20 Feb Is It All Right For a Christian to Want to Be Happy?
GOD WANTS US TO BE DEEPLY HAPPY IN LIFE… HAPPIER THAN MOST OF US ARE
Happiness is probably the highest goal of the modern American mind. It has been part of our value system from the very beginning, being found even in 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.
If you ask an American parent what they want for their children when they grow up, they will commonly say, “I just want them to be happy.”
However, we may not be sure it is okay for a Christian to want to be happy. It may seem vaguely shallow and unspiritual. We might think we ought to be willing to give up happiness in the pursuit of higher things, or that happiness is not available to Christians living in a fallen world.
But the Bible, surprisingly, paints a different picture. So, let’s explore the question of whether or not it is all right for a Christian to want to be happy.
- We inherently long for happiness, and that’s not wrong
As far back as Socrates, 400 years before Christ, philosophers have argued that all men naturally desire happiness.
Seventeenth century philosopher Blaise Pascal said it eloquently:
”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 attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this objective. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
- God wants to fulfill our longing for happiness with Himself
God is actually the one who gave us this powerful longing for happiness. He wants our longing for happiness to draw us to Himself, and wants to fill that longing with Himself. Scripture speaks clearly of this:
- “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).
- They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; And You give them to drink of the river of Your delights. (Psalm 36:8).
Listen to those words: joy, pleasures, delight, desires, abundance! This is not a stoic or Spartan picture of life. It is a picture of rich fulfillment!
These passages tell us two things:
God wants us to be deeply happy in life… happier than most of us are.
He wants us to understand that He is the only one who can give us that level of happiness.
C.S. Lewis furthered the thought that God wants us to be happy when he wrote:
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 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 it cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Blaise Pascal furthered the thought that God is the only one who can fulfill the longing for happiness when he wrote:
“There once was in man a true happiness of which now remains 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.”
- We will be as obedient to God as we are convinced that that obedience will make us happiest.
The longing for happiness is so powerful, as Pascal said, that our every move is directed toward what we think will make us happiest, including whether or not we obey God.
Until we become persuaded that we will be happier by being totally obedient to God, we pick and choose what we want to obey.
Even threats of divine judgment for disobedience are not sufficient to overcome our disobedience unless we are convinced that obedience will make us happier, in the end, than disobedience.
A watershed issue in the Christian life is coming to the conviction that, ultimately, we will be happier by being totally obedient to God than if we are not.
Part of the reason for partial obedience may be that we have tried giving ourselves to God, and it didn’t seem that God took very good care of us. We had pain He didn’t relieve. We had strong desires He didn’t fulfill. We had urgent requests He didn’t answer.
We may have felt abandoned by God and, decided – either consciously or subconsciously – that we had to take things into our own hands and find our own happiness.
That strategy may give us a measure of happiness if we get lucky and things work out for us. But often, things do not work out for us and our attempts at self-induced happiness do not work. But even if they work on some level, they will not give us the degree of happiness that God promises.
God’s way is harder up front and easier down the road, while our way is easier up front and harder down the road.
So, even when God’s way is hard, it is still the only way to full happiness. By leaning into God’s will, refusing to take an easier way out, we become candidates for God’s full blessing: joy, pleasures, delight, desires, abundance.
But please note: Even when we decide that our potential for happiness is greater with total obedience than selective obedience, we do not automatically “poof” into a happy person, like the frog kissed by the princess. It is still a growth process. But it is the only path that has true happiness at the end.
Therefore, to reiterate, a watershed issue in the Christian life is coming to the conviction that, ultimately, we will be happier by being totally obedient to God than if we are not.
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