The Church and the Pursuit of Happiness

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” – United States Declaration of Independence

These words, penned by Thomas Jefferson, are hardly a matter of controversy. Rarely, outside of those few who still subscribe to some form of tyranny or another, will anyone be heard arguing against the very basic notion that a nation ought to be founded on the principle of freedom; fewer still would, or should, argue that a nation ought to do anything at all to stifle its citizens pursuit of happiness.

As a political doctrine I take no offense to the Declaration of Independence. As an assertion of basic freedoms it is practically unmatched; it is used to affirm very basic principles of government—that a citizen and a government are separate; that a government does not exist to control the people, but to protect and to enable individual success. I even understand when this principle is abused in an effort to support certain viewpoints that I happen to oppose. Of course there are reasonable limitations that have to be placed upon any such unrestrictive doctrine; if it makes a person happy to kill his neighbor that is, of course, not a pursuit we are likely to oblige. If it makes a person happy to steal another’s property, it is only the rare, freewheeling judge and jury who might grant leniency when the defendant decides to quote Jefferson on the stand.

I certainly understand the value the world places on the pursuit of happiness, and I understand that it really is a good thing. What I object to—what I really cannot fathom—is when the church comes to the very strange belief that it might go well with them if they hold to the same thing.

This is one of many ways that the doctrines of a church ought to have no overlap with the doctrines of a nation. Just as I can assert that the communism practiced in the early church ought never be considered a valid principle for governing secular society, so also it should be stated emphatically that the church ought never be tempted to teach its members to pursue their own happiness.

To a Christian, after all, the pursuit of happiness should be seen as a great contradiction. It should, at the very least, be recognized as an enigma—for the Christian ought to know that happiness is not a thing that can possibly be pursued. If anything, we could say that happiness has already pursued and overtaken us, and that we are foolish to think that anything could work the other way around.

Christianity is really not the solemn, quiet religion that the secularists make it out to be; the content Christian is not really the opposite of the giddy drunkard or the self-fulfilled womanizer. The Christian simply knows a great secret: That he needn’t go searching about the world, wandering back and forth in it, in the pursuit of happiness, contentment or fulfillment. He needn’t any politician to tell him that he is free to pursue his happiness. For the Christian, happiness is intrinsic. “Man is more himself,” wrote Chesterton, “when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live... Joy, which is the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.”

The church that dares encourage its members to pursue happiness, each in their own way, is a church that has quite clearly never understood the nature of happiness, for it has somehow mistaken the temporal, in which happiness is futile and fading, for the eternal, in which happiness is inward and indistinguishable from joy. Such a church has really sought to undo the drama of the temptations of Christ! For what was the temptation to turn stones into bread but the temptation to place the temporal above the eternal, to feast now and ignore the later...? The Devil offered Christ nothing more than a moment of earthly happiness—a temptation just as direct as an offer to a philanderer of his choice of lovers.

Many churches in recent years have failed in this very particular and very important regard (just as, in many other regards, churches have been failing throughout history). We are all sinners, of course, but the fact that a man had to die for our sins mean that we ought never be proud of them, and we certainly never ought to convince the church to accept them! Needless to say, not only are certain sins being tolerated within the body of Christ, but they are being celebrated!—for certain sins offer the impression to the weak minded that they are nothing more than men and women pursuing their own happiness, non-traditional places though their happiness might lead them. Sinners are no longer driven to repentance; they are driven to the altar in holy matrimony.

How can one obtain the status of Pastor or Priest—titles that one expects to go hand-in-hand with theological training and, one hopes, devoutness—and yet utterly miss such a fundamentally scriptural doctrine? Faith is not a means of obtaining happiness—not in this world, at least.

When the author of Hebrews offers his beautiful account of the great men and women of faith in the Old Testament, how does he conclude his account? “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth,” and, again, “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us...”

What about the Bible could possibly lead us to believe that earthly happiness is our ultimate reward? Time and again men and women are reminded to have eternity in mind and to reject their impulses toward earthly security and happiness. But true happiness is not the fulfilling of our every desire, just as true pleasure is not the momentary giddiness of a strong drink or the brief impulses of eroticism.

G.K. Chesterton says that this “religion” of happiness and pleasure seeking, “is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose that Dante saw. Great joy has in it the sense of immortality; the very splendor of youth is the sense that it has all space to stretch its legs in.”

Likewise, Malcolm Muggeridge, writing near the end of his life, offered an intriguing observation on the source of true happiness: “I increasingly see us in our human condition as manacled and in a dark cell. The chains are our mortal hopes and desires; the dark cell is our ego, in whose obscurity and tiny dimensions we are confined. Christ tells us how to escape, striking off the chains of desire, and putting a window in the dark cell through which we may joyously survey the wide vistas of eternity and the bright radiance of God’s universal love.”