‘Though there is significant disagreement on what happiness is and how to get it, there is substantial agreement in recognising it as the bull’s eye on the target at which we aim our lives’.
– David K. Naugle [1]
Missing the Target
Two of my favourite verses in the bible are –
‘Taste and see that the Lord is good. How happy is the person who takes refuge in him!’ – Psalm 34:8 CSB
‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”’- Isaiah 52:7 ESV
They speak of the happiness we can have in God. The happiness that comes from the gospel.
We’re all searching for happiness – ‘it is the bull’s eye on the target at which we aim our lives’ – but many disagree on what the bull’s eye is. And even when we experience it, the feeling never lasts. We’re constantly missing the target.
Rousseau describes this existential angst when he writes we ‘must be happy…that is the goal of every being which senses. That is the first desire which nature has impressed upon us, and the only one which never leaves us’.
He writes this, yet also asks, ‘but where is happiness? Who knows it? All seek it, and none finds it’.[2]
Happiness is Addictive
Once we get a taste of happiness we want more. It’s moreish, it’s addictive. Because it’s what we’ve been created for. But when it comes to happiness – many of us are missing the target. Most can’t find it because most people are not looking to the One who offers true happiness.
We think money is the answer. We think work is the answer.[3] We think health is the answer. We think friendship is the answer.[4] And of course – all these are important contributors. But they’re never enough. They never quite hit the bull’s eye.
So we pursue happiness in pleasure. We dull the aching heart with the hedonistic lifestyle of alcohol, Netflix, food, and sex. But is this happiness?
We’re grasping at shadows – clutching at the wind, but can never hold on. It’s been this way since mankind left Eden. As Augustine says, ‘Certainly by sinning we lost both piety and happiness; but when we lost happiness, we did not lose the love of it’.[5] Augustine is saying, when we left God we left true happiness behind, but we still have a taste for it. We still crave it. Because true happiness is found in God himself.
Happiness as Witness
In Acts 14:17 Paul and Barnabas are speaking to the people of Lystra who are steeped in Greek culture and think Paul and Barnabas are Greek gods. But here Paul and Barnabas say that God did not leave the Gentiles without evidence that God existed. They say, God ‘did not leave himself without a witness, since he did what is good by giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons and filling you with food and your hearts with joy’.[6]
Note that. One of the witnesses to God’s existence was the fact he filled people’s hearts with joy.[7] One piece of evidence for God is our happiness. When we’re happy that is an echo of our time with God in Eden. We were created for Edenistic happiness, not hedonistic happiness.[8] The happiness the world pursues is a pale imitation of true happiness, because we’re pursuing ultimate happiness in everything and everyone, except in God.
Broken Signposts
The short series ‘The Pursuit of Happiness: Broken Signposts that Point Us to Jesus’ is tapping into the main ingredients for our happiness. Things like love, beauty, justice, identity and hope. Things we can’t live without. Things that make us happy. And yet on their own, they fail to fully and completely satisfy.
They’re broken because the drug of happiness they give us doesn’t last. It doesn’t work. But in Jesus they do! In Jesus we have a love relationship that lasts forever, beauty that does not fade, justice for all evil committed, identity that gives us purpose and a hope of a better tomorrow with no more sickness, pain and death. That’s the good news of happiness we have to offer and get to experience together!
So when everyone else is missing the target when it comes to happiness, are you running to Jesus? Are you taking refuge in Him?
And are you running to tell others of this good news of happiness?
Augustine says: ‘If I should ask you why you believe in Christ, and why you have become Christians, every man will answer truthfully by saying: for the sake of a happy life. The pursuit of a happy life is common to philosophers and to Christians’.[9]
And everyone else.
[1] David Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness, (William B. Eerdmans, 2008), Kindle location 167
[2] Quoted in Darrin McMahon, The Pursuit of Happiness: A History from the Greeks to the Present (Penguin, 2006), p. 237; p. 240.
[3] There’s good evidence that work is integral to our happiness as psychologist Jonathan Haidt concludes in his book The Happiness Hypothesis (Cornerstone, 2007), p. 223.
[4] Epicurus among others, thought friendship was a key ingredient to happiness.
[5] Quoted in Randy Alcorn, Happiness, p. 31.
[6] CSB
[7] It is popular in Christian circles to create a dichotomy between happiness and joy. Historically and biblically this is wrong and is a recent development springing from the late 19th century and Victorian Britain. The saying goes happiness is worldly and external and fleeting, while joy is spiritual and internal and permanent. Some Christians will even speak in a way that takes all the emotion and feeling out of joy. As if it is simply an internal reality. This isn’t the case. Here’s a few examples of Christians throughout the ages talking about happiness:
‘Happiness does not depend on outward circumstances but on the state of the heart’ – J.C. Ryle.
‘Every man, whatsoever his condition, desires to be happy.’ – Augustine.
‘All men seek happiness. This is without exception’ – Blaise Pascal.
‘Jesus knew that all mankind were in the pursuit of happiness. He has directed them in the true way to it, and He tells them what they must become in order to be blessed and happy’ – Jonathan Edwards.
‘The day of death is to true believers a day of happiness and joy’ – Richard Baxter.
See Randy Alcorn, Happiness, Darrin McMahon, The Pursuit of Happiness: A History from the Greeks to the Present and Jonathan Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life for references and more….
[8] This phrase is from David Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness, Kindle location 242.
[9] Quoted in Alcorn, Happiness, p. 31.
