Is Seeking Happiness Selfish?

Is seeking happiness selfish?

I will sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the LORD. Psalm 27:6, NIV

Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. C. S. LEWIS

MANY CHRISTIANS BELIEVE the notion that wanting to be happy is inherently selfish and immoral. Why? Partly because we focus on one group of biblical statements without balancing them with others. True, the Bible warns against those who are “lovers of self,” identifying them as money-loving, boastful, proud, abusive, and unholy (see 2 Timothy 3:2). The self-love spoken of here is obviously wrong. But when Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves (see Matthew 22:39), he isn’t arguing that we shouldn’t love ourselves, only that we should extend our instincts for self-care to caring for others.

Flight crews routinely announce, “If you’re traveling with a child or someone who requires assistance, in the case of an emergency, secure your own oxygen mask first before helping the other person.” Those instructions may sound selfish, just as it sounds selfish to say that one of our main duties in life is to find happiness in God. But only when we’re delighting in our Lord do we have the happiness of God to offer everyone else. If we don’t take the time and effort to cultivate that happiness, we can’t help those around us.

It’s possible for someone to act sacrificially and selflessly in the best interests of others while enjoying the fruit, including feeling good about having honored God and receiving his approval and reward.

The pediatric surgeon who serves in remote African villages for minimal pay is by some standards making a huge sacrifice. After all, she could make ten times the money in an American hospital: better hours, higher success rates, and lavish living.

However, while she sacrifices conveniences to serve others, she is not sacrificing happiness. She’s happiest while using her gifts and skills to help people, knowing that by God’s grace she’s saving lives and improving children’s quality of life. She enjoys the teary gratitude of parents who thought their child’s cleft palate or inability to walk could never be corrected.

So she sacrifices something small to gain something great.

Those self-sacrificing yet self-gratifying physicians are living examples of what Jesus says: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:23-25). Similarly, Matthew records Jesus as saying, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39).

Many think that Jesus’ primary message here is the virtue of selflessness and self-sacrifice. But take another look: he calls us to lose our lives for his sake by appealing to our desire to find our lives and save them! By honoring and following Christ, we do the best possible thing for ourselves!

C. S. Lewis began his great sermon “The Weight of Glory,”

If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive. . . . The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.^a

Lewis went on to make this critical point: “The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.”^b

We are quick to recognize that Satan tempts us through offers of happiness and gain. However, we’re slower to recognize how he tempts us by offering a twist on our God-given desires.

If God has wired us to want happiness, surely we shouldn’t imagine it is wrong to want happiness. We just need to listen to God, not Satan, about where to find it. A high salary and good benefits will motivate someone to accept a position only if that person values big paychecks and perks. The draw of an academic credential, a sales award, an Olympic medal, or a Super Bowl ring all hinge upon one’s desire for such things.

I’ve had countless conversations with sincere Christians who imagine it’s selfish and wrong to desire the rewards God himself offers them. Yet Jesus repeatedly offered his followers rewards as motivations to follow him (see Matthew 6:6, 17-18; 25:37-40; Luke 6:22-23, 35, 38; 14:12-14). Since Christ appeals to our yearning for reward, which is a matter of personal gain, wanting reward and gain cannot be intrinsically wrong—God would never appeal to our desire for what’s sinful, because he never tempts us (see James 1:13).

Therefore we should want whatever Jesus offers us.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field” (Matthew 13:44, NIV). Should we feel sorry for this man? After all, he “sold all he had”—the poor man! But Jesus said he did this “in his joy.” He surrendered a lesser treasure to obtain a far greater one. The cost/benefit ratio was totally in his favor! We should seize our opportunity to part with small temporary treasures to gain great everlasting treasures (see Matthew 6:19-21).

When God calls upon us to deny ourselves and follow him, what appears to be our loss is in fact our gain. Should we want to gain our lives? Of course. Paradoxically and beautifully, losing our lives to Christ is the means to ultimately finding them.

Lord, your ways are so different from ours. Your ways bring happiness when ours bring only misery, frustration, broken relationships, and hopelessness. Remove our false guilt for wanting to experience fulfillment and gladness. Enable us to find ourselves and our happiness by losing ourselves in you.