04 Jun Must We Choose God Over Happiness?!?
When I read the Bible, it often seems backwards. Have you ever had that impression? Some of the things the Bible tells us don’t seem, at first glance, to be in our best interests. For example, to save our life we must lose it, to be first we must be last, to be great we must be a servant.
But on second glance, those things always are in our best interests. So, it is important for us to train ourselves to always look below the surface of things to see the deeper truth.
Must we choose God over happiness?
For example, the Bible tells us that we should choose nothing over God. Luke 14:26 says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”
Misunderstanding passages like this might give us the initial impression that we can have either God or happiness, but we can’t have both.
In popular American culture, happiness is the highest good. One website on happiness says “happiness is really all there is and all there ever will be; all else is only a means to happiness.
“And, of what value is anything except for its utility in facilitating happiness. Careful reflection reveals that the only reason we do anything in life is to maintain or enhance our happiness.”
On television or in movies, we may hear a mother telling her child, “I just want you to be happy.” On one level this makes sense. Who wouldn’t want their child to be happy? But on another level, it doesn’t seem to be working so well. Many people travel from one self-inflicted disaster to another because they assume that emotions, rather than truth, are a reliable guide to making the decisions that we think will make us happy.
And while the pursuit of happiness using emotions as our primary guide often results in great self-inflicted pain, there is surprising support for the wisdom of pursuing happiness.
Blaise Pascal once wrote:
All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employee, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attending with different views. They will never take the least step but to this objective. This is the motive of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
Are we clear on what will make us happy?
The problem, however, is our confusion as to what will give us happiness. We are naturally inclined to assume that health, wealth, and positive circumstances (getting our way) will give us happiness. Yet, there is little evidence to support that idea.
Even a casual look at the lives of professional athletes, movie stars, musicians and singers, and other famous and wealthy people teaches us that fame and fortune are not automatic avenues to happiness.
Again, Blaise Pascal speaks to this:
There was once in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the dark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not find in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God himself.”
Or in other words, we’re looking for happiness in all the wrong places.
Is it all right to want to be happy?
But there is a nagging suspicion for Christians that it is not all right to want to be happy; that if we were truly unselfish, we would not worry about being happy. C. S. Lewis has written to that question:
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from [philosophers] and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we were to consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Even something as staid as the Westminster Confession, written in 1646, agrees that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. John Piper, in his book Desiring God, goes one step further. He asserts that the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever… that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
Will only God make us truly happy?
Many Scripture passages indicate that a deep longing for happiness is not unspiritual, but rather, it can be understood as a sign of God drawing us to Himself. He gives us deep longings for happiness because He intends to be the one to fulfill those deep longings.
“In Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever” (Psalm 16:11)
“Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).
“O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:7)
“As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1 – 2).
“O God, you are my God; I shall seek you earnestly; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1 – 2).
God has given us longings for happiness because He wants to be the one to fulfill those longings. It is not wrong to long. It is wrong and self-destructive however to look outside of God for the fulfillment of them.
If we pursue God as the fulfillment of our longings, then our longings can lead us to true happiness in Him.
Conclusion
So, we started by saying that the Bible often seems backwards, that some of the things the Bible tells us don’t seem, at first glance, to be in our best interests.
But on second glance, those things always are in our best interests. So, it is important for us to train ourselves to always look below the surface of things to see the deeper truth.
On second glance, we see that choosing God is choosing happiness. Not a shallow, flighty happiness dependent upon circumstances, but a deep, solid happiness based on God’s blessing in our lives that follows our full pursuit of him.
Help spread the message, “Like” my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/maxanders.author and invite your friends to do the same. If you know someone you think may find this blog valuable, please forward it to them. I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at max@maxanders.com. I try to answer all emails, but, if not, I may address in future blogs the questions/issues you raise.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.