How (Not) to Be Happy
Everyone wants to be happy. The little boy who splashes around in mud puddles does so because he wants to be happy. The young girl who braids her hair does so because she wants to be happy. The man who goes to the bar every weekend hoping to take a woman home does so because he wants to be happy. The mathematician Blaise Pascal famously said that even people who hang themselves do so because they want to be happy.
The universal drive and desire for happiness has caused people to do beautiful and terrible things, courageous and cowardly things, unimaginable and unspeakable things. Countless books have been written on why human beings are so bent on happiness, and philosophers have tried to puzzle through how to actually achieve happiness for millenia. Some have argued that the surest path to happiness is to indulge every desire that we can (such as the Epicureans); some have argued that the true happiness is, ironically, found in denying and suppressing all desire (such as the Stoics and Buddhists); some have sought a more balanced approach by suggesting that happiness is found in living as whole and virtuous a life as possible (the Grecco-Roman virtue tradition).
Contrary to popular belief, Christianity is not silent in this important discussion. According to the Scriptures, God is the one who has placed the desire for happiness within us, and that desire is meant to lead us back to him, the ultimate fountain of joy and light (Psalm 4:6-7, 87:7, Isaiah 55:1, John 7:37-38, etc). The desire to be happy is not in itself a bad thing. In fact, many Christians wrongly say, “God is not concerned with your happiness; he is only concerned with your holiness,” as if holiness isn’t a pathway to freedom and delight (Hebrews 12:1-2, Psalm 37:4). Our problem is not happiness per se; our problem is that we often go running to empty wells in order to slake our thirst.
The Surest Way to Misery
Here’s how the Lord himself describes the great human problem, in Jeremiah 2:12-13: “Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
What is it that causes the angels to shake their heads in disbelief? What is it that causes the very heavens to quake with pain?
It is not that the people of the Lord are trying to be happy that they find appalling; it is where they go to try and find happiness that appalls them: God’s own people turning to broken cisterns of their own making, rather than to the ever-flowing fountain of living water which is freely offered to them.
Let’s put it another way. The surest path to misery, the surest way to not be happy, is to drink from the well of sin. Cognitively speaking, many Christians understand this. We know that rebelling against the Lord makes us feel gross and decidedly unhappy when everything is said and done. But the reason that we keep going back to those broken cisterns is because, in the heat of the moment, they offer promises of happiness -- and those offers are hard to deny.
So when we’re frustrated with a family member, the broken cistern of man’s anger promises us relief, which will lead to happiness -- but when we lash out, we feel shame in our guts. When we’re feeling lonely in the night, the broken cistern of lust promises us consolation, which will lead to happiness -- but after we’ve looked at the porn, we feel disgusted with ourselves and more isolated than ever. When we’re overwhelmed by the weight of work that needs to be done around us, the broken cistern of sloth promises us rest, which will lead to happiness -- but when we’ve neglected our responsibilities, we feel restless and adrift and lost.
Understand Why
When we feel like we’re wandering around an endless wilderness, and then we see those empty wells, it can sometimes feel like we’re being pulled toward them by a force stronger than gravity. We feel that we must go take a swig from them, we feel that to deny the craving would be to deny ourselves some great form of satisfaction. But how many visits does it take before we realize that we leave those dry wells thirstier than when we came? And, on the flip side, how many of us have ever successfully denied temptation, and then thought, “Wow, I really regret denying that temptation”?
But we don’t often have the foresight or self-control to think that far ahead when we’re actually looking at the broken cisterns, because we’ve trained ourselves by habit to go running to them. We don’t have to think about it at all; it’s just what we do, it’s automatic.
But when we suddenly become self-aware of this, it means that we’ve come to a crucial moment of understanding. We now know, definitively, how not to be happy. And the question then becomes: how in the world do we find happiness? We will take a look at that question in part 2 of this article, coming soon.
