The Pursuit of Happiness
The movie with Will Smith is one of my favorites. How can your heart not go out to someone who is working so hard to make a good life for himself and his son? Of course, the film’s title is a riff and metaphor on a much earlier statement.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
So wrote the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. In that geopolitically reorienting speech act, our nation’s leaders grounded their move toward independence on the premise that England was hindering the colonist’s God intended opportunity for securing happiness.
This, of course, begs the question that is still at the core of the premise: What would it take to make you truly happy? I mean really happy.
If you watch any amount of television at all or spend any amount of time online, the answers to that question are readily available: flatter abs and a tighter rear end will make you happy. Based on the Wall Street Journal’s Friday edition insert, an upgraded “Mansion” will fulfill this desire. For those serving and leading in Washington, there are several items on the menu of happiness: finding a spouse, moving up to the next rung of the office ladder, putting your name on legislation, getting your kids into that private school, or finally hearing your parents say they are proud of you.
But, when we are asked what would make us truly happy, we tend to think in terms of something that we do not have. There is a sense in which that is good because it directs us to see the need for something better in our lives, especially regarding our vocations, families, and communities. Yet, the reality of the human condition is that we spend most of our lives looking for happiness and blessing everywhere except where it is promised.
As Christians, especially those leading and serving in Washington, we must reframe any discussion of our pursuit of happiness.
The Desire for Happiness
We desire happiness and blessing because our Father in heaven created us to experience happiness and receive blessing. In other words, the right to the pursuit of happiness is preconditioned by our preexisting desire for happiness. We were created with a desire for happiness because God intended to fulfill it. The simple reality is that God’s posture towards his people is a posture of blessing with happiness.
We see it early in the story, when we read Genesis 1:28 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Even after the fall, we see it again in God’s covenantal calling of Abraham Genesis 12:1-3 1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
The psalmist is quick to answer our first question, “How do I come to experience true happiness and blessing?” His answer is the same answer that has always been given to the people of God. We experience happiness and blessing through reverence and obedience.
This is what is meant whenever the Psalmist says, “blessed is the man who fears the Lord.” In the Old Testament, the word fear is used in several ways. It can represent either the emotion of fear or the intellectual anticipation of evil, which is primarily how we use the word. But in the Old Testament, this word is regularly used for reverence. This aspect of the word has lost its footing in today’s world, as showing reverence to anyone except maybe your parents is seen as encroaching on our independence and dignity. We have become a society that is defined by a lack of reverence. As such, our pursuit of happiness is hindered from the outset.
The key to happiness and blessing is not just reverence but obedience, “to walk in his ways.” In the Psalms and throughout the Old Testament, the idea of fearing God and walking in his ways are not two separate things that might go together at times. Rather they are two things that must go together because one naturally flows out of the other. You cannot say that you have reverence for God if you are not obedient. Obedience is simply living by the rules that God has set before us as his people: rules that are an expression of his love for them.
This is where the wheels come off because this has been our problem since the Garden. As our story goes, Adam and Eve had everything they needed for happiness and blessing, and all they had to do to continue in that initial state was to fear God and walk in his ways. In other words, to practice reverence and obedience. Yet even though they had complete run of the place and were told that the only thing they could not do was to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they just couldn’t resist. And there was the fall, and then there was the curse. Their ability to recapture the happiness they had known was lost. However, their desire for happiness remained as strong as ever.
The Extent of Happiness
Now that we have answered the question of how to place ourselves in a position to experience happiness and blessing, the real question then becomes what do this happiness and blessing look like? How will it impact my life?
We were created to experience happiness and blessing in our vocational life. Psalm 128:2 says, “You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.” While this is a good translation, it might be better translated as “you shall eat of the fruit of the labor of your hands with happiness.”
This is a helpful reminder to the pilgrim on a journey to worship at the Temple. It makes even more sense when we recall that the people of God in Israel were once in slavery in Egypt. There, they were not in a position to “eat of the fruit of the labor of your hands with happiness;” their slave owner was enjoying the fruits of their labor. That does not lead to happiness for the worker.
What role do reverence and obedience play in bringing happiness to our vocational life? The same has always been the case. The people of God serving and leading in government have been called to go to work on time, work the full shift, and do their job as worship to the glory of God. It means coming to work and asking: what is good that I can encourage, what is broken that I can mend, what is missing that I can create, and what is evil that I must oppose. It also means treating everyone you work with as people created in the image of God. When doing that, you will experience happiness and blessing as you eat the fruit of your labor.
We were also created to experience happiness and blessing in our relationships. If you are looking for a spouse, you should always use the criteria God sets forth. Are they reverent and obedient to the Lord - not, “are they hot, and will they buy me great stuff?” For married people, the application works like this: if you want to have the best possible relationship with your spouse – pursue reverence and obedience to the Lord in how you interact with them. Do not repay wrong for wrong. Do not hold a grudge. Do not lord it over them. Be quick to repent and forgive.
We were created to experience happiness and blessing in our vocational life, family life, and community life. The idea here is that the people of God, when pursuing reverence and obedience to God would experience the prosperity of their city. A flourishing city is an outflow of it being filled with people who are pursuing reverence and obedience to God.
Proverbs 11:10 says, “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.”
Dr. Amy Sherman expands on this truth in her excellent book, “Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good,”
“As the tsaddiqim [righteous] prosper, they steward everything – their money, vocational position and expertise, assets, resources, opportunities, education, relationships, social position, entrée and networks – for the common good, for the advancing of God’s justice and shalom [flourishing]. And, when the people “at the top” act like this, the whole community cheers. When the righteous prosper, their prosperity makes life better for all (Kingdom Calling, 2011, p.17).”
Stop and consider the implications of that for our nation’s communities that your office or agency is charged with caring for.
When we pursue reverence and obedience, we find our happiness and bring about happiness for others.
God uses Scripture and the church to force us to recalibrate our pursuit of happiness and blessing with reverence & obedience, rather than all of the answers and pathways that the world proposes.
One word of warning. Some of us might be saying, I have done all that and so “Where’s my blessing of happiness?” Scripture says that we will find happiness through reverence and obedience, but this is not an assurance of earthly blessing. We do not get to demand from God the blessing we want when we want it. Doing this leads to our unhappiness (just see Psalm 73!). But when has that ever stopped us? We like to sit as our own evaluators of righteousness and then blame God for holding out on us.
The Root of Happiness
Washington is often an unending quest for happiness through achievement. It tends to amplify everything: our insecurities, our self-doubts, our self-comparisons, and even our ambitions. But it is not alone. This quest for happiness through achievement is the water we swim in. For some, it starts in families where gatherings are about who traveled where on their vacation and what traveling squads their kids are on. For others, it begins in middle or high school, where we seek happiness through an invitation to sit at certain tables in the lunchroom or wishing our bodies took shape faster or “better.”
In every setting, happiness seems just out of reach.
But, here’s the insane thing about life as a Christian. Our happiness is not something we achieve; it is something given to us. In the gospel, we realize that our Father sent his Son to save us from the endless quest for happiness through achievement. Instead, the God of steadfast love and faithfulness offers his unwavering joy to us in the fact that we are His children, not because we have achieved but because of his grace.
The Apostle Peter, our dear friend and frequent conversation partner, makes this clear when he says,“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:3-9