Is Happiness A Legitimate Pursuit?

As a young Christian, I heard someone say, “God doesn’t want you happy, he wants you holy.” Another way I’ve heard this, “God isn’t interested in your happiness, he’s interested in your holiness.” And it’s often said like it’s a clever play on words. 

I remember hearing it for the first time and wondering, “Are those two things mutually exclusive? Doesn’t he want both for us?”

The Old and New Testaments are filled with prescriptions for happiness. Jesus himself spoke often about it and laid out a roadmap to happiness in his Sermon on the Mount. According to Jesus, Paul, and Old Testament writers, the human desire for happiness is a given.

Something else Christians tend to do is create a false dichotomy between joy and happiness. And I’ve often heard it said, “Happiness depends on what happens, but joy comes from the inside.” But you’ll only hear Christians say that, and it’s a form of modern Christianese. The English words for happiness and joy are synonyms. If you look up happiness in a dictionary, you will see the word joy. And if you look up joy, you’ll see the word happiness. The Greek words translated joy and happiness in the New Testament are also synonyms.

Throughout Christian history, Christian leaders used the words happiness and joy interchangeably. From Augustine, to Luther and Calvin, to Spurgeon, great Christian leaders of the past used joy and happiness interchangeably in their sermons and their writings, and they spoke of happiness as a legitimate desire of all people, including Christians.

So these dichotomies between happiness and holiness, and happiness and joy, are both recent, and not really Biblical.

The truth is, God is very interested in your happiness. The problem comes in how we pursue it. We think that happiness is found in following our hearts, doing what we feel like, getting lots of things, or in a human relationship.

But pursuing happiness in those things are surefire paths to unhappiness. God knows that. And that’s why he repeatedly tells us to seek happiness by seeking him.

We were created for God, to know and enjoy him, and for him to know and enjoy us. As believers, we are set apart for him (the meaning of holiness), and we will only achieve real and lasting happiness when we fulfill our purpose: knowing, following, honoring, and enjoying our creator.

So yes, happiness is a legitimate pursuit. But you will only find it when you pursue Jesus!