The Joy of Duty


Book Description

A corporate executive is miserable and seeks the help of a psychotherapist. A college student is unhappy in her current major and goes to her academic advisor. A married couple struggles with discord and seeks the help of a licensed counsellor. In each case, the diagnosis and prescription will likely be the same: you are miserable because you are not doing what you want. Your path to happiness thus lies in figuring out what you enjoy doing, coming up with a strategy to satisfy these desires, and then executing your plan. This is the standard approach to happiness used in much of today’s counselling and psychotherapeutic practice. The Socratic, Stoic, and Confucian philosophical traditions tell a different story: you are miserable because you are not doing what you must. Through historical and contemporary case studies, analyses of key novels, reviews of modern psychological research, interviews with struggling people, and close readings of philosophical texts, The Joy of Duty illuminates the intimate connection between human joy and the performance of ethical obligation.







The Way of Duty


Book Description

Combining the skills of a gifted writer and a scholar's grasp of early America, The Way of Duty draws readers into a vividly evoked world.




The German Lesson


Book Description

In this quiet and devastating novel about the rise of fascism, Siggi Jepsen, incarcerated as a juvenile delinquent, is assigned to write a routine German lesson on the “The Joys of Duty.” Overfamiliar with these joys, Siggi sets down his life since 1943, a decade earlier, when as a boy he watched his father, a constable, doggedly carry out orders from Berlin to stop a well-known Expressionist artist from painting and to seize all his “degenerate” work. Soon Siggi is stealing the paintings to keep them safe from his father. “I was trying to find out,” Lenz says, “where the joys of duty could lead a people.” Translated from the German by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins




The Dangerous Duty of Delight


Book Description

Strengthen your relationship with God by enjoying Him and His creation! Discover just how to delight in the Lord in this compact version of Piper's classic Desiring God.




Our Duty & Our Joy


Book Description










From Duty to Delight


Book Description

Prayer has an important role in the lives of believers. For some, however, prayer has become a chore almost something to be dreaded than eagerly anticipated. Some people get caught up in the "how much/how often" they pray. But it really is not about how many chapters of the Bible you read or how many minutes a day you pray. It is that you read the Bible and you pray. In From Duty to Delight: Finding Greater Joy in Daily Prayer, author Ron Parrish seeks to help you become a person who enjoys spending time in God's presence through prayer someone who finds such joy in devotion that you will lose track of time. From Duty to Delight is written for the average person who struggles to set aside time for meaningful, focused interaction with God. If you feel badly about missing your devotions, if you quickly run out of things to say when you try to pray, if you sometimes find prayer boring, or if you have given up on trying to be a man or woman of prayer, From Duty to Delight can help you find your way to prayer that is fulfilling and that you can look forward to each day.