The Vain Pursuit of Happiness
by Brian Carpenter
(This is Part 2 of a series. Click here to read Part 1.)
Everything we do, we do in the pursuit of one goal. It is the permanent mainspring which drives all human activity. It may take a different outward form for each of us, but the same fundamental desire drives us all. We organize all the days of our lives and all their activities around this one goal. That goal is happiness. We are each seeking happiness. We each have some assumption about what will make us happy. These assumptions are often unexamined, and our assumptions drive all our choices, even our sinful ones. We pursue happiness with a relentlessness and a ferocity which is sometimes shocking. I’ve seen men abandon wives and children whom they profess to love, in the pursuit of this happiness. I’ve seen women savage the husbands and children they profess to love in pursuit of this happiness.
We seek happiness in the forming and breaking of our relationships. We pursue it in the choice of our spouse and when we exercise the option of divorce. We pursue it in the choice of career and in the seeking or leaving of a job. Some people have a serious desire for some kind of food (like chocolate) or drink (like alcohol) because they derive intense pleasure from the eating or the drinking. It makes them, temporarily, happy. In America most of us have absorbed the tacit assumption to one degree or another that buying and owning things will make us happy. We are a “consumer culture.” We do this in spite of the fact that we loudly profess to know that material possessions won’t make us happy. If you ask Americans what they value most (i.e. what they believe will make them happy) they usually say that some relationship is what they value most. They most often cite family or friendship or romantic love. But if you want to know what people really believe, then look at what they do, not what they say. When you look at how we actually behave, you could not be faulted for concluding that our relationships are actually among our greatest sources of pain, and the pursuit of material gain is among our greatest sources of pleasure. Sexual pleasure is a close second.
We even tend to choose our churches based not on what we believe is true (we rarely think about that.) We choose them instead based on how they make us feel. Every pastor knows that, whatever people may say, what they really want is for you to make them happy. Each parishioner has a different expectation about what will make them happy. The “successful” pastor in our day is not the one who faithfully proclaims the truths of God, but rather the one who has figured out what a lot of people think will make them happy and who gives it to them. That pastor will have a big church and will be counted as “successful.”
Now, the way I have spoken about this may lead you to believe that I think the pursuit of happiness is a bad thing. That’s not true. The bare fact that we are driven to seek happiness is a good thing. It’s how we were created. This desire was implanted in us before the Fall, and was the chief motivating force in the life of pre-Fall Adam and Eve. Pre-Fall Adam and Eve were intensely happy. The Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it with admirable simplicity:
Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
We are designed to be in intimate relationship with God. When we are in intimate relationship with God we are happy. This fact ought to show us the problem most clearly. The problem comes at the level of our assumptions about what will make us happy.
Part of the curse of the Fall is that we no longer know what will make us happy and we are no longer capable of desiring on our own that which will make us truly happy. So we spend our days trying one thing after another, asking ourselves, “Does this make me happy? Or this? Or how about this?” The people I know who are closest to despair are those who have enough money to have tried many things in the pursuit of happiness, and to have found nothing which will make them happy. Such people often have a romantic notion of the poor and simple as being necessarily happy and content. In my experience, the poor might be marginally better off in this area, but they are not substantially better off.
True happiness will not come to us until we are first regenerated and then convinced of something. We must be regenerated by the Spirit of God and come to saving faith in Christ Jesus. That regeneration plants “the seeds of all graces” (WLC 75) in our rebellious and sin-sick souls. As these seeds grow, they bring new possibilities for being. We are becoming something which we were not before, and could never have been without God’s transforming grace. But we must also be convinced. We must be convinced of the truth of what David says in Psalm 16:
I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord;
apart from you I have no good thing.”LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup;
you have made my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the LORD, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
I have set the LORD always before me.
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
You have made known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (16:2, 5-11)
Calvin, writing on this passage says,
This passage teaches us, that none are taught aright in true godliness but those who reckon God alone sufficient for their happiness. David, by calling God the portion of his lot, and his inheritance, and his cup, protests that he is so fully satisfied with him alone, as neither to covet any thing besides him, nor to be excited by any depraved desires. Let us therefore learn, when God offers himself to us, to embrace him with the whole heart, and to seek in him only all the ingredients and the fullness of our happiness. All the superstitions which have ever prevailed in the world have undoubtedly proceeded from this source, that superstitious men have not been contented with possessing God alone. But we do not actually possess him unless “he is the portion of our inheritance;” in other words, unless we are wholly devoted to him, so as no longer to have any desire unfaithfully to depart from him…
Whenever, therefore, those things present themselves to us which would lead us away from resting in God alone, let us make use of this sentiment as an antidote against them, that we have sufficient cause for being contented, since he who has in himself an absolute fullness of all good has given himself to be enjoyed by us. In this way we will experience our condition to be always pleasant and comfortable; for he who has God as his portion is destitute of nothing which is requisite to constitute a happy life.
Our behavior tells us and everyone else what we really believe, no matter what we say we believe. We lack a healthy outward Christian simplicity because we lack a healthy inward Christian simplicity. We lack an inward Christian simplicity because we are not content and happy in God alone. We are not content and happy in God alone because we are not convinced that we can be. We really don’t believe it’s possible. Perhaps it never occurred to us that such a thing is possible. Because we are not convinced that we can be happy and content in God, we are driven to pursue happiness in the same way as the fallen and hell-bound world all around us. Then we wonder why we have no power. We wonder why our lives are such a mess and why the church doesn’t look any different than the world.
Next week, if God spares us, we will begin looking at this inward simplicity and contentment from 1 Timothy 6:6-8: “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.”
Brian Carpenter is the pastor of Foothills Community Church (PCA) in Sturgis, South Dakota. He and his wife Laura have two lovely daughters, Evelyn and Jordan, ages 2 and 3. His interests include automotive and motorcycle repair and rebuilding, welding and metal fabrication, economics and monetary theory, philosophy, classical education, church history, and really expensive Scotch whiskey. Brian blogs at TheHappyTR and AFiresideChat. His sermons are available online at SermonAudio.com.
Recommended further reading:
Thomas Watson: The Art of Divine Contentment
John Calvin: Sermons on the Beatitudes
Henry Law: Daily Prayer and Praise
Sign up for the daily Christian Reader email update by clicking here.
Related articles:
