The Endless Pursuit of Happiness
I don’t know how many of you have read the American Declaration of Independence, but it says this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This document tells us that human beings have the right to pursue happiness—and this seems to make sense, doesn’t it? Most of us don’t want to keep others from being happy and most of resent it when it seems like others are doing this to us.
But what sticks out to me here is that happiness is something we pursue. I am responsible for my own happiness. And in our culture this is how we think, isn’t it? And of course in our culture, most people believe that happiness comes with success, good health, a family life, and money and possessions. The American Dream, which people often think of as financial success, continues to be just a dream—no amount of hard, honest work appears to pay off in the end. And even when it seems to pay off with wealth and success, there is no guarantee that we’ll be happy.
If all of this is true, then we have to ask ourselves this question: what is happiness anyway? If having all that I want—money, success, family, health—doesn’t bring lasting happiness, what does? Is it possible to be truly happy? Why do so many people find happiness elusive? To answer these questions, we have Psalm 128, a psalm about happiness, the kind of person who knows happiness, and what happiness looks like.
“The Lord bless you . . .”
Our psalm begins with the line “Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.” We can also say “blessed is everyone.” The Hebrew word that begins Psalm 128 can be translated either way. So in biblical terms, happiness and blessedness is the same thing; to be happy is to be blessed, and to be blessed is to be happy. Now when you think of the word “happy” in our culture we often think of this word in terms of what I have to do to “get” happiness. If someone asks you if you’re happy, you might feel guilty, as though you realize you’re not doing enough to get this happiness that some people say you have a right to pursue. Or maybe you feel like you have tried and no matter how much you’ve pursued happiness, it’s eluded you. Some people, of course, never stop trying; other give up and resign themselves to unhappiness, thinking there’s nothing they can do to make themselves happy. And these last people are right. There is nothing we can do.
Think of the other word, “blessed.” Most of us would admit that whatever being blessed means that none of us can bless ourselves. Our church vocabulary conditions us to think of blessing as something we do for others—be it blessing God in worship and by blessing others through our service. The word suggests that being blessed is precisely not something that I can do for myself. It sounds instead suspiciously like something done for us and to us. If this is true, and I can’t find happiness and blessedness on my own, how can I find it?
According to Scripture only God truly blesses—all of the ways we might bless others are derived from God. And by looking at Scripture we see that to bless is something God loves to do. God pronounces a blessing on Adam and Eve in the garden. He announces to Abraham that He will bless him. He blesses the 12 tribes of Israel. In the NT Jesus calls those who commit themselves to the path of discipleship “blessed” and in the beatitudes in Matthew 5 gives a vivid picture of what this blessedness looks like. God desires to bless us—He loves to bless us! The problem is that so often we find this hard to believe.
Some people have the definite impression that God is a kill-joy, that He is the one looking to take all the fun out of life. How many people do you know who resist God because they think that being a Christian will take all the fun out of life? People think, “If I take God too seriously, I’ll never enjoy myself again!” To these people, God is the one who wants to rain on our parade. As a result people who believe this run from God for the sake of having what they think will be happiness. So that God cannot cramp their enjoyable lifestyle, they go their own way. But is God really looking to suck the joy out of our lives and make us dour and sour?
The witness of Scripture seems to sing the opposite tune, that God wants to bless us and wants us, therefore, to be happy. God wants to give us life, and not just any life, but life overflowing with abundant joy. God desires our happiness. It is a not a happiness that the world can know, but only one that God can give. The problem is that happiness—true blessedness—may not look like what we want it to look like and it’s not something we can acquire for ourselves.
Happiness is not the experience of simply having a good day or experiencing what we believe to be “good luck.” Happiness is also not found in entertainment and pleasure—blessedness and happiness is not the same thing as this. What the world offers to make us happy acts more like temporary sedatives, preventing us from receiving the only happiness that truly lasts. The book of Ecclesiastes calls our attempts to live satisfying lives apart from God “vanity and a chasing after wind.” What we think is happiness turns out to be futile and meaningless in the end. Thankfully God desires our happiness.
“Happy is everyone . . .”
Well, not only does our Scripture let us know that God desires our happiness; it also lets us in on the sort of person who is happy. Now the wonderful thing here is that the happiness that God offers is available for everyone. “Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.” All are included in the invitation. God doesn’t want to leave anyone out. The problem is that people leave themselves out. Why? You see, there is a direct connection between happiness and fearing the Lord that cannot be cut. The Hebrew word that we translate here as “happy” or “blessed” “describes the sense of happiness and wholeness that comes from living in good relationship with God.”
In other words, we can’t be happy and blessed apart from fearing the Lord and walking in His ways. Most people try, but it never works. These folks, thinking that there can be no true happiness if I do walk in the Lord’s ways, turn tail and run as fast as they can in the opposite direction. They’re like the prodigal son who wants to get his inheritance and ends up squandering it, giving absolutely no thought about the father who provides him with his riches. The problem, of course, is that anyone who does this, who tries to find happiness apart from the Lord, is going against the grain of how God has made things. If God is the Creator of all things, it only stands to reason that happiness consists in being in relationship with Him. Everyone can know this happiness; but while everyone is invited, few actually show up.
Let’s look a little more closely at v. 1. It tells us who will be happy: “Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.” But what does it mean to fear the Lord? Our passage doesn’t mean that God frightens us. We’re talking about awe and reverence. It is that moment of realization that we are living in the presence of a holy God who deserves our worship. It is when we make the decision to entrust our lives to Him because we know that He is the ultimate source of our lives. It means orienting our lives toward God. God becomes the source of happiness for us when we recognize that all that we have comes from Him.
V. 1 also says “Happy is everyone . . . who walks in his ways,” and in one sense this is simply a parallel statement to “fear the Lord.” To fear the Lord means to walk in His ways; walking in His ways demonstrates our fear of the Lord. But more specifically it means that we also are to live obediently. It means that our fearing the Lord takes shape in putting one foot in front of the other in daily acts of loving discipleship. All of us know that none of us does this perfectly. But being perfect disciples—in the sense that we often use the word ‘perfect’—is not the point. Walking in the way of the Lord in holy reverence is. We don’t only achieve happiness once we become perfect disciples. The happiness—the blessedness—is in the walking.
“Like a fruitful vine . . .”
If v. 1 tells us who will be happy, vv. 3 – 4 give us a picture of what such happiness looks like. They describe the life of someone who decides to fear the Lord and walk in His ways. Now the word used here for “bless” is different than the one in the first two verses. It “describes what God does as he shares his abundant life with us in a relationship of salvation.” In other words, it’s a word that applies to the practical blessings we receive in everyday life as we live in relationship with God.
In Hebrew culture, having a family and a wife who is capable of bearing children were signs of God’s blessing, as was fruitfulness in labour. Indeed, the opposite was also the case. A barren wife was seen as a curse. But of course we also know that sometimes even a barren wife was blessed by God—think of Sarah for instance. Here we see again that God delivers the blessing of children. But we need to be careful here. This is an illustration. Obviously we don’t all have to have lots of kids to experience happiness! Indeed comedian George Burns once joked that “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” And certainly anyone who does not have children—indeed cannot—is not thereby excluded from the blessings of God. But if this is an illustration for blessedness, how we can understand it for ourselves?
For the ancient Hebrews, happiness is experienced in the fruitfulness of work and family. What I think we can say from these verses is that blessings have a tendency to increase. Happiness spreads and multiplies, although not necessarily in the form of a larger family! Happiness is contagious and wants to be given away. When we really are blessed and happy, it is not something we want to keep to ourselves. Blessedness naturally spreads. To put it another way, it is a sense of blessing that comes to us when we seek to bless others. Mark Twain said that “Whoever is happy will make others happy too.” That is what we’re talking about here.
We hear it said that “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” but the world’s wisdom would have us believe the opposite—it invites us to take, buy, accumulate, consume, and do so greedily. Think of how most scientists believe that there is not a shortage of food in the world—there is plenty for everyone. There’s no excuse for hunger. There’s no justifiable need for children overseas to die of malnutrition. There is not a distribution problem—we have the technology to get food where it needs to go. What we have in our world is a greed problem—we don’t want to do without and we don’t want to give it away. People think, “If I don’t grab mine now, I might not get any.” No government or organization can solve this problem. Only Christians who fear the Lord and walk in His ways and have learned that blessedness comes not in having but in giving can solve it. So, then, fearing the Lord, living in holy reverence before Him and walking in His ways, means living with a giving spirit, one of generosity.
When we live in fear of the Lord—in holy reverence before Him—and walk in His ways, this means that we trust Him to provide all we need. This psalm encourages us to view the ordinary daily benefits of life in relation to God—it is God that we thank for even ordinary provisions: for fruitful labour, for food on the table and clothes on our backs, for a wife who can bear children, and for the children that fill our homes and surround our tables like olive shoots. This means we do not have to try and pursue our own provisions and happiness anxiously—eating that awful bread of anxious toil—but we can let happiness come to us by entrusting ourselves to Him and living lives of generosity.
“All the days of your life”
The best thing about living this way—in the fear of the Lord and by walking in His ways—is that this sort of happiness doesn’t depend on circumstances. Martha Washington said that “the greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances.” It’s a happiness that comes from the inside out, not the outside in. Those who live according to God’s ways will know a happiness that prevails despite the circumstances. Happiness comes not from having a fridge stuffed full of food, but with having a life filled with people with whom I can share the food I have.
1 Timothy 6:17, 18 says: “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.”
In doing all of this we also discover that even though we have the right to pursue happiness, at least according to The Declaration of Independence, that the greater blessedness comes not from pursuing our own happiness but in pursuing the happiness of others. More than that, we also discover that only by securing the happiness of others do we guarantee our own.
