of Tabernacles. This was set at the end of the agricultural year, when everybody took a week's holiday, and they went to the sanctuary. They went to the holy place and brought lots of food and wine — picnic wine. Hello, Harold, I hope he brought some wine for me. And for seven days they ate and drank in God's presence.

And this is what God says about that festival, the Feast of Tabernacles, which, in Christian terms, is a foretaste of heaven, that feast. This is what God says, or Moses says: "The Lord your God will bless you in your produce and in the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful" — meaning altogether, totally, utterly joyful.

When I was young, I thought that the worship of Israel, with all those animals being sacrificed, and having to confess your sins, and all that kind of stuff, was rather dismal. It's come as a great surprise to me, when I studied the Old Testament, that it's just the opposite. The temple was a place of joy, the place of joy for Israel here on earth. Now, that's the background to Ecclesiastes, okay? That's the backdrop. As we go, you'll probably see some overlaps and some development of the themes here.

The first counsel for enjoyment is an observation that is made by the preacher here, in Ecclesiastes chapter 2, verses 24 to 26. Now, in each of these passages, I give you my own translation to accentuate certain things that are not evident in any of the English translations. So here's the first thing, advice about enjoyment: "There is nothing as good for a man, a human being, as to eat and drink and bring himself to see" — you could translate it "discover," it's almost impossible to translate the Hebrew here, but the idea is basically seeing and being brought to see, discovering. So it's seeing and experiencing. "So there is nothing as good for a man as to eat and drink and discover what is good in his work. This also I have seen is from the hand of God, for apart from him, who can eat and have enjoyment? For to a man who is good before him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the task of gathering and collecting, only to give it to the one who is good before the Lord, before God. This too is but a breath, and a chasing after wind."

Now this is the first of four observations. So the writer here is getting us to investigate our lives, and the investigation of our lives is to discover what — what's the profit, what's the bonus, from the work that we do under the sun, which means in this life. So it's not about the life to come. It's about the order of creation. That applies to every single human being. So this is the first of four observations about what is good for a person in this life. The question is: what's good in our ordinary life on earth?

Now, one of the strangest, oddest things about human life is that we miss out on the extraordinary things because they are so ordinary. All the best things in life are ordinary and available to everybody. What's good in your ordinary life? Now, we have the idea that you've got to lead an extravagant life doing extraordinary things, and if we do those things, then we will feel good, we will be happy, we will be fulfilled. But the best things in life are under your very nose. And because they are under your very nose, you don't even see them, you seldom notice them. In fact, you mostly notice them when they are taken away from you. Let's say, for example, the extraordinary joy of good health. When you're healthy, you don't know you're healthy. You don't even feel healthy. But when you're sick, then you notice what you've lost.

Now, the simple answer that Ecclesiastes gives — watch out for simple answers, simple answers are never simply simple answers — is the good in our daily life is food, daily meals, and daily work. So what's good? What's best about life here on earth? Daily meals, daily food, daily bread, and daily work.

Let's start off with food, meals. In the Old Testament, there were two kinds of eating and drinking. There were the ordinary everyday meals, the domestic meals that you had with your family, and typically in the ancient world, and still in most parts of the world, people have two meals — in the morning and in the evening. So you have the morning meal to prepare you for your day's work, and the evening meal is, at the end of the day, to enjoy the fruits of your daily work. So meals and work are inextricably combined, they belong together. It's only our modern way of life that has disjoined them, undone them.

So there's two kinds of eating and drinking. First of all, there's the meals that you have in your house, with your family — and in the ancient world it was not your nuclear family, but extended family. So the whole family comes together, beginning of the day, end of the day, and they have a meal together. Very simple, very necessary. But are you aware how extraordinary meals are, and how important they are? Then secondly, there are the festive meals, the holy meals, which were held in God's presence, in God's house, where God is the host, and we are the guests at his table. So there are the festive meals, as well as the ordinary meals — common meals, holy meals.

As I said, there's a close connection between meals and work. Most obviously, we work in order to get food, and to have food that we can enjoy. And we enjoy food in order to nourish us for our work. So we work in order to eat, and we eat in order to work. That's the boring everyday reality. But there's something extraordinary hiding in that everyday reality. Now, God gives these two basic gifts to every single human being. You don't have to be a Christian. God gives daily bread to everybody here on earth, even to the birds and the animals. He gives daily bread to everybody, and by the movement of the sun, he gives rest to every human being and creature on earth. So everybody gets those two gifts from God.

Now, the basic issue here is not about food and the enjoyment of food, but the basic issue is work. What's the problem that we have with work? Well, ever since the fall, work is not usually a matter of joy, but a burden. Just ask yourself, how many people do you know who enjoy their work? Do you enjoy your work? Every bit of it? Okay, so the problem is that since the fall, the curse of God is on us, and work is a burden instead of a delight. But it doesn't mean that God has removed his blessing. There's a great blessing in work, but because of sin, the blessing, the joy, is hidden. The joy is hidden.

So the joy that God wants to give you in your daily work is hidden from your physical eyes. It's not obvious. It's not up your nose. It's not shoved at you. You need to have eyes to see in order to discover it. You need to look for it, because it is hidden. Now, as it's hidden from sight, that means that very often, like health, you can see it only in hindsight, on reflection, in retrospect. So we have two stances that we have. We look forward to certain things — I look forward to doing something in the hope that I will enjoy it. Then there's enjoyment in the moment when you're working, and then there's the enjoyment that comes when you look back on the day's work, or the week's work, or your life's work. There's the retrospective joy, but most commonly we only see the joy where? In retrospect. Nostalgia.

Now the problem is that we don't, or seldom, see the joy day by day, moment by moment. So there's two common problems that we have — that you get people who work in order to pursue, to gain possessions in the hope of getting enjoyment from possessions. And that's futile. You know that. You work hard, you want to get possessions, and then, when you have enough possessions, then you're going to enjoy it. Now that means, because we have that particular view of life, we look away from the present, we're looking to the future, and what do we not see? We don't see the joy that God wants to give us — not from our work, but in our work. So we need to look very hard. We need to have eyes to see. We need to be wise in order to see what's good in our work, in order to discover it and enjoyment. It's hidden from sight. It's hidden. It's seen only in retrospect. So we pursue possessions without getting happiness.

Ah, yes, okay. The other thing is that we look for enjoyment from work rather than enjoyment in work. Ecclesiastes doesn't talk about the enjoyment that you get from work, but the enjoyment that you get in your work. Now, some social observers call Australia the land of the long weekend. The land of the long weekend, because the basic philosophy of many of my fellow citizens is that you work for the sake of the weekend — that's when you really live. So you work, if possible, four days a week, but at the most five days a week, and you enjoy life over the weekend. So the idea is that you don't find joy in work, but you work in order to get joy from your work.

Ecclesiastes says that a person who is good before God, a person whom God approves of, the person that God is pleased with and who pleases him, who has his approval, has also joy in his work and in his meals. Just listen to what's said again: "To a man who is good before him, God has given wisdom, and knowledge, and joy." So if God is pleased with your work, then what will you get? Wisdom. Wisdom, which leads to knowledge. And knowledge, which leads to joy. So you will experience joy in your work. And what's the mark that God is pleased with what you're doing? What's the sign that God is happy with the work you're doing? He gives you joy.

And please, that's not just to Christians, but that's to everybody. If God is pleased with your work, if you're God-fearing and do what God wants you to do in your station and vocation, then God will give you the gift of joy. But on the other hand, what happens to the sinner, the person who is not right with God, the person who doesn't fear God? God gets him to work and work and accumulate possessions, in order that someone else may have the possessions and have joy from the possessions that this man spent all his life chasing.

So the gift of joy is given to the upright, righteous, God-fearing person. On the other hand, those who pursue wealth in a way that violates God's order, that violates morality, will lose the joy that they could have in their work. So what's the number one gift, the gain that God gives to people in their work, what's the profit from work? Joy. Joy — that's the profit from work. That's the great gift that God gives to those who please him.

Yes, okay, one minute — any questions or observations? Yep.

Do you think that some of the issue with enjoyment, from work, around the enjoyment of work — or in work — is because our cultures have changed so much? Our Western culture has changed so much that so few of us work with our hands anymore.

Yes.

And we work with — we work with our hands on keyboards, but we don't build, we don't plant, and we don't harvest.

Yes, I think that's part of the issue, it's a fair challenge. Now, I think the basic problem, plainly, is sin. But that also affects culture. You know, it's very difficult for you as a pastor to see the fruit of your work. I find that many pastors, like me, like gardening. What's the appeal of gardening? You can see the fruits of your work. But there's still fruits from your work — there's still something you get from it. And there's no doubt that it's easier to see what's good when you're doing physical work. I love people who are craftsmen, who take joy in making and doing things, pride in it. They don't do it to make money, but they do it because they want to make something that is good, and they want the satisfaction from doing something well. Now, you can do that very easily with your hands. But if you're working with people, or even if you're just working at the computer, it's harder to discover, to see, what's good in your work.

And Ecclesiastes says, okay, it's a gift from God — God not only gives you work, and he gives you joy in your work, but he gives you the wisdom, the insight, to do what? To see what's good in your work. And that can be very often surprising and unexpected. Let's say you have a lousy job, which by any standards is boring and mundane. Now, the joy in the work may not be directly in what you do, but the fact that you do it together with other people. So the joy comes from the collaboration, the work together with your mates.

But I — yeah, I think there's a bit of a problem there. But I think Ecclesiastes would say, look, it goes deeper than that. It's not just a cultural, social thing, which has been complicated by technology and getting away from a rural, agrarian community, or from a craft community.