“I just want you to be happy,” says a parent to her child.

The Declaration of Independence celebrates our pursuit of happiness. It is our birthright. But is it the reason for which we were made? Is the purpose of our existence the absence of pain and the satisfaction of desire? Our modern culture answers with a resounding, “Yes!”

The United Nations publishes a World Happiness Report every year. The United States has trailed the western world and declined each year since about 1990. And since 2011 happiness, however, measured, has plummeted for teens. If happiness is the human project, we are failing!

And when we turn to the Bible, we hardly find the word happy in the pages of any English Bible. What is that all about? Look at Jesus. The word happy is never used of him. But instead, he was the man of sorrows. In the garden where he prayed and “his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Lk. 22:44 ESV) the word happy just seems so wrong. But the Bible tells us of something more solid and substantial that filled his soul: joy.

looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…

Heb. 12:2 ESV

Our lives are seldom—may I say never?—free from those circumstances that cause us grief, pain, sorrow, or heartbreak. Life is filled with toil, and not only does our work not always bring about the desired happiness, but it all must be done again tomorrow. It sounds grim, doesn’t it? But that is perhaps we have set our sights not too high, but too low. C. S. Lewis said,

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

Jesus invites us—no, commands us—to follow him. It is not a path of mere happiness, the freedom from concern and pain, but a path with a cross like his. But it is also a path filled with his own joy. Let’s explore that in the next posts!

Mud Pies, by Ludwig Knaus