Does God Want Us To Be Happy Or Holy?

Does God want us to be happy or holy?

In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. JESUS (John 16:33, NKJV)

Not everyone who has the will for happiness has happiness.

ANSELM

THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHER and mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) famously said, “All men seek happiness.” He also wrote these words in his collection of thoughts on theology:

What else does this longing and helplessness proclaim, but that there was once in each person a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? We try to fill this in vain with everything around us, seeking in things that are not there the help we cannot find in those that are there. Yet none can change things, because this infinite abyss can only be filled with something that is infinite and unchanging—in other words, by God himself. God alone is our true good.^a

The Fall didn’t generate the human longing for happiness—it derailed and misdirected it.

Scripture portrays our connection to the sin of Adam in a way that transcends time—as if we were there in Eden with him (see Romans 5:12-21). Similarly, I believe we inherited from our Eden-dwelling ancestors a sense of their pre-Fall happiness. This explains why our hearts refuse to settle for sin and suffering and we long for something better.

The devil’s lie from the beginning was that God doesn’t care about our good. The truth is, God wants us to seek real happiness in him, while Satan wants us to seek false happiness that will only leave us empty and broken. (There is also false holiness—the Pharisees had a passionate desire to be holy on their own terms, resulting in self-congratulatory pride. We don’t invalidate true holiness because of its false forms, and neither should we invalidate true happiness because many seek happiness in sin.)

Satan hates God, he hates us, and he hates happiness as much as he hates holiness—God’s and ours. He isn’t happy and has no happiness to give, so he dispenses rat poison in bright, colorful, happy-looking wrappers. The devil has no power to implant in us a desire for happiness. Satan is not about happiness; he is about sin and misery, which come from seeking happiness where it can’t be found. God is the one who planted our desire for happiness—the devil can’t remove it, he can only misdirect it.

Adam and Eve fell away from God and happiness because of their disobedience. However, they never lost their desire to be happy. As their descendants, we inherited their separation from God, and therefore from happiness. Ages later, we retain a profound awareness that we were once happy—and that we should be happy.

This compelling desire for genuine happiness, while at times painful, is God’s grace to us. Longing for the happiness humankind once knew, we can be drawn toward true happiness in Christ, which is offered to us in the gospel.

Because we were made for greatness, the world’s superficiality is unsatisfying. We sense that unhappiness is abnormal, and we ache for someone, somehow, to bring us lasting happiness. That someone is Jesus, and the somehow is his redemptive work.

When I was a teenager, God used my persistent desire for happiness to prepare me for the gospel message. The “good news of happiness” in Christ (Isaiah 52:7) was exactly the cool water my thirsty young soul craved.

The gospel is good news only to those who know they need it. Had I been happy without Jesus, I never would have turned to him.

Yet while I heard much about God’s holiness at church, Bible college, and seminary, not once did I hear about God’s happiness. I have no doubt it would have been surprising, memorable, and encouraging. What better explanation for the flood of happiness that overwhelmed my life after coming to Christ than that my God, who created, redeemed, and indwelt me, was happy?

Though I studied the Bible regularly, somehow the hundreds of Scriptures indicating God’s pleasure, delight, and joy didn’t register. They were nullified by unbiblical statements I heard from pastors and authors, such as “God calls us to holiness, not happiness.”

I’ve always been a voracious reader, inhaling books, including theological works, by the hundreds. But I didn’t read anything about the happiness of God until the late 1980s, after I’d been a pastor for ten years. John Piper’s then-new books Desiring God and The Pleasures of God introduced me to a subject I should have heard about in my first few months attending church as a teenager.

Fortunately, it’s never too late to learn. If this book is your first introduction to the idea that God is happy and has wired us to crave happiness in him, I hope it excites and inspires you to realize that your yearning for happiness is a gift from God and that he alone can ultimately satisfy you.

God, we’re so grateful that you implanted this intense craving for happiness in us so we would continue searching until we found its source in you. Thank you for providing the way to experience the true happiness you intended for us before the Fall. Help us to never be content with the world’s cheap imitations of happiness but to always seek the happiness that’s in you and from you.