The Pursuit of Happiness

Blessing and Fulfillment in Christian Faith

Sarah Heaner Lancaster

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9781608999026
  9781498258364
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498272933
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

People want to be happy. Nothing could be more obvious, and yet this common and evident goal is not as easy to achieve as it is to desire. The Christian tradition has understood happiness to be gained through relationship with God, and it has much to say about what will make us truly happy and what will not. This book examines happiness from a Christian perspective, using John Wesley as the focus of study because he understood happiness with God to be the very goal of Christian life. He also understood that Christian happiness needed to acknowledge the difficulties of life. This book seeks to learn from the wisdom of the past in order to imagine how Christians today might talk about happiness in a way that is faithful to the tradition and engages the world as well.

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Introduction

People want to be happy. Nothing could be more obvious, and yet this common and evident goal is not as easy to achieve as it is to desire. We know we want to be happy. We may even think that we ought to be happy—believing that something is wrong if we do not feel good. Almost everyone, though, has some time in her or his life when happiness is difficult. For some, that period may be relatively short, but for others it may endure for years. Realizing that there is a disconnection between what we want to feel and what we do feel can make us even more unhappy. Conversely, when life is going well and we feel satisfied with it, we may take happiness for granted, perhaps even believing we have a right to have it (and not just the right to pursue it). In either case, whether we suffer from a lack of happiness or assume that it is ours by right, people believe happiness to be of importance. It is a central goal of human life.

The search for happiness is both ancient and modern. It is ancient because it was a topic for Western philosophy millennia ago, and it is modern because the way we conceive of and expect happiness in the twenty-first century is quite different from generations of the distant past. This book will explore happiness as an ancient pursuit with contemporary meaning, and it will do so by trying to understand this common human desire within the framework of Christian faith.

It may seem odd to attempt a book on happiness from a Christian perspective. For a few decades at least (although only a short time in the whole scope of Christianity), Christians in the United States have preferred the word joy to the word happiness when talking about their positive experience in Christian faith. It is common to hear Christians relegate happiness to “the world” and speak of it as a far lesser goal, calling people to a deep joy instead.1 The insight that there is something different about what Christian faith offers than what most people think of when they pursue their happiness is a good one, but giving up the word happiness in order to talk about that difference seems to me to be a mistake. First, both happiness and joy have a history of use in English translations of the Bible, so there is no scriptural reason to put them in competition with each other. Second, if happiness is the word that most people actually use in their daily lives, then it is the better point of engagement for talking about what Christian faith has to offer, especially for people who are not already in the church. Third, abandoning the word happiness can blind us to resources in the Christian heritage for talking about the deep experience that Christians want to share. Christians of previous centuries used both the words happiness and joy to talk about their experience with God, and they were aware that the word happiness put them in line with a long philosophical tradition from which they could draw to explain what they meant. They did, of course, feel free to develop the idea of happiness in a way suited to Christian faith, but they did not shy away from saying that happiness and Christian faith go together. In the light of this rich history, it makes no more sense to give up the word happiness than it does to give up the words redeem and redemption because we also use those words to talk about coupons. It may be useful, though, to identify the kind of happiness we mean by calling it “Christian happiness,” and I will do so at times in this book.

This book, then, does not attempt a general theory of happiness. It is concerned, rather, to show the specific way that Christians have talked about happiness in God. Neither is it an attempt to survey all Christian reflection on happiness.2 The breadth that I seek is about how to cover the many facets of Christian happiness itself. I find it useful to focus primarily on a particular figure to see how he addresses multiple concerns within a developed perspective. So after providing some introduction to the topic in Christian faith more generally, I will focus on the work of John Wesley as an example of a theologian who took happiness as a topic for serious theological reflection. I am not making any claim about his own personal happiness, rather I am looking at the theological concept of happiness that he held. Although John Wesley’s work is of interest to me because I stand in a tradition that regards him as founder and mentor, I think his work can be instructive beyond the specific Wesleyan/Methodist tradition. When John Wesley and his brother Charles began organizing and equipping Methodists in the eighteenth century, it was not their intention to start a new church, much less a “branch” of Christianity. They called the gathering of Methodists a “society,” to indicate that the members were not separating from the church but were coming together to deepen their commitment to discipleship.3 In that spirit, I take John Wesley’s reflections on happiness to belong, not simply to a particular tradition, but to the whole church. It is precisely because Wesley’s understanding of happiness is less well known than that of, say, Thomas Aquinas that he may promote new avenues of reflection on the topic. I offer this account of his thinking as an example of how the riches of Christian faith may contribute to happiness, and I hope that this example will encourage others to explore Christian happiness using the resources in their own traditions. Of course, I would also like Christians who see themselves as Wesleyans or Methodists to regain and use this heritage in John Wesley’s work.

Because his reflection was undertaken in the context of a lively movement that involved many ordinary, faithful Christians, Wesley did not produce a merely abstract theory, but rather arrived at his conclusions with the help of testing in the lives of real people. In this sense, his reflection on happiness is a genuinely practical theology. It is my hope that reflection on the topic in our present time would also have such relevance to Christians who may be uninterested in theory but who seek a deep and fulfilling relationship with God. Reclaiming the Christian practice of reflection on happiness could potentially enliven churches and make sharing faith a delight.

It has long been recognized that the centerpiece of John Wesley’s theological reflection was salvation. If one holds a superficial understanding of happiness, the topic may seem frivolous next to salvation, and to some it may even seem damaging insofar as it distracts from the serious matter of being saved. Wesley, though, did not have a superficial understanding of happiness that could be considered either frivolous or distracting. He offers a deep and meaningful description of happiness that shows it to be, along with holiness, the essence of salvation itself. The hunger to be made whole and the hunger to be happy are related, and this book finds in John Wesley’s theology an attempt to help us feed these deep hungers with that which will make us truly whole and therefore truly happy. In the way of salvation that Wesley preached, our happiness as human beings is connected to fitting ourselves to the kind of life that God intended for us in our creation. We gain happiness by aligning our spirits with God, because only then do our lives fulfill the purpose for which we were made.

Wesley does not, though, offer his description of happiness all at once in a systematic argument. In fact, he has not always been regarded as a theologian of consequence (even by Methodists) because he did not produce a grand theological system. Instead, he wrote short sermons and other kinds of materials that were intended to convey theological ideas to ordinary people in a way that would matter for their daily lives. He often wrote situationally, addressing matters as they arose (for instance to answer charges made by his critics or questions that emerged among Methodists), rather than systematically—moving formally from one sermon to another to build a case. Forming an understanding of his theology requires using many resources. The main resources that I use to uncover his theological understanding of happiness are his sermons. At times, I also draw from his journals or other works. I even turn to his brother Charles Wesley’s hymns occasionally to provide examples of what Methodists would have learned about happiness through their singing.

Clearly, happiness matters to people, but the kind of happiness that we seek also matters. In a “happiness culture” that encourages people to pay attention to and seek for those things that make them feel good, the loss of those things or the failure to attain them can lead to frustration and even depression. If those things we think will make us happy do not, then what are we to do? The history of reflection that informs Wesley’s own work thinks of happiness as deep human fulfillment, so it is less about pleasure and absence of pain than it is about living an integrated life that has meaning. That understanding of happiness has much to commend it in a society that promotes seeking and satisfying personal desires. The Wesleyan tradition also has significant practices to draw from that aid the pursuit of this kind of happiness. Thinking about Christian happiness, properly understood, as the goal of life with God both sets the direction for spiritual formation and provides the driving force behind participating in those practices that will lead to that formation.

As interested as he was in the personal fulfillment that individuals long for, Wesley recognized that none of us lives in isolation. Our lives are so intimately connected with others that our own fulfillment, our happiness, includes happiness of others. There is, then, a social dimension to his theology that is essential. Authentic lives take shape in relationship, not only as we demonstrate our Christian love through actions toward others, but also as we develop personal Christ-like qualities through the way we interact with those around us. Wesley’s work is not simply individualistic, even though it offers powerful spiritual guidance to individuals, and it can serve as a helpful resource and counsel for a time when our connectedness with one another is becoming more and more apparent.

Reclaiming a theology of happiness can help Christians find language for expressing the fulfillment they receive through their faith that is especially pertinent to our time. The search for happiness has taken a new form in psychology, and insights from that discipline are being widely dispersed through popular culture. The field of psychology is contributing to an understanding of fulfillment, and some of the findings resonate with practices of Christian faith. A theology of happiness, though, will have to go beyond psychology. It presses beyond transient feelings of personal satisfaction to the ground of life, which alone can satisfy completely.

Using the language of happiness can inform many aspects of the church’s work. At a time when many no longer know the classic language of salvation (for instance, the words justification and sanctification) happiness can offer a vocabulary for sharing the good news that could enliven evangelism and inform preaching. To use the language of happiness, though, requires care and thoughtfulness to avoid falling into superficial understandings that can do more harm than good. A theology of happiness acknowledges sorrow, as well as trials in life, but puts them in a context in which they can be borne with grace. Taking happiness as a serious topic of reflection can result in a practical theology, one which provides a pattern for living that connects us with God and allows us to live the life of integrity for which we long. Christians can learn to satisfy our deepest hungers in God and share a way of finding the fulfillment humans so desire.

John Wesley’s theology provides an entry point for an understanding of Christian faith that can be developed further in light of the questions of our time. He is important for this topic not because his thoughts should be taken as definitive, but rather because he has touched on so many issues that matter. His reflection also took place in a movement that offered a place to test and revise certain ideas. Though it may be unfinished, the reflection he started provides a starting point that has both depth and breadth. He has been called a practical theologian because he sought to make theology accessible and meaningful to ordinary Christians. His reflection on happiness can provide an orientation for a theology that continues to be practical for a new generation of Christians. This book intends to enable the possibility of thinking with him about a topic of common interest that has potential for illuminating Christian spiritual life in the twenty-first century.

Before talking about Wesley, though, I set the stage for his reflection in two ways. First, in chapter 2, I take a brief look at reflection on happiness in the early centuries of philosophy and Christian theology. Drawing from Greek and Roman philosophy, theology developed an idea of what happiness is that partially reflected its roots but that was also modified to fit the emerging theology of the early church. Augustine’s major influence in the development of Christian theology in the West extends also to the understanding of happiness. Happiness also featured prominently in the work of Thomas Aquinas. The language used by these theologians to talk about being happy in God carried with it the idea of blessing, and they clearly rooted the concept in relationship with God. Second, in chapter 3, I examine some of the reflections on happiness that introduced ideas into English thinking that would have influenced Wesley. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, happiness became closely associated with pleasure in the wider culture, and its pursuit became a major preoccupation. Meanwhile in theology, happiness was linked closely with holiness, seeking an internal experience that would confirm genuine relationship with God.

The exploration of John Wesley’s understanding of happiness takes shape in three movements. First, in chapter 4, I show how important the concept of happiness was for Wesley’s theology. Happiness was God’s intent for us in our creation, but it was lost in the Fall. Salvation r...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Blessing and Fulfillment
• Chapter 3: Happiness and Misery
• Chapter 4: John Wesley: Happiness in the Way of Salvation
• Chapter 5: John Wesley: Happiness through Holiness
• Chapter 6: John Wesley: Happiness and Feeling Good
• Chapter 7: A Theology of Happiness and the New Study of Happiness
• Chapter 8: Christian Happiness and the Church
• Bibliography