October 6, 2009: A Note On The Pursuit Of Happiness

Suppose you are single and contemplating marriage, and a benevolent angel visits you and tells you that if you marry you will be exactly as happy in the future as if you had remained single. The pros and cons of your marriage will balance each other perfectly – all joys on the one side will match (but not exceed) sorrows on the other.

Do you marry?

I think a Christian would want to ask the angel, “Well, what does God want me to do?” Now the angel says, “In your case God doesn’t care. Oops – sorry - let me rephrase that. He cares about you, of course, it’s just that he’s fine with it either way, whether you marry or remain celibate. Both options are equally obedient.”

So, do you marry? Or is there anything else you would like to ask the angel?

While you think about that, let me recommend an essay by C. S. Lewis, “We Have No ‘Right To Happiness’” in his book, God in the Dock. It would give me some happiness to mail you a copy of it upon request, because it is good and will benefit you and you will be a better person if you take its lessons to heart.

Lewis writes about people who do despicable things like have affairs and leave their mates because doing so makes them happy - and happiness is a thing they regard as a sacred right. Actually, they only regard their own happiness as a sacred right. If someone slandered them, for example, they would howl in protest and not be placated if their enemy explained, “But it made me happy to tell all those lies about you!”

Lewis’ essay debunking the right to happiness is the last thing he ever wrote. He died a few days later.

Lewis was a happy man, by all accounts – jovial, courteous, laughed a lot, brightened every room he entered. All the Lewis biographies say that about him, and every written remembrance alludes to his broad generosity of spirit. But Lewis hardly ever seemed to plot a course of action merely on the basis of what would make him happy. In fact, he even got married as a favor to a friend! American author (and single mom) Joy Gresham asked him if he would marry her so that she would not be deported from England when her visa expired. Though perfectly content as a 58-year-old bachelor, Lewis agreed to the marriage-in-name-only (no rings, private civil ceremony, they lived apart) just so that she could stay in England with her boys.

Then Joy got cancer, and Lewis took her into his home. He cared for her until she died two years later. He fell deeply in love with her, and cherished her as much as one person can cherish another. Read A Grief Observed, written right after her death, and unless your heart is made of stone you’ll want to cry for him, the loss hurt so bad.

The last thing Joy said to Lewis before she passed away was “You have made me happy.”

That’s what I’d like to ask the angel about in the hypothetical situation I propose above. Regardless of whether marriage advances my happiness, what about my spouse? Will she have greater joy for having married me? If so, then by all means let’s do this! If I am to marry, please let it be to someone who can say to me on her deathbed (or when I’m on mine), “You have made me happy.”

Romans 14:7 says that none of us lives to himself alone. That is as it should be. Do good, and let the prospect of other peoples’ happiness determine the course of your actions and decisions. You might get a good share of your own happiness on the rebound. And if not, well, don’t worry about it. If you trust in Jesus Christ you’ll have a whole eternity to bathe in joys and ecstasies that will drown every sorrow you have ever known.