What's the Point?

An article entitled “11 Most Important Philosophical Quotations” included a quotation by Albert Camus that goes something like this, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether or not life is worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest are games . . . one must first answer the question of suicide.” This is not an article on suicide, but a question related to suicide. This is an article about happiness and meaning. Although Albert Camus believed that an absurd life did not necessitate suicide it must be admitted that people who choose suicide have deemed this life absurd or, at the least, unhappy. They would rather not live at all than to live unhappily. So we are faced with the question, can happiness be found in this life? And if so, where? Let’s examine the happiness that the world has to offer and then see what the Bible has to say about our happiness.

Well, what does the world have to offer? Only three things: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (cf. 1 John 2:15-17). How might we epitomize these three things? Well, the lust of the flesh has to do with all of our appetites, but probably the one that comes to most minds is sex. You may have thought of food but it seems that sex is perverted more often than food (unless you live in America, then they have an equal share). The lust of the eyes has to do with the things that we see as well as (I believe) the obtaining of those things, and the primary way we obtain those things is through money. Finally, the pride of life. We might personify this as power. So then, although people seek happiness in more than just these three ways it seems that they are the most common: sex, money, and power. If this is where happiness is to be found then we would expect the sexiest, richest, most powerful people in the world to be the happiest, but all of them are in Hollywood and how many of them are truly happy? Very few, if any. It is interesting to note that the suicide rate in teenagers increased about 5,000% between 1950 and 1990. This coincided with the sexual revolution and the propagation of “the pill.” Obviously, sex did not make them very happy. The suicide rate of Sweden is something like a thousand times higher than Haiti, even though it is a far wealthier country. Money, apparently, does not make them happy. There is also a legend that says when Alexander the Great came to the end of his military campaign he wept because there was no more world to conquer. Power did not make him happy. Why is it the case that none of these things make a man happy? I think it is summed up in this: happiness is not something you can get by seeking it.

C.S. Lewis said, “Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things. We never get, say, even the sensual pleasure of food at its best by being greedy.” In sex one is seeking intimacy, but in order to have intimacy one must love giving. However, the sex addict is not concerned with giving, only taking and selfish pleasure, therefore he does not obtain intimacy. A demand for intimacy makes intimacy impossible. He kills the very thing he seeks by placing it first and wanting it more than anything else. The covetous man wants money because he believes it will offer him rest and comfort, but when he spends all of his time working to obtain money he has neither rest nor comfort. He kills the very thing he seeks by wanting it more than anything else. The powerful and prideful man wants recognition, but the prideful man is quite snobby and no one wants to give recognition to a snobby person. The person who demands recognition is the one who never gets it. He kills the very thing he wants by wanting it more than anything else. Well, what is the answer? Where is happiness found? Most of you, I think, will expect me to say that you can only find happiness through God, but that is not exactly what I am going to say. One cannot find happiness, even through God, as long as he is seeking happiness first. The person who seeks happiness through God is the person who says, “If serving God is the only way I can be happy, then fine. I will serve You, God, but only so long as you make me happy. Otherwise, I won’t serve you.” That person is not really seeking God, he is seeking happiness. He is trying to control God and tell God what to do, but God will not be controlled like that. He is King, not you, and not me. This way of thinking treats God as a means, not an end, and God must always be our end. We cannot put happiness first. If we do, we lose it. The only way to find happiness is to give it up. Is it any wonder that God says to us, “He that saves his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:24, 25). God’s answer is this: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). I do mean exactly that if we seek God first that He will give us sex, money, and power, but in order to explain what I mean I must move on to my next point. To quote Alexander MacLaren, “The longest way round is the shortest way home.”

Here is the key to happiness: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37). One might say, “I thought you said that you could not find happiness through God?” That is right. But I did not say that God does not make us happy. I said that we cannot manipulate God into making us happy. Notice the Psalm, “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Psalm 37:4). I do not believe that this means, “Serve God and He’ll give you everything you want,” but rather, “When God is what you want He will give you Himself.” And really, is that not what we are searching for in the first place? Augustine said, “Amor meus, pondus meum” or “My love is my weight.” Everything he loved pulled him like a weight, or gravity, towards God. Even when we love the world, if we will look through the world instead of at the world we will see God. When a person seeks happiness in pride what is he seeking? Recognition. But it is only by humbling himself before God that he gets the most valuable recognition, God’s. “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 14:11). When a person seeks happiness in money and stuff, what is he seeking? Rest and comfort. But it is only in coming to God that he receives these things. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). Even the person who looks for happiness in sex is looking for God . This person is looking for intimacy and how much more intimate can you get than being married to the one Person who knows you perfectly inside and out? “And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God” (Revelation 19:5). G.K. Chesterton said, “When the adulterer knocks on the door of the brothel he is really looking for a Cathedral.” Peter Kreeft commented on this saying, “Therefore Christ alone is the answer to the Sexual Revolution because nobody else gives us intimacy with God.” Our search for happiness is, at bottom, a restless search for God. The most famous quote from Augustine is this: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in Thee.” All of the world justifies theirs sins by saying, “Well, I just believe that God wants me to be happy.” God does want us to be happy, the problem is, what we are doing does not really make us happy and that’s exactly why He forbids it! George MacDonald put it well, “Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.”

Here is the most interesting thing: when our focus is on loving God, we will not be concerned with whether or not we are happy because the deepest love never is. A father does not love his children because they make him happy, he loves them because they are his children whether they make him happy or not. Many couples make each other miserable and yet stay together far longer than makes any sense because they are “in love.” One might say, “Better to be unhappy and with him than happy without him.” Many battered women when asked why they remained with abusive husbands responded, “Because I love him.” We will feel the same way when we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Brother Lawrence, a monk and author of The Practice of the Presence of God, said of himself, “I did not engage in the religious life but for the love of God, and I have endeavored to act only for Him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God. I shall have this good at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love Him.” And again, “Sufferings will be sweet and pleasant to us while we are with Him; and the greatest pleasures will be, without Him, a cruel punishment to us.”

Now that I have said that love is not concerned with happiness I must now say that God does make us happy, but that happiness is only accidental. We will love God whether He makes us happy or not, but we find that He does make us happy. It is interesting to note that the Catholic Church will not canonize a person, that is, recognize him or her as a Saint, if they do not find in that person all of the fruits of the Spirit, and that includes joy. The people who have lost themselves the most in God have been the happiest, most joyful people. It is also peculiar that we often talk about the “fruits” (plural) of the Spirit when the Bible only speaks of the “fruit” (singular) of the Spirit. Someone has commented that the only fruit of the Spirit is Love, the first in the list, and that everything which follows, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are all manifestations of love. Like one fruit, say, an orange, when cut in half shows many different sections on the inside. The one fruit is love, and one of its sections is joy. The truest love, which loves in spite of unhappiness, brings us the truest happiness. I said before that just because we seek God first does not mean that He will give us sex, money, and power, but there is a sense in which we only truly possess those things when we place Him first. Only when we have God can we know what true intimacy, rest, and recognition is and only then can we truly see, posses, and appreciate the intimacy, rest, and recognition that we might have. C.S. Lewis said again, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” This is why if we lay up treasures on the earth they corrupt (cf. Matthew 6:19). If we seek those treasures for their own sake they pass away. But if we seek God and lay up treasures in Heaven (cf. Matthew 6:20) those things never corrupt. If we seek God, “all these things” shall be given to us.

How then do we learn to love God for Himself? This will likely be the most disappointing part of the article because it is at once the simplest answer and the hardest to hear, and to answer it I will use the words of William Law, “If you will here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you have never thoroughly intended it.” Simply put, if we intend to love God we will. Therefore, we must not have intended it. If we want God He has promised to give us Himself. “Seek, and ye shall find” (Matthew 7:7). However, once we have intended to love God we still must practice and if we would learn to love God we must start by learning to love our brother for “he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20). Is it any wonder then that God said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me?” (Matthew 25:40). I read once before, “If you would learn to love better, start with someone you hate.” Well, how are we to do that? When Christ told us to love our enemies He did not leave us in the dark as to how to do that. “But I say unto you, Love your enemies.” How Jesus? “Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Again, William Law said, “There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him.” Why is that the case? Because our heart follows our treasure (cf. Matthew 6:21), and our most valuable treasure is our time, therefore our heart will be given to the things to which we give our time. If we do things for a person we find that we come to love that person more. The same things that help us learn to love Man will help us learn to love God. Just start. Do. Perform the action of love even when you do not feel love and you will find that you feel love more. And the more love that you feel the easier performing the action of love becomes, and as you perform acts of love more effortlessly you feel love more effortlessly. One reinforces the other. By giving we receive, and by receiving we are better able to give. We must love God. If we miss God we will be hopelessly unhappy. Charles Péguy said, “Life holds only one tragedy, ultimately: not to have been a saint.”

So then, what is the point? The point is not to be happy. The point is God. It always has been. But when we see that, we will finally be happy.