(As I write
this, I am wondering if I have this right.
Am I really accidentally picking up books that just coincidentally carry
similar themes? Could there be some Providence working in my choosing so that I
will be fed, by hook or crook, a healthy dose of whatever it is I am needing to
learn right now? Or perhaps neither of
these is exactly the truth. Maybe truly
I choose freely my books, as I do every day the clothes from my closet, without
the finger of God really being involved at all in my choice. In fact, it might be that someone else
reading these same books might not even notice the congruency in lessons that
catches my eye, captures my mind, and eventually moves my heart to accept and
be changed by the double- or triple- or quadruple-pronged lesson. ) All of that
was put into parentheses because it’s not the point I set out to make, just a
stream of consciousness intrusion that so often happens when I set out to tell
any kind of a story. Maybe we will get
back to this stream later, but if I deal with that now, I will forget what I
wanted to say to start with.
Lately,
everything I read is prodding me to reevaluate what living a happy, fulfilled
life of peace in the Lord means, according to Him, the Lord. Do I have it right? Am I pursuing the kind of life that God will
bless with His peace and His joy, or have I slipped into the postmodern way of
thinking about the pursuit of happiness. Of course I know that the blessedness
of the beatitudes isn’t the same thing that most would define as sheer, crazy,
out-of-this-world, wild bliss. I know
that, even though some versions do substitute the word “happy” for “blessed,”
that kind of happiness that comes from being persecuted for righteousness’ sake
is something that must grow on us, or rather that we must grow into; I don’t
think Jesus is trying to convince us that the joy from that sort of thing would
immediately feel like happiness or
even joy, since joy seems to be something less superficial. I believe He is promising us something that
will usher us into the place we need to be to experience the strong, durable,
lasting peace and joy that is above circumstance. I remember learning all this as a much
younger Christian, and I think I have maintained my awareness of this
truth. I think I have.
But as I
read these books that strongly call me out from inside myself and into others,
I am reminded that that what Christians from earlier generations, and even the
Founding Fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence, meant by the
“pursuit of happiness” was something
much different from what today’s American society, even Christians, think of as
happiness.
It seems
like what Americans wanted a guaranteed right to pursue was not a life of
self-centeredness and constant pampering, but a life of purposeful living. If we listen to our parents and grandparents
talk about their lives forty or fifty years ago, when they describe good
memories of happiness and joy, they don’t talk so much about high-priced
vacations (vacating) as much as they talk about interacting and throwing
themselves all together into purposeful experiences that brought relief and
even rescue to their community.
And I’m a
little worried because I know a lot about fun.
I have learned a whole lot about having fun that, honestly, I just wish
I could somehow unlearn. I’m talking
about the easy, immediate, thrilling kind of fun that is bought with money and
concerns the stomach in one way or another: sometimes it’s the butterflies that
flit around in there at the thought of a rip-roaring good time of recreation,
and sometimes it’s the vast array of festive food that will overfill me. All
this has me concerned. I’m pretty sure
I’m slipping into that dangerous, wide highway that defines happiness as something
we chase after for its own sake.
Happiness
was never meant to be chased after as our one goal. Single-minded, goal-oriented people who enter
into this kind of a quest will end up doing whatever it takes to get some. And then some more the next day. And then, it becomes the normal expectation
of every one of our days. And this kind of thing can easily become what
happens, even to Christians, if we don’t discipline ourselves to prayerfully
answer some important questions about how we define happiness and joy and peace
as compared to how Jesus defined it.
If we allow
ourselves the luxury of getting on a quest like this, we usually find that once
we have figured out what does it for us, it is just so much easier to get it
when a lot of other people aren’t involved.
After all, what if they have their own idea of happiness and it clashes
with ours? And so, often we end up pursuing
happiness in isolation or with just a few, who have the good taste and judgment
to define happiness like we do. As I study
the Word, this just doesn’t seem to be what Jesus had in mind for us. He had a different kind of happiness that
involved purposeful living, giving
and taking, not taking and taking some more, bringing shalom into the world around us that would otherwise be doomed to chaos. That’s the way Jesus set out to live every day
He got up; that was the example He set for us: to take the risk of involving
ourselves with others who might hinder our fun until finally we learn that the
only kind of happiness worth having is the kind you can only find when you take
it off the bullseye where it never belonged.
Maybe you
are scratching your head about me right now and wondering why I am wasting the
time of both of us stating the obvious here. Maybe you are so far down the road
that this is child’s play to you. I
thought I was, but now I think I’m not.
I think I have fallen into some lazy thinking and have allowed myself to
get caught up in the pursuit of the wrong kind of happiness. I think that I
almost forgot that this is a world easily defined and limited by gravity, both
physically and spiritually, and at least for the span of eighty or ninety
years, I am going to have to fight against it in a conscious way.
I am praying now that I will give God the
chance to work with me and use me in some serendipitous ways instead of taking
the reins out of His hands and heading off to do my thing every morning after
my devotional time.
P.S. Okay, maybe I
didn’t choose the books like I chose my clothes. You probably knew I would
eventually figure it out, huh?
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