Sunday Sermons
The Right to Happiness?
The Right to Happiness?
“After all’, said Clare, ‘they had a right to happiness’. We were discussing something that once happened in our own neighborhood. Mr. A had deserted Mrs. A and got his divorce in order to marry Mrs. B, who likewise got her divorce in order to marry Mr. A. And there was certainly no doubt that Mr. A and Mrs. B were very much in love with one another. If they continued to be in love, and if nothing went wrong with their health or their income, they might reasonably expect to be very happy” (God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis p. 317). Lewis further observed that “a right to happiness” sounds as odd as a right to good luck, a right to be six feet tall, a right to have a millionaire as a father, or the right to get good weather whenever one wants to have a picnic.
What People are Claiming
When people claim they “Have a right to be happy”, they are saying far more than “they can do what they want”, rather they are claiming not merely a legal right leave Mrs. A, but a moral right to do so. Here is where feelings can be so deceiving. The man or woman who falls in love with someone other than their mate feels that denying themselves and remaining in a supposed loveless marriage would be a great injustice.
The Cherished Right
“The ancestry of Clare’s maxim, ‘They have a right to happiness’, is august. In words that are cherished by all civilized men, but especially by Americans, it has been laid down that one of the rights of man is a right to ‘the pursuit of happiness’. And now we get to the real point. What did the writers of that august declaration mean? It is quite certain what they did not mean. They did not mean that man was entitled to pursue happiness by any and every means—including, say, murder, rape, robbery, treason and fraud. No society could be built on such a basis. They mean ‘to pursue happiness by all lawful means’” (pp. 318-319).
God’s Definition of Happiness
Many people, when they think of happiness, are focused only upon either their own or a very fleeting and temporary feeling of well-being. Yet God never allows us to isolate happiness merely around ourselves. Jesus taught, “Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). Thus, I am never allowed simply to act with consideration only for self. We should equally observe that not only do we not have a right to engage in something evil for the sake of happiness, we do not even have an inherent right to engage in something morally neutral if it causes others to stumble (1 Corinthians 10:32). Compare the common statement, “I have a right to be happy” with what the Holy Spirit said:
· “Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor” (1 Corinthians 10:24)
· “Just as I please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of the many, that they may be saved” (1 Corinthians 10:33)
· “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (10:31)
· “Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25)
God’s Definition of Love
God would not agree that when Mr. A left Mrs. A for Mrs. B that they were “in love”, because true love cares more about another’s soul than how they might be of benefit to us. Paul argued in Romans 13:8-10 that what we owe others is that we love them and yet love would never move one to murder, steal or commit adultery. Coveting your neighbor’s wife is not a loving thing to do. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law” (13:10). Added to this definition, how could anyone ever “enjoy” a relationship that was entered deceitfully and which hurt so many people? A person who would covet his neighbor’s wife and actually break up his and her marriage and then claim a “right to happiness” for the whole affair is obviously a person without a conscience. True love can never rejoice in unrighteousness (1 Corinthians 13:6). Love rejoices with the truth and there is nothing truthful about such a relationship. Lewis notes, “When two people achieve lasting happiness, this is not solely because they are great lovers but because they are also---I must put it crudely—good people; controlled, loyal, fair-minded, mutually adaptable people” (p. 321).
The Heart of the Matter
“When I was a youngster, all the progressive people were saying, ‘Why all this prudery? Let us treat physical intimacy just as we treat all other impulses’. I was simple-minded enough to believe they meant what they said. I have since discovered that they meant exactly the opposite. They meant that physical intimacy was to be treated as no other impulse in our nature has ever been treated by civilized people. All the others, we admit, have to be bridled. Absolute obedience to your instinct for self-preservation is what we call cowardice; to your acquisitive impulse, avarice (greed). Even sleep must be resisted if you’re a sentry. It is like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong—unless you steal nectarines. Our sexual impulses are thus being put in a position of preposterous privilege. The sexual motive is taken to condone all sorts of behavior which, if it had any other end in view, would be considered as merciless, treacherous and unjust” (p. 320).
It is strange that people will justify Mr. A if he leaves Mrs. A for Mrs. B because they are “in love”, but take the same couple and insert a different lust or passion and people would find this disgusting. What if he leaves because he is afraid to deal with the cancer that Mrs. A is fighting? What if he leaves because it would be cheaper to live with Mrs. B? What if he leaves because Mrs. B has lots of money?
The Passion that makes Great Promises
Lewis might be right when he says that erotic passion probably makes more towering promises than any other emotion. “No doubt all our desires make promises, but not so impressively. To be ‘in love’ involves the almost irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies, and that possession of the beloved will confer, not merely frequent ecstasies, but settled, fruitful, deep-rooted, lifelong happiness. Hence all seems to be at stake. If we miss this chance we shall have lived in vain” (pp. 320-321). In fact many people have noted that at times “lust” feels more like love than love does, yet such promises are so deceptive and untrue:
· “Everyone (except Mr. A and Mrs. B) knows that Mr. A in a year or so may have the same reason for deserting his new wife as for deserting his old. He will feel again that all is at stake. He will see himself again as the great lover, and his pity for himself will exclude all pity for the woman” (p. 321).
· The reason for this is that keeping a relationship together, making it work, takes character, yet the person who has sacrificed everything for his or her shot at “happiness” has just sold whatever character they had.
· Denying ourselves is not missing our one chance at happiness; rather it is ensuring that we can experience happiness here and in eternity. It is truly amazing that when people grasp at what they consider to be their “one chance”, what they gain is not happiness, but rather misery. Jesus noted that all selfish grasping only moves us farther and farther away from true “life” (Matthew 16:25).
· It has been my experience as I have observed people who grasped after their “right to happiness” that by doing so they only condemned themselves to a life where happiness was impossible. Rather, any woman who would choose a life with Mr. A, a man who had left his wife, would be just as selfish as Mr. A. Now what chance do two selfish people have at achieving real happiness? This is God’s universe and one of the rules is that selfish people cannot find any lasting or real happiness.
· The devil equally seeks to convince us that we can have some sort of elusive happiness that can be divorced from self-control, patience, honesty, integrity, unselfishness, sacrifice, devotion and loyalty. That we can just abandon all these virtues and still be happy.
· It is the myth that one can be happy forever after apart from God (Ecclesiastes 2:25).
“Whose Happiness?”
When Mr. A left Mrs. A, was Mrs. A happy? What if they had children, would the children be happy? When one observes the ruins that are left when someone exercises their supposed right of happiness, like women left struggling to survive financially, children who are angry and bitter and messed up, parents and in-laws who are left grieving and the taxpayer often paying the bill, this excuse wears pretty thin. Lewis is right when he observed that any society in which infidelity is tolerated, must always be in the long run a society that is adverse to women. “Where promiscuity prevails, they will therefore always be more often the victims than the culprits” (p. 321). No wonder when God observed some of His own people leaving their wives that He did not see “happiness” rather He saw deception and treachery (Malachi 2:14).
“The Right that Moves”
“Secondly, though the ‘right to happiness’ is chiefly claimed for the sexual impulse, it seems to me impossible that the matter should stay there. The fatal principle, once allowed in that department, must sooner or later seep through our whole lives. We thus advance toward a state of society in which not only each man but every impulse in each man claims carte blanche. And then, though our technological skill may help us survive a little longer, our civilization will have died at heart, and will—one dare not even add ‘unfortunately’—be swept away” (p. 322).
Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net/mdunagan@easystreet.com
