God Just Wants You to be Happy

“Happy are those who reject the advice of evil people, who do not follow the example of sinners or join those who have no use for God. Instead, they find joy in obeying the Law of the Lord, and they study it day and night.  They are like trees that grow beside a stream, that bear fruit at the right time, and whose leaves do not dry up. They succeed in everything they do. But evil people are not like this at all; they are like straw that the wind blows away.  Sinners will be condemned by God and kept apart from God's own people. The righteous are guided and protected by the Lord, but the evil are on the way to their doom.”  Psalms 1

If you were to examine the lists of sins in the previous two posts, you will notice that sin is usually a result of us doing what makes us feel ‘happy’.  Yet the mantra that you hear being preached to the western world is “God just wants you to be Happy” or so says the vast majority of not only secular Americans but Christian Americans as well.  The pursuit of individual happiness has begun to eclipse their obedience to the Word of God… after all, they muse, “God wants me to be happy.”  There is just one problem with that belief, ---- IT”S A LIE.  What if my own personal happiness interferes with your happiness?  Or what if doing what I want to do to make myself temporarily happy happens to violate human law, or worst yet God’s law?  If the prime purpose for your life is to be happy there would have been no reason for Jesus to come and die on the cross?   

I do not know if a study has ever been done on the matter, but what I have discovered in my life is that those same people who are busy proclaiming that God just wants you to be happy (and by you they mean themselves) that you will frequently hear these same people telling everyone that they are not as “bad, as greedy, or as selfish as you may think.   That they are a nice person.”    I have also noticed that those who I have discovered truly are genuinely a nice, generous, self –sacrificing, good person never mention it.    

There is a collation of course between the two sets of statements; the individual who speaks either of them is focused on themselves, their own desires, their own pleasures, their own rewards.  Their focus is inward and not outward.   If they are unhappy they will take matters into their own hands, and do whatever they feel like doing to give themselves that fleeting feeling of happiness.   Of course it does not last so they do it again and again and again, always focused on their own personal happiness. In their wake they leave a trail marked with greed, betrayal, immorality, pain and abuse.  But just in case you forget they will remind you that they are a ‘nice’ person, a ‘nice’ Christian.

I wonder how one of these Christians would respond if I were to tell them that what would make me happy (temporarily of course) would be to smack them in the mouth to silence them?  This, if the truth were known, would be a gentler thing than what they do to others in pursuit of their happiness.  Is that what God really wants me to do? 

I am not saying that these happiness seeking ‘Christians’ are mean, but anyone who is focused on their own personal happiness can not care about other people's well-being, they are devoid of ethics, having no empathy and no compassion beyond what serves their own selfish desires, They are corrupt people who play by their own rules, for their own gain, they are hollow inside.  But they are a ‘nice person’.    Psychologists call them Sociopaths, Psychopaths, and Narcissists; the Bible calls them evil.  

Conversely you will, if you look, realize that the most joyful people are those that exhibit the traits of being the most loving people, they are kind, caring and compassionate; ethics and integrity are byproducts of their life. They are pursuing holiness which is what God wants for each of us.   

Pursue Happiness and you will receive the byproduct of it... doom.  Pursue holiness, and you will receive the byproduct of it…. Joyfulness.  The choice is yours.