Why Do We All Want Happiness?

Why do we all want happiness?

The people the LORD has freed will return and enter Jerusalem with joy. Their happiness will last forever. They will have joy and gladness, and all sadness and sorrow will be gone far away. Isaiah 51:11, NCV

While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life’s joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world’s sorrows, tasting the coming joy. TIMOTHY KELLER

THE FEVERISH PURSUIT of happiness in our culture might lead us to believe it’s a passing fad, the worldview equivalent of bell-bottoms or Beanie Babies. Not so. The desire for happiness isn’t, as many suppose, the child of modern self-obsession. The thirst for happiness is deeply embedded in all people, in every culture, and even in God’s Word.

The Shawshank Redemption contains a poignant scene in which a prisoner, Andy, locks himself into a restricted area and plays a record featuring opera singers.

Beautiful music pours through the public address system while prisoners and guards stare upward, transfixed.

Another prisoner, Red, played by Morgan Freeman, narrates:

I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. . . . I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.^a

The music liberated those prisoners, stirring feelings of a better reality and instilling hope that true beauty exists. We, too, though living in a fallen world, dare to hope for a transcendent happiness that’s out there . . . somewhere.

I have fond memories of my childhood and the idealistic dreams of my early life. But by the time I was a teenager, I was disillusioned and empty—though most who knew me wouldn’t have guessed.

In junior high I got good grades, won awards, played quarterback, was named team captain, and was elected student body president, but I wasn’t happy. I had brief tastes of happiness, but I spent far more time seeking and longing for happiness than experiencing it. I bought comic books by the hundreds, subscribed to fantasy and science fiction magazines, and spent nights gazing through my telescope, pondering the universe, longing for something better.

The night sky filled me with awe—and a small taste of happiness. I yearned for something bigger than myself. (Since I knew nothing of God, aliens were the primary candidates—somehow I knew that this world by itself didn’t have enough for me.) One unforgettable night, I gazed at the great galaxy of Andromeda, 2.5 million light-years away, with its trillion stars. I longed to explore it someday, to lose myself in its immensity.

But my wonder was trumped by an unbearable sense of loneliness and separation. I wept that night because I felt so incredibly small. Unknown to me, God was using the marvels of his universe to draw me to himself. Through God’s creation, I was seeing “his invisible attributes . . . his eternal power and divine nature” (Romans 1:20).

When I first read the Bible, it was new, intriguing, and utterly disorienting. I opened it and discovered these words: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Then I read the greatest understatement ever: “He made the stars also” (Genesis 1:16, KJV). Countless stars in a universe one hundred billion light-years across are a mere add-on: “also.”

I realized that this book was about a person who made the universe, including Andromeda and Earth—and me.

Because I had no reference points when I read the Bible, it wasn’t just Leviticus that confused me. But when I reached the Gospels, something changed. I was fascinated by Jesus. Everything about him had the ring of truth, and soon I came to believe he was real. Then, by a miracle of grace, he transformed me—and the single most noticeable difference was my newfound happiness.

My father, angry that I’d turned to a belief he disdained, predicted I would “outgrow” my conversion. I’m grateful that forty-five years later, I haven’t. (I’m also grateful that at age eighty-five, four years before his death, my dad trusted Christ.)

Like everyone else, I’ve experienced suffering and heartaches in my life. Still, every day I find happiness in the one who reached out to me with his grace decades ago—and continues to do so whenever I call out to him. I hope you’ll join me in this journey and that together we will experience the life-changing happiness of God.

Lord, we live in a world that sells false happiness at newsstands, stores, and websites. Thank you for offering us authentic happiness in Jesus. Help us to remember that our desire for true happiness comes from you and can only be fulfilled by you, the happy God.