Christian Happiness

THE AMERICAN MARKETPLACE

Against many moral-spiritual offerings, the American marketplace currently proposes a materialist notion of happiness from which moral, spiritual, and public considerations are eliminated. I would characterize it as having what you want, when you want it, and in the amount that you want it, understood in material terms often focused on money, sex, and power (recognizing that money and sex are about power). Market forces and exceptional technological prowess have now established novelty, convenience and efficiency as crucial American values to maximize what Thomas Jefferson famously called “the pursuit of happiness.” Prizing novelty, convenience and efficiency now shapes American expectation of immediate gratification rather than valuing discerning judgment that the ancient Platonists, Stoics, Aristotelians, and the Buddhists all assumed is necessary to become excellent persons who will flourish emotionally and materially.

In discerning what happiness is, we seem to be facing a choice. Either the good life is a wisdom-driven life led by principles and character strengths that must be carefully cultivated from childhood, or it is that set of skills which enable us to master the forces of nature and society that can marshal against our getting what we want, when we want it, and in the amount that we want. The choice here is between thinking of happiness as either having to do with our spiritual life, or with adventitious good that we hope to acquire. Either it is about the quality of our life or our skill at negotiating the culture in which we live. My own belief is that this is a false choice, because the caliber of who we are cannot but affect how successful we will be at negotiating the world. Conversely, living in adequate circumstances of health, wealth, safety, and salutary companionship free the spirit to focus on the quality of one’s character and how we impact others as we negotiate the world around us.

AUGUSTINE ON HAPPINESS

From Augustine’s perspective, if happiness is the contentment of living an intentionally virtuous and well-examined life but one is ignorant of or resists that truth—thinking, for example, that happiness is the external pleasures wrought by money, sex, and power—one will never be happy because these transient pleasures cannot last, and Augustine began his reflection by observing that we all want happiness to last. So, he concludes that some people are deluded about what truly makes for a good life. Though people may say they want to be happy, if they do not understand that true happiness depends on wisdom that comes from within rather than possessions that come from without, they carry around a counterfeit notion of what we all truly want. They are self-deceived, having turned away from what truly happifies to follow a dead-end path that may temporarily please but will ultimately fail. Think of food, sex, and thrill, for we only want these over and over again. Long-term satiety is beyond their reach. Even more pointedly, think of the American Airlines drink napkins that say “Coca-Cola is Happiness.” It’s not only a lie. It’s insulting. Such slogans are silly if not pernicious for they are designed to drag us down to the level of soft drinks in order to get our money. Personally, I don’t even like Coca-Cola. It’s too sweet.

Against this dubious separation of the pleasures of a morally good life from the pleasures that come from enjoying material goods, Augustine proposed that happiness is having everything you want and wanting nothing wrongly (De Trinitate 13.8). Here we are at the crux of the Christian doctrine of happiness. Augustine, along with other ancient moral philosophers, believes that to pin happiness on material pleasures disconnected from the psychological pleasure that we derive from living excellently fails to value the genuine pleasure that comes from living graciously, gently, courageously, magnanimously, or (as the Buddhists would say) rightly. This may seem like a dualism that divides spiritual pleasure from sensuous pleasure, but I think that division is simplistic. I think it better to conclude that sensuous pleasure—pleasures of the body—divorced from enjoying a well-ordered moral life is problematic. Bodily pleasures are not to be scorned but they do need to be monitored. With this single terse sentence, Augustine set the standard for the western theological tradition that the happy life is grounded in the moral life, as a document like the Ten Commandments suggests.

AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM

Today in North America we are in an individualist culture that has severed the ancient bond between the moral life and the happy life and with the Augustinian–Thomistic bond between God and happiness on the grounds that happiness is having what we want and wanting it rightly.

Because Augustine was influenced by Stoicism and Neo-Platonism, he identified the personal skills needed for happiness in terms of character strengths. Basic to personal strength is self-mastery that requires self-control not control of others (De Trinitate 13.17)—as the desire for “money, sex, and power” does. So, my friends, even if the stark choice between a morally pleasurable life and a life devoted to temporal pleasures is an overly simplified construal of happiness, we are faced with a decision about what happiness truly is. The difference between the spiritual and the materialist proposals is, it seems to me, that Augustine and the ancient moralists are thinking in a context that is far larger than self, unlike the context that now characterizes individualist societies like ours. Communally oriented cultures of Asia do not suffer this problem. Convinced that the happy life properly understood is a well-ordered life oriented toward that which is truly good—not only for ourselves, but for the community—does not separate personal desire from the web of mutually interdependent relationships that enable society to flourish.

Happiness for Augustine depends upon mastering one’s desires that guide an ordered life that is far more likely to eventuate in flourishing on all levels than is a disordered life. It is not a matter of chance or of seizing an opportunity. It is not a matter of being in the right place at the right time. It is not just a matter of knowing the right people in the right places. Nor is it something adventitious, external to us. Happiness is not something that one receives, or that accrues to one by virtue of successfully manipulating the environment so as to control it. For despite technology and medicine’s ability to control more than ever before, in truth there is much that we cannot control in this life: catastrophic illness, injury, social and economic downturns, the devastations of war and climate changes as well as accidents of birth belie our pretense of power to bend the world to our will. No, for Augustine, Christian happiness is more under our control than reliance on circumstance allows for we can prioritize wanting exalted things and nothing can negate our enjoyment of living such an excellent life.

OUR BASIC CREATURELY GOOD

Lacking basic creaturely well-being can be spiritually corrosive. It can be degrading and anxiety producing, and can distract from tending to the quality of one’s actions and their impact on others. That is, creaturely disadvantage and deprivation may deter one from discerning what is truly worth wanting. Greed may lurk in all of our hearts, but serious deprivation can activate that greed in exceptional degree. Poverty forces people to focus their energies on fighting for financial and physical survival and may crowd out space for the examined life, which is necessary for moral-spiritual flourishing.

Unstable family life cannot easily train the young in the skills needed to benefit from education and to sustain constructive relationships. Further, creaturely deprivation can cultivate character weaknesses: greed, as noted, reflexive anger, contempt, xenophobia, anguish, despair and self-righteousness that are socially isolating. In short, physical well-being provides a floor upon which psychological well-being is enhanced and psychological well-being enables one to strengthen one’s intellectual and spiritual strength for moving ever more deeply into life with God that in turn strengthens one’s ability to master untoward desires.

Creaturely security allows the mental and emotional space to attend to the quality of one’s life, or as Augustine puts it, attending to what it means to know, love, and enjoy God. Yet even if a comfortable material floor is needed to be able to tend to the quality of one’s spiritual desires, it does not assure that one will be interested in doing so because in order to want what is truly worth wanting we need to be able to discern what is truly worth wanting and what is not. That is why valuing moral-spiritual goods above material goods has a point.

THEN WHAT IS TRULY WORTH WANTING?

Happiness from a Christian perspective entails having what we want and what is truly worth wanting. In a materialist and individualist culture like the U.S., how are we to learn to distinguish between what is truly worth wanting and what is not? American culture no longer enjoys the support of moral philosophical assumptions that enabled Augustine and Aquinas to rely on the desire for moral excellence as an alluring category that brings satisfaction and contentment to one’s life. Perhaps it was never so. By the same token, it is interesting to note that the value of spiritual self-cultivation has reemerged over the past forty years, although not necessarily in the Christian form that focuses on God or that addresses the Augustinian point that a serious Christian teaching on happiness must include learning to want what is truly worth wanting. My point here is that if we need training in how to cultivate the best life, we need guidance and practice.

For guidance in discerning what is truly worth wanting I am particularly drawn to the commandments of the Older Testament, not only the famous ten which are direct but many more whose moral guidance encourages formation of salutary dispositions, for these are essential to learning to want well. They articulate not a vague general notion of life with God but give specific shape to it through guidelines for the actual texture of that life. For example, the command to leave the corners of a field unharvested, and the injunction not to strip your vineyard bare of fallen grapes but to leave them for the poor (Leviticus 19:9–10) intend to cultivate generosity and public mindedness. The command to return lost articles to their owner (Deuteronomy 22:1–3) cultivates neighborliness that enables healthy stable communities. The command to construct the roof of a house with a parapet to protect from harm any worker who goes up there (Deuteronomy 22:8) cultivates active concern for employees as does the command not to withhold the wages of a day laborer overnight (Leviticus 19:13). The command that permits taking eggs from a nest but not the mother bird (Deuteronomy 22:6–7) cultivates ecological sensitivity and concern for the future. These and many related commands cultivate socially oriented dispositions much as Aristotle named salutary character traits (although he does not specify concrete practices that teach us how to practice them). These public-spirited commandments form spiritual appetites the exercise of which advances both the moral-spiritual life that God wants for us and the public good, that God also wants for us, from which those who practice them derive deep contentment and satisfaction. Personal pleasure in this regard and promoting societal well-being are central to the Christian life.

My proposal for happiness in the Christian life then is that most biblical commandments as well as the guidance offered by the Bible’s prophetic tradition and wisdom literature, are not perfunctory rules but rather pinpoint specific actions the practice of which crafts a public-spirited lifeway that cultivates emotional maturity, insight, caring and generosity. Biblical commands understood broadly rather than perfunctorily teach us to want well and to have what we want: both spiritual and material flourishing for us and for others.

In turning to the Younger Testament, I think the text that treats our topic specifically is the Gospel of John. It adds two important elements to our discussion. Despite its dualism that divides those who follow Jesus from those who do not, this Gospel has a teaching on happiness very like what I have been arguing for here. It is named as eternal life. That is, John assures us that happiness is to be found in this life in obedience to the call of Jesus. We do not have simply to withstand this “vale of tears” until we cross over as Augustine later believed. The other element that John adds is that eternal life is lived in the company and with the encouragement of friends. That is, happiness in the Christian life is lived with the help of the church, the keeper of liturgy and scripture.

Happiness in the Christian life requires allowing oneself to be shaped and nurtured for eternal life in this world in the company of friends committed to the same goal. What I am saying is that you are engaged in cultivating that life with and for one another every day, in every class, at every sporting event, at every meal. I urge you to cherish this gift as you learn how to advance eternal life not only within your own community, but in every community that you will ever touch.