HUNGER FOR HAPPINESS

Blessed are they which do HUNGER and thirst after RIGHTEOUSNESS: for they shall be filled – Matthew 5:6

Many Christians confuse HAPPINESS with JOY. Some ancient moral philosophers even argued that the end or purpose of humans was their happiness. Unfortunately, much of modern-day infantile Christianity remains a struggle to find happiness in this imperfect world. Inside and outside the church, most people are seeking happiness. The fourth of the Lord’s beatitude is that we should hunger and thirst after righteousness. He never commanded us to hunger or hunt for happiness.

A related suggestion is that if you can forget your troubles, you will quite likely get happy. The fallacy is that people can generate happiness as an act of will. Happiness is however not a matter of simple will, or the entire world would be happy. Those without Christ inevitably discover that self-generated contentment is convulsive and interspersed by hangovers of anguish and misery. In these times of uncertainty, security and despair have indeed become widespread afflictions.

We cannot overemphasize the need to differentiate between happiness and joy. Happiness is a buoyant emotion resulting from the transient plateaux of well-being that characterize our lives. True faith is not a hunger to be happy. Life is not meant to be a furious drive or mad urge to be happy, an insatiable appetite for ever higher and higher plateau of pleasure. Those who seek happiness too intensely often have little of it. Happiness happens based on prevailing circumstances.

Joy on the other hand, is not a momentary occurrence subject to circumstantial change or climate. Rather it rises above mood or emotion and transcends our erratic moments of elation. Joy is bed-rock confidence that operates irrespective of our moods. Joy is the certainty that all is well, however we feel. Joy is spiritual and supernatural. There is a depth to joy that only the Spirit of Christ can reveal…And, the children of God have the Mind of Christ!