Where Did Our Desire For Happiness Originate?

Where did our desire for happiness originate?

Let everything that breathes sing praises to the LORD! Praise the LORD! Psalm 150:6, NLT

It is as natural for the reasonable creature to desire to be happy, as it is for the fire to burn.

THOMAS MANTON

THE FIRST PANEL OF a cartoon shows happy schoolchildren entering a street-level subway station—laughing, playing, tossing their hats in the air. The next panel shows middle-aged adults emerging from the station looking like zombies—dull, joyless, utterly unenthusiastic. A study indicates that children laugh an average of four hundred times daily, adults only fifteen.^a So what happens between childhood and maturity that diminishes our capacity for happiness?

Based on the books I’ve read, the sermons I’ve heard, and the conversations I’ve had, I’m convinced that many Christians believe our desire for happiness doesn’t come from God but was birthed in humankind’s fall.

Were we merely the product of natural selection and survival of the fittest, we’d have no grounds for believing any ancient happiness existed. But even those who have never been taught about the Fall and the Curse intuitively know that something is seriously wrong.

Why else would we long for happiness and sense what a utopian society should look like even if we’ve never seen one? We are nostalgic for an Eden we’ve only seen hints of. Medieval scholar Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) lamented humanity’s fall and the loss of the happiness that comes from knowing God: “O wretched lot of man, when he hath lost that for which he was made! . . . He has lost the blessedness [happiness] for which he was made, and has found the misery for which he was not made.”^b

What if Anselm was right and God made us for happiness, and therefore our desire to be happy is inseparable from our longing for God? What if God wired his image bearers for happiness before sin entered the world, and what if that wiring can be properly directed at him and all he wants for us? How might this perspective change our approach to life, parenting, church, ministry, business, sports, entertainment, and everything else?

Anglican bishop J. C. Ryle (1816–1900) wrote, “Happiness is what all mankind want to obtain—the desire for it is deeply planted in the human heart.”^c If this desire is “deeply planted” in our hearts, who planted it? Our answer to that question will dramatically affect the way we see the world. Did Adam and Eve want to be happy before they sinned? Did they enjoy the food God provided because it tasted sweet? Did they sit in the sun because it felt warm and jump into the water because it felt refreshing? If we believe God is happy, then doesn’t it stand to reason that he would create us with the desire and capacity to be happy?

Yet today, Christ-followers say things like, “God wants you blessed, not happy”;^d “God doesn’t want you to be happy. God wants you to be holy”;^e and “God doesn’t want you to be happy, he wants you to be strong.”^f But does the message that God doesn’t want us to be happy promote the “good news of happiness” spoken of in Isaiah 52:7? Does it reflect the gladness-saturated gospel of redemption in Christ? Or does such antihappiness language obscure the Good News? If happiness is what you want and God doesn’t want you to be happy, wouldn’t that actually be bad news?

When we separate God from happiness and from our longing for happiness, we undermine the Christian worldview. We might as well say, “Stop breathing and eating; instead, worship God.” People must breathe and eat, and they must also desire happiness—and they can worship God as they do so!

Lord Jesus, help us to remember, with our every breath, what a precious gift life is. We can’t live without you—you are our provider, our protector, and our best friend. Thank you that, regardless of all claims to the contrary, you really do want us to be happy in you. Thanks for not only giving us a desire for happiness but also giving us so many ways we can please you by pursuing happiness in you.