Happiness seems to be a big deal to us Americans. After all, our Founding Fathers thought happiness was important enough to write it into the Declaration of Independence. It states that we Americans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Wow! The right to happiness. That’s an interesting statement. We all want to be happy, right?
But what is happiness, exactly? And is it really so important? Happiness is an emotion, and if there’s anything we girls know, it’s that our emotions change all the time. I’m often joyful one minute over a new pair of shoes and sad the next because I gained a pound after eating a pint of chocolate cherry ice cream (in one sitting!). I was happy over my new red strappy sandals, but the happiness went away when I stepped on the scale. Was I really happy? And if I was, why did it go away so quickly?
I spent a lot of my teen years chasing happiness. I was happy when I got the part in a play but then sad when I got a bad grade in algebra. Happiness seemed to be a see-saw feeling; I was flying high above the swing set one minute and slammed down into the playground sand the next. Could I ever get hold of happiness to keep?
Weighing In
As do many young girls, I had a love-hate relationship with my body. I loved being able to go for a walk, swim, swing a racket and type on a keyboard without much effort, but I hate my thighs and my upper arms. My bathroom scale seemed to have a direct effect on my happiness. The lower the number, the happier I felt. It got to the point where I dreaded weighing myself, because I knew if that number had crept up a digit or two, I’d be devastated. I began to wonder if happiness was always so unpredictable. Could my scale really determine if I felt happy or not?
I decided to see what God said about my right to happiness. Although the word shows up a few times in the Bible, it’s never associated with a promise from God for our personal happiness. Yikes! So God doesn’t promise us we’ll be happy or tell us it’s our right to be happy? I didn’t like this discovery. I wanted to hear that Christianity was a guarantee for happiness and that God had said in the Bible that if we’re Christians, we’ll also be happy. If that were true, however, I would need a refund, for I’ve been a Christian pretty much my whole life, and it hasn’t all been happy.
Between my parents’ divorce and my little sister’s dying in a car accident, I’ve certainly known much sadness in my life. Sure, I’ve had happy times, like summers at the cottage or traveling to Europe or finding the perfect pair of jeans. But those happy moments seem to teeter like the numbers on the bathroom scale.
Joy in Trials
When I look at some of the people in the Bible, I see that their lives weren’t exactly what I’d call happy. The apostle Paul, for example, was in and out of jail, beaten, starved, shipwrecked multiple times, and he said he counted it all joy. James 1:2-4 says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Joy!? At being beaten and put in jail? How can this be? I have trouble finding joy in my comfortable house full of food and clean clothes. How did Paul find joy in a cold, dirty, lonely prison cell? And not only does Paul say we should find joy in trials, but they’re good for our character. That’s hard for me to hear. I don’t want trials; I would much rather just be happy all the time. But the Bible says we need hardships to mature and build our endurance in order to complete the purpose God has for our lives.
So according to the Bible I should be joyful over hard times because they’re developing me into the person God wants me to be. As much as I hate feeling sad, I’ve come to realize that sadness is something the Lord uses to mold us. The Bible says, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:6-7). The Lord considers our suffering and unhappiness more valuable than gold, because it can strengthen our faith.
It’s hard to understand why God allows us to go through bad times, but we can pray for the wisdom to trust God through these trials. Happiness comes and goes, and if we’re always trying to be happy we’ll be tossed about like waves on the sea. We need an anchor that will keep us in one spot no matter what storms come into our lives. Hebrews 6:19 states, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”
Makes No Difference
Clearly Paul, through the Holy Spirit, and our Lord have a different idea about happiness than we Americans. Jesus said in John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. I memorized it years ago and often need to say it to myself when life gets tough. God doesn’t promise us happiness, because happiness, like the numbers on a scale, comes and goes, but He does promise us everlasting peace. We can trust Him to keep us steady when the waves roll over our heads.
There’s nothing wrong with happiness. It’s wonderful when we feel it, but we Christians can’t chase happiness as though it’s the answer to life. It’s fleeting and will never satisfy us, so instead we should follow our Lord and Savior, and we’ll find the peace and joy promised to His children.
The bathroom scale might affect our happiness, but if we know and obey Jesus, the numbers on the scale need not affect our true joy.
