Movies, music, jewelry, cars, sex, food, money, technology. According to society, if we have all these things, we will be happy, and the more we have, the happier we will be. But do they really make us happy? Are the richest people the happiest and the poorest the saddest? Are the lives of the rich void of suffering because they have all the possessions they could ever want? Are the lives of the poor filled with depression and despair because they don't have many (or any) possessions? Contrary to what the world says, Christianity says that possessions do NOT bring happiness; in fact, Christians say, possessions can lead to sadness. What really makes us happy, they say, is a relationship with God. Who's right? Which philosophy makes more sense? Which worldview makes us happiest?
We all want to be happy; we would all love it if suffering suddenly disappeared from our lives and we could be completely happy. But, in the thousands of years of our existence, nobody has found total happiness on earth. Nobody has been able to avoid all suffering and be as happy as can be every single second of his life. However, we still desire happiness and an end to suffering. This desire is as basic as the desire for food and drink; in fact, all our other desires come from our desire to be happy. If we think something won't make us happy (either immediately or in the long run), we don't do it. If we think something will make us happy, we will do it. The search for happiness is the most basic of all human desires; it is the foundation of all our decisions. Every other basic human desire (such as hunger, thirst, the desire for love, etc., not the desire for a new car or a million dollars) can be fulfilled: we're hungry, so we eat; we're thirsty, so we drink; we're lonely, so we spend time with friends and family; we want sex, so we go to our spouses (or we're supposed to, anyway). But the desire for total happiness cannot be fulfilled in this life. Is this some kind of cosmic joke? Has nature placed this most basic of desires inside of us, only to tell us that we can't achieve it? Only to tell us that it's all a sham, a farce? No, there has to be SOME way to attain this goal. Maybe we will achieve total happiness in the future when our technology is improved? No, this doesn't solve the problem either. The natural desires we have are meant to be satisfied by any man, primitive or progressive, with or without technology. So, how can this desire be fulfilled? If not in this life, then in the next. Only after we die can we achieve complete happiness without suffering; only after we die can we satisfy our most basic desire. In the atheistic worldview, life after death is extremely improbable (if not impossible); only a theistic worldview can adequately explain this phenomenon.
Given that only an eternity with God can make us truly happy, we can conclude that all the money, possessions, and fame in the world won't make us perfectly happy. But, since heaven is after we die, maybe possessions can bring us happiness while we're on earth? No, they don't; I know this from experience. I live in one of the richest counties in America and go to a school where all of the kids are at least middle class, and many of them are in the upper class. But they're not deliriously happy. In fact, many are always complaining about something. I myself am not rich (by contemporary standards), but I'm fairly well off. However, my happiness does not come merely from my possessions. If they were all I had to bring me happiness, I'd go insane. Money cannot bring us happiness. Given that only God can make us eternally happy, it makes sense that we can only reach the pinnacle of earthly happiness in God.
But doesn't God impose too many rules on us? Doesn't religion make our lives dull and boring? Don't Christians look down upon having any fun at all? The answer to all these questions is no. Like I said before, we can only find true happiness in God, and to be in God we must obey His laws. But why does He impose these laws on us? The more we follow the moral law, the happier we will be. God made us specifically so that we could love to the best of our ability, and the whole moral law is based on love. It is in loving completely that we find true happiness. Think about it. Who has the happier life: the guy who hates everybody, trusts nobody, and wants to be by himself, or the guy who loves everyone and is always nice? Yes, but can't we be nice but still be naughty at the same time? The biggest obstacle to following the moral law these days is sex; the biggest sin of our era (in my opinion) is lust. What's so bad about "having a little fun" with a girl for just one night? If she agrees, then nobody's getting hurt. Well, this is a misunderstanding of sex. It is not a toy; it is not something to experiment with. It is an expression of total love and commitment between the two partners; this is why it's reserved only for marriage. Think about it. A husband and wife have (or are supposed to have) a very special relationship with each other (both physically and emotionally) that they have with nobody else. If a guy fell in love with every woman he met, would he really have a special relationship with his wife? Of course not! It's the same with physical intimacy; if a guy goes around having sex (or doing other things) with women besides his wife, he doesn't have anything special with her. We reserve the highest form of emotional intimacy for our spouses because we love them so much that we want to have a special relationship with them, and it should be the same way with sex. The only difference is that while we have less intimate forms of emotional closeness with friends (that's the normal course of human conduct), we don't have ANY type of sexual relationship with our friends (or, at least, we're not supposed to). Sexual intimacy is SO special that ANY form of it is reserved ONLY for our spouses. When we have this special relationship with our spouses, it makes us happy, even happier than womanizing.
So, the only way to find total happiness is to accept God and live by His laws. While they may seem arduous at first, it will pay off in the long run. Just like learning a foreign language may be tough at first, the ability to communicate with others is worth the trouble.
I think that here we must pause to explain two issues: the fall and hell.
First, the fall is a logical explanation of why obeying God's law can seem so hard when it's the right thing to do. We've been corrupted by sin, so we need God's grace to help us. Humans everywhere know that we have fallen. It is impossible for a person to follow the moral law perfectly, and we all know this. This, then, implies a fall; why would we have a moral law that's impossible to fulfill perfectly? Now, why did man fall? Simple. God made us to love Him, and to truly love it must be a free choice, not forced. Because of this, God gave us free will, the ability to freely choose or reject Him, which means that we have the ability to reject Him. And we did; the first humans rejected God (original sin), and it's been passed on from generation to generation. The question, then, is why did God allow this. Why does God pass on original sin to everybody who's ever been conceived, even though THEY THEMSELVES have not yet sinned? The same reason that Jesus was able to die for us. We're all connected as one big human family. We're connected so much that what one of us does can effect other people in ways as big as the fall or Christ's atonement. This is why Jesus was able to die in our place; had Adam not been able to pass on his sin to us, Jesus would not have been able to die for us. It's as simple as that. A sense of this connection can still be seen in modern times. If a member of your family does something great (such as saving a country from destruction), you'd feel a bit proud, even though you yourself didn't do anything. Conversely, if Hitler was your grandfather, you'd feel a bit ashamed, even though you yourself didn't do anything wrong. Another great example of this is national pride. If a country has done great things, its citizens will feel proud, even though they probably didn't do anything. Most Americans today are proud that they live in the "land of the free"; they're proud of those who have given their lives in war for the sake of freedom, from the Revolution to the war on terrorism. But most Americans haven't done anything. Nevertheless, they still feel as if they're somehow connected because they're Americans. It's the same way with the fall; we're all interconnected because we're humans, even though we may not always be aware of this connection.
Secondly, hell is a logical corollary of our ability to reject God. If we reject God, we don't want Him, so He leaves. Since we were made to be with God, we suffer without Him. Now, several questions may arise when talking about hell, most of them being very good questions. First, why doesn't God send the damned to a place like earth where they won't be totally with God, but they won't suffer like they do in hell? Well, if God stays just enough so that people won't suffer so much, then that's selfishness. That's using God just so you won't be happy, even though you reject Him; that's not right. Secondly, why doesn't God just destroy the damned rather than let them suffer eternally? Wouldn't that be a better fate? Well, we really can't know. We can't compare suffering to nonexistence because we don't know what nonexistence is like. For all we know, it could be worse than suffering, so we can't make that comparison. Thirdly, why would God eternally punish people for finite sins? Well, while each sin is finite, the total sum of our sins is infinite. People in hell still reject God; they won't repent. Well, how do we know that they won't repent? To accept God, we must love Him, but those in hell can't. True love does not come about as a result of separation from someone we previously rejected. So, what does hell have to do with anything? Nothing much, but it is related to happiness, and it shows that looking to something other than God for happiness will lead to suffering and sadness. Plus, it is also related to the next topic, what C. S. Lewis called the problem of pain.
A typical construction of this argument would go like this:
1) If God were all-loving, He would want His creatures to be happy.
2) If God were all-powerful, He could do whatever He wanted.
3) We are not happy (because we suffer), so therefore God does not exist.
First of all, all suffering comes from evil, and there are two kinds of evil: moral and physical evil. Moral evil is evil done by humans, and physical evil is evil in the natural world (such as storms, trees falling on people, etc.). Moral evil can easily be explained by free will. God gave us the ability to freely decide to act in one way or another, and with this freedom comes the possibility of harming others. Physical evil, on the other hand, requires a more in-depth explanation.
First of all, we must remember that we are a fallen race. With the fall, we have been alienated from God, so we are susceptible to pain and suffering. Now, as a fallen race, we are not in the state that Adam and Eve were before the fall, before they became corrupted by sin, but we want to get back to that state. That state, perfect happiness, should be our top priority (even though it's not always easy to act like it is), and it's God's top priority. Now, if our happiness here on earth gets in the way of our eternal happiness, then God is going to allow us to suffer to bring us closer to Him. The best example of this I've ever read is C. S. Lewis's A Grief Observed. It is the journal that he wrote after his wife died; it is the story of how he lost his faith and regained it. Lewis, one of the most famous Christian apologists of the twentieth century, was not a likely candidate to lose his faith, but he did for a while. At the end, his conclusion is that his faith was like a house of cards that, by allowing his wife to die, God knocked down and let Lewis rebuild. And, he says, if his faith were still a house of cards, God would knock it down again. And again, and again, and again, until his faith became an impenetrable fortress, strong enough to enter the kingdom of heaven. The more we stand firm in our faith in the midst of suffering, the stronger it becomes, and we come closer to God. In times of intense suffering God may sometimes be the only thing left to cling to, and if we seize the opportunity, we can learn to trust in Him completely, bringing us ever closer to eternal happiness.
While that is a good explanation of why we experience certain types of pain, not all pain is that intense. Sometimes it's as small as just stubbing our toe, which can hardly bring us closer to God; this is where the fall comes in. As fallen creatures, we have been alienated from God, so we are susceptible to the aches and pains of everyday life. Plus, even through small amounts of suffering, we can inch our way closer to God.
Remember, God is our Father; He disciplines us and does what is best for us, even though we may not like it at the moment. Just as a human father doesn't save his son from every single ache, pain, or moment of suffering if it will help him in the long run, so God doesn't save us from every single ache and pain if it will help us in the long run. God loves us; He is not merely kind to us. There's a difference. Kindness is just helping someone to be happy at the present moment, even if we have no special love for the person. Love, on the other hand, cares for the person, even to the point of not being "kind" if it will help in the long run.
I've gone over a range of topics in this essay, and here I will wrap it all up. First, we all want to be happy, and only God can bring us true happiness. It follows logically that God should be our top priority. Secondly, God wants us to be happy with Him; that's why He made us. Thirdly, even though God wants us to be happy, He will respect our decision to reject Him (if we do) and let us be separated from Him. Fourthly, because of the fall, we have a tendency to move away from God, and it is through suffering that God brings us back to Him. This is the paradox of suffering; it is through suffering that we are brought to eternal happiness. God allows us to be temporarily unhappy because He wants us to be eternally happy.
