Stop Pursuing Happiness: Jesus, Suffering, and Learning To Live Well

Happiness is fleeting.

Happiness is dependent on a whole host of circumstances that are constantly in flux and uncontrollable. The immense complexity of our psyches makes the necessary ingredients for our happiness seem impossible to nail down. We are constantly growing and being molded by things external to ourselves.

Because of this our finances, relationships, and life goals may never reach the point of stasis necessary for us to be happy. We may be happy in a instance when all the variables in our lives line up perfectly, as though it were a wink from the divine. But the most we’ll get is a moment or two. As soon as we realize we are experiencing a happy moment, it is gone.

Some church leaders and evangelists - with the best intentions, of course - preached the Gospel as the key to happiness. We may have heard some version of the idea that when we have a relationship with God, then we will be happy. Or maybe, once we have a personal relationship with Jesus, then we will be happy. Again, with the best intention, I believe that these evangelists believed what they were preaching, but Christianity leads to the Cross. Following Jesus, means following Him to Calvary. No one was happy at Golgotha.

In Pursuit of What?

We were created to pursue the divine.

Our world has been turned on its head because it has forgotten, or ignored, the natural inclination to pursue a relationship with the divine. So much of the fad diets, latest parenting tips, and new “crunchy” advice is about returning to how things used to be before.

There are so many movements of returning to how things used to be before technology, food processing, and YouTube. There is a deep sense of nostalgia that convinces us that before our time, things were just better. So we look back at how people before us eat, dressed, worked, learned, and survived and we try to emulate that in hope that we might receive some sort of balance in return.

We need to include man’s desire for the divine in that as well. We need to recognize the hunger within us to experience the transcendental and holy. The trajectory of our lives should be one that aims towards getting this divine mystery solved.

Because, when you realize that happiness is impossible, instead of falling into despair or uncontrolled nihilistic self indulgence - you see that, “It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness.” (Saint John Paul the Great)

It is Jesus.

He is the satiation of the desire you have within you that you believe is the desire for happiness. He is there to bring you beyond fleeting happiness. St. John Paul continues,

“He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.” (15th World Youth Day)

In this life we are not pursuing an abstract ideal, but a person who is waiting for us.

Happiness And Suffering

Jesus takes us beyond what the world recognizes as happiness and comfort. Notice that Saint John Paul does not say that Jesus will make us happy. He says that Jesus will fulfill that desire that we seek to fulfil when we dream of happiness.

There has been such an effort in Christian circles to make God into a divine therapist. Though it is true that God provides comfort in hard times, God desires more than that for our lives. He doesn’t want us jumping from comfort to comfort.

Inescapable on our journey with Jesus is always the cross. We will suffer in this life. And the purpose of our relationship with Jesus is not so that He takes our suffering away, but that He accompanies us in our suffering, gives our suffering purpose, and has provided us with an example of how to suffer. As Pope Benedict reminds us, “God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with. Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus's Passion.” (Spe Salvi)

Our pursuit of Jesus is not a transactional relationship. It is not a relationship that says, I come and pray to you and you make my life feel good. A relationship that says if I give you my devotion, you hand me my happiness.

Following Jesus is one of complete dependence on Christ with a commitment to go and do whatever He says and not count the cost.

Learning To Live Well

I write all this to make the point that a relationship with Jesus does not equal an easy life. That means that we need to work to pursue Christ above all things, and then we need to learn to live life well.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

Many of us don’t know what it means to live well. We instead assume that giving our lives to Jesus is all we need to do, and that He is going to make every other aspect of our lives fall into place. But that is not at all what the Saints before us have taught.

For example, St Thomas Aquinas would say that we need virtue in order to live life well: “Wherefore the craftsman needs art, not that he may live well, but that he may produce a good work of art, and have it in good keeping: whereas prudence is necessary to man, that he may lead a good life, and not merely that he may be a good man.” Also, in reading Saint Benedict’s Rule, I’ve learned of the emphasis he puts on routine, and being regimented both in prayer and in work.

The life of a devout follower of Christ should be a life lived well! It is a life that allows God to perfect our humanity by His grace. Because, “Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it” (St Thomas Aquinas) we should experience this perfect of our nature if we are following Jesus.

If the proof of Christ’s work in our lives lies more in the books we read, clothes we wear, and posts were share instead of our inner virtue and ability to live a good life, then are we following Jesus with the entirety of our being?

We are in an a moment in Christianity where our belonging to Christ needs to be marked by our personal holiness and acquiring of virtue rather than our political positions and number of retweets.

We need to start pursuing living well.

This Is Why I Started This Blog

More than anything this blog has been a place for me to practice writing and gather my thoughts on the state of Christianity in our culture and where it needs to go next.

I firmly believe that we are in a stage in Christianity where our focus needs to be primarily in our holiness and the holiness of our families. You might think of this as a type of “Benedict Option” where we regroup in order to go back out in the world to evangelize.

All of the things I write about: Chastity, Motivation, Parenthood, Exercising, Pornography, and soon, Mental Health are areas that I have experienced transformation, healing, and have learned how to approach them from human perspectives.

As Christ followers we need to understand that there is a very human aspect to all the ills of this world and we cannot just assume that by preaching Christ we will fix everything. Some people need very real accompaniment and journeying. Sometimes that looks like preaching the Gospel and others times it looks like walking with them daily through messiness.

We need to develop a better awareness of how to build up virtue and help others grow in bettering themselves as well. The end is always Jesus, but the means to get there is different for everyone.

If you’ve been reading for a while, I hope this blog has blessed you in some way. Like I said, I am still developing my thoughts on things and my primary focus has been my own virtue and holiness. I share what I can on social media, but my focus has been on growing my influence as much as it has been on making sure I have the tools necessary for God to work in me.

I hope you are able to continue to journey with me as I grow personally and reflect on what God is doing in my life here. And if God is able to use my rambling to help you live life well, than all the better.

Thank you for being here - let’s keep pursuing more together.

Verso L’alto - Renzo