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Can happiness really be empty? If so, why do we exist? Who is God and what does he do? How is he all-loving?
First, just to be clear, these are the questions that I ask myself everyday. These are the reasons that all I have is ideas. I am a religious person, I am a spiritual person, I believe in God, and most importantly, I am insignificant. It seems that this has become the basis of my faith in recent months. I find myself struggling daily with the question, how is God all-loving? To explain this problem is a common example. I find myself praying about things at times such as a friend that is sick. When this friend becomes better, I say, “Thank you God, you have healed my friend”. In the same amount of time that my friend is miraculously healed, a child in Africa prays intently for one meal for the day, but sadly dies of starvation in weeks to come.
To believe in God, do I honestly have to believe that my white, middle-class, American friend was favored over a starving child in Africa? This is the kind of thinking that is typically fostered in churches, not to degrade church in any way, or to say that any church intentionally wants us to believe that we are favored in any situation, but churches often cheapen God’s grace and mercy by labeling anything happy with God’s name. The sad truth is, the reason churches harvest this kind of thinker is that they fail to deal with tough issues such as the problem of an all-loving God. So the question is does God fail to meet the all-loving status or could it be that our idea of God is completely off?
Most Christians believe that we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus. But most Christians also get upset when any man is credited for an act such as removing cancer from an individual’s body. This idea is very paradoxical. If we are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus, and we want to believe that God is all-loving, then it makes sense to believe in a God who works solely through us and in us. A child starving in Africa says nothing to limit God’s power and love, but it does everything to show us where we are failing to allow God’s love to flow through us.
Everywhere I go and everywhere I look people are searching for happiness. Most days all I want out of life is to find happiness, but I think I couldn’t be farther from the truth in this. In a sense, to be a Christian, happiness has to be emptiness. This idea seems extremely controversial but logically, it shouldn’t be. To explain how happiness is emptiness in one question I would say something like, “When was the last time you saw a married couple that was happy all of the time?” The bad thing about happiness is that it is temporary. Happiness comes and goes and when it goes (which is inevitable because it is waged on our feelings and emotions which are also temporal) it leaves us feeling worse than before with possibly even more problems to deal with. Another bad thing about happiness, from a spiritual standpoint, is that it promotes selfishness very strongly. This explains why happiness has to be emptiness to be a Christian. Jesus says, “Love others as I have loved you”. In the hardest case, this means that I should love my enemies unconditionally. In a life striving to find happiness, this would be next to impossible.
Although happiness, in most cases, is empty, I do believe happiness exists. To relate back to the earlier question of an all-loving God, we sort-of have to believe in happiness to believe that God loves us and in the same sense, we have to believe in happiness in order to find a soul-mate that we will spend the rest of forever with. The conclusion was met earlier that happiness that is sought after is selfish and can therefore be named empty as well because something done out of selfishness cannot also be done out of love. This means the only real happiness is something that cannot be found. In a sense, it can only be given. Because real happiness can only be given and good things exist out of love and love only, then the only way to happiness is through love.
I believe that God is calling us to abandon our search for happiness.
We are insignificant as individuals. But together we are not. Therefore, may we long to make a difference, not for ourselves, but for others.
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6 comments:
Saint Augustine said, "Our hearts are restless until we repose in thee."
This is a very important quote to me, because I feel that it sums up why I need God. I can always tell when I have not been doing what I am supposed to (Some could argue that it is my own conscience, and i know this).
I think that it is important to remember that we are the hands and feet of Christ, so like you said the question is not if God can do something...it is are we willing to heed God's call and take action.
That starving kid in Africa will not get food without us helping, and with us giving time, money and supplies he/she will be able to eat. The same goes for your friend; without the help of doctors and medicine the common cold could turn into pneumonia, which in turn could be fatal.
Being a Christian should not simply be a title...it should be your lifestyle (to keep it simple...take action!)
In Saint Augustine's view, TRUE happiness in this world is impossible, because happiness is not temporary (like you said)...but is something that cannot waver. We all have our ups and downs in this life, therefore we cannot be truly happy.
Read up on Augustine (The City of God, and The Confessions) I think that you would get a lot out of it.
We're are not insignificant as individuals by any means. God has called us to go into the world preaching the gospel of Christ. We are God's children, His most important creation, and those that believe in Him will spend eternity with Him. God is an all-knowing all-powerful and yes, all-loving God. But evil entered the world through sin, Adam and Eve's sin, and the world is no longer at it's perfect beautiful state God intended it to be when he created it. I also do not believe Christian s in the church become upset when a doctor heals a sick or dying patient. Most understand that the miraculous works that came from these hands were from the power of God. Some churches' legality has tainted the view of what the real Body of Christ is meant to uphold and represent; the unfailing grace and love of Jesus Christ, and the gift he offers us.
To jeffrey: I have enjoyed what I have read of St. Augustine, my favorite thing I have heard of him thus far is "An unjust law is no law at all." This quote has been of great importance in my life in recent times. Whenever laws are made out of greed the world is unsound.
To ohsnapitsla: I agree with the idea that legality has tainted churches. What I essentially meant was that there is an overwhelming amount of christians(speaking from my viewpoint, which could definitely be different from yours) that have grabbed hold of of God in a very mystical sense meaning they think of a supernatural being that exists solely seperate from everything that this world is. I do not mean to say that I don't think this type of God exists, I just know that the bible tells us that God exists within us. "Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me." Meaning that even in the case of non-believers, God can exist. Also, to clarify, I do not mean to in any way cheapen God's grace by crediting man for the same things or bringing God to our level. So my point would be that rather than believe that we should pray to a supernatural being and then sit and watch and wait we need to react to God's calling on our lives.
Shane Claiborne said, in a video that I watched of him, that if you ask God why there are things going so horribly wrong in the world, he would probably ask you the same question back.
I agree with what Shane Claiborne said.
Again, going back to Augustine, he equates the "problem of evil" with human error. It is by our decisions as, entities with free wills, that evil persists in this world.
It is our responsibility to "change" the world...to make a difference. God could make us do his will...but then...is it out of love for him (or others for that matter) that we do it?
I would think not.
There are a number of interesting points in your original post. I've wonder about similar questions and wrestled with the issue of happiness. Firstly, there is no doubt that the Bible portrays God as a deity that permits but does not cause evil. The account of Job illustrates that God permits evil. However, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob does not approve of evil. God is omnibenevolent. Indeed, God must be wholly good, if he is the maximally excellent being that compossibly exemplifies all great-making properties (omnipotence, omniscience, and so forth).
Secondly, I agree that we probably should not pursue happiness. Holy Writ indicates that we should serve God and happiness will follow. Think about the psalm that states: "How blessed [i.e. happy] are the people whose God is the LORD!" (Psalm 144:15 NASB)
"Happy is that people, whose God is the LORD" (KJV).
"happy is the people whose God is Jehovah" (American Standard Version).
So, the Old Testament suggests that happiness is a result of worshiping God. And Jesus also pointed the way to happiness in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Notice what kind of persons he declares "blessed" (Greek, MAKARIOS). See Matthew 5:3-12.
One last thing: before we can be happy, we need to define what we mean by the term. Aristotle contends that happiness is something long-term. It is human well-being or human flourishing. Happiness is not a temporary state. For Aristotle, it is an activity of the soul.
Cheers!
Edgar,
Thanks for the insights...very good points indeed.
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