Pursuing Happiness or Gratification
Is Happiness the Enemy?
I recently came across this thoughtful and thought-provoking essay by Rick Plasterer on how the pursuit of happiness has gone downhill in our culture at Juicy Ecumenism. It’s worth reading.
He begins his essay…
“America seems to be struggling for life from its own success. Having identified “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as a national ideal, the result for many generations was greater freedom and prosperity. But the advance of free society had the guardrails of religion and morality. We have been undone by making freedom from dissatisfaction into an absolute, not to be corrected by any authority, even common sense, and certainly not by religion or morality.”
As the influence of religious faith and objective moral standards give way to moral relativism and seeking personal gratification above all else, our culture slips further into the cesspool.
But you ask, “Doesn’t God want us to be happy?” Yes, the biblical concept of happiness is not what our sex-saturated, selfish culture imagines.
While the Bible promises peace and prosperity as at least the common result of obedience to God (Psalm 1, Jn. 10:10), Scripture also teaches that our first duty is obedience to God and love of neighbor. And in pursuit of that, it recognizes that the righteous suffer. If we are not happy in the course of our duty as disciples of Christ, we must realize that happiness is not what is most important. And we can take satisfaction in doing our duty to God and neighbor, even if life isn’t particularly pleasant.
Plasterer concludes…
Any merely “cultural Christianity” (Christian morality and the historic cultures rooted in the Christian past, held in the absence of Christian theology) cannot survive over time. People want happiness, but if that is all that is in view, they will not know that it is right. People will want happiness without justification rather than accept restrictions only out of respect for Christian culture.
Read the essay for yourself. It will be well worth the few minutes of your time.
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