Happiness: King Solomon’s Conclusion

Blog Series: Helpful Tips for Saving Yourself from Trouble

It is said that you cannot break the laws of God. You can only break yourself against them when you violate them. We are beginning a new series today, looking at some of the simple and clear “laws of God” – that is to say, “biblical principles” –  that we must follow if we do not want to bring very negative cause-effect consequences into our lives.

The pursuit of happiness

I once heard of a man who was unhappy in his work, unhappy with his family, and unhappy with life in general. So he decided to escape to get away from it all. He joined a mute monastery, where he took a vow of silence. People there could say only two words every five years.

“This is perfect,” he thought. “No stress, no one to bug me, nothing but silence.”

So, he stayed there five years without uttering a syllable. At the end of that time, his superior called him into his office and said, “You have two words you can speak. Would you like to say anything?”

The guy nodded his head and said, “Bad food!”

He went on for another five years without uttering a syllable, and again his superior called him to his office and asked if you would like to say anything.

He nodded his head and said, “Hard bed!”

Another five years passed, and his superior called him in and asked him if he would like to say anything, and the guy said, “I quit!”

His superior responded, “Well, I’m not surprised. You’ve done nothing but complain since you got here!”

Happiness is not based on external circumstances. It’s based on internal attitude. Think of all the wealthy people you know of who are miserable, and think of all the people of modest means who are happy. That simple observation tells us that there is no direct correlation between external circumstances and happiness. Abraham Lincoln once said, “a man is about as happy as he makes up his mind to be.”

It is all right to long for happiness

Perhaps the highest value in American culture is happiness. That value goes back as far as our Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This theme of happiness pops up time and time again in American culture. When pondering choices to be made, relationships to pursue, dreams to chase, the guiding phrase is typically: “I just want to be happy.” Or when giving counsel to others on the same issues, it is: “I just want you to be happy.”

There is certainly nothing wrong in wanting to be happy. In fact, the pursuit of happiness seems to be woven into the fabric of the human psyche. Everyone has different ideas as to what it would take to make them happy, but everyone pursues happiness. Some pursue it in wealth, others pursue it in achievements, others pursue it in pleasure, but all pursue happiness.

Blaise Pascal, a 17^th century philosopher, once wrote:

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tended 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. The will never takes the least step but to this objective. This is the motive of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

As Christians, we may be vaguely uncomfortable admitting happiness is a priority for us. It doesn’t sound spiritual. Yet the Bible doesn’t seem to shy away from presenting happiness as a valid longing.

The word “happiness” doesn’t occur often, but Bible holds up joy and “gladness” over and over again, from beginning to end.  The challenge is, of course, understanding how to get joy and gladness. The Bible makes it clear:

• 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).
• Oh God, you are my God. Early will I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water (Psalm 63:1).
• You will show me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures evermore (Psalm 16:11).

In these verses the Bible speaks of deep longings we have and implies that the fulfillment of these longings, as well as joy and pleasure, are things that God does not find objectionable. Rather, He seems to encourage it, as long as our pursuit of happiness is centered in Him.

Happiness depends on an eternal perspective

The only thing we need to be happy… the only thing… is for everything to go the way we want it to.

Of course, that is not possible. We cannot control circumstances adequately enough to always make things go the way we want them to.

Solomon told us that 3000 years ago, but we don’t quite believe him. The son of King David, he was probably handsome enough to be a male model. He was wealthier than perhaps any man alive today. He was commander-in-chief of a powerful army and king of a great nation. He was brilliant.

With all this going for him, Solomon admitted that he did not withhold anything from himself. If he wanted it, he got it. He lived a rich, full life by the standards of this world. But as an old man, he said that all the things this world had to offer were unsatisfying.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, he wrote, “Everything is meaningless… completely meaningless” (NLT).

He finishes the book of Ecclesiastes by saying: Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands… (12:13 – NLT)

Solomon’s whole life is a living demonstration of the fact that happiness does not come by getting everything you want. That, he admitted, was meaningless. Instead, he concluded in the end that, we should “fear God and keep His commandments.”

Conclusion

Our problem is that we don’t quite believe Solomon.

We think that for some reason, he just didn’t get it right. Yes, he had brains, money, looks, fame and power, and wasn’t happy, but if we had his brains, money, looks, fame, and power, we would be happy! We would be able to pull it off! However, in her book, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, Peggy Noonan observes,

I think we have lost the old knowledge that happiness is overrated – that, in a way, life is overrated. We have lost somehow a sense of mystery – about us, our purpose, our meaning, our role. Our ancestors believed in two worlds, and understood this to be the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short one. We are the first generations of man that actually expected to find happiness here on earth, and our search for it has caused such unhappiness. The reason: if you do not believe in another world, higher world, if you believe only in the flat material world around you, if you believe that this is your only chance at happiness – if that is what you believe, then you are more than disappointed when the world does not give you a good measure of its riches, you are in despair!

So true. If we pursue happiness and what this temporal world alone has to offer us, then life can be a profound disappointment. But pursue God and the fullness of the life He offers, and happiness can dawn like the sun after a dark night.

Our ability to be happy in this life is greatly increased by the knowledge that complete happiness can be found only in the next life. Rather than an earthly perspective based on temporal pursuits, the foundation of happiness is in maintaining an eternal perspective based on trust in God.

Update: The entire “Helpful Tips for Saving Yourself from Trouble” series is now completed and is in the archives, beginning with the post on July 26, 2022.

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