‘God made man for nothing but pleasure’ (Jonathan Edwards)
‘God made man for nothing but pleasure’, so declared
Jonathan Edwards. I asked a wise friend
whether this could be true and he said that it is, but it would need to be
qualified.
Sometimes Christians differentiate between happiness and
joy. They say that happiness refers to
those feelings that are dependant of favourable circumstances and that joy is
something far deeper. I think that is
correct, although I don’t think that the English use of the word happy needs to
be restricted so much. My online dictionary
says that happiness is a feeling of contentment and pleasure. If God made us for pleasure, then I think we
can say that He made us to be happy!
So, did God make humankind to experience happiness? What qualifications do we need to add if the
statement is to be true? The
qualification is that this is not a happiness that is devoid of pain.
Sorrowful yet always
rejoicing
I love the realism of the psalms. Many of the psalms are referred to as psalms
of lament. These psalms of lament are
where an individual or the community cries out to God in their pain. They ask hard questions of God. They complain. They often pray thought their sorrow to a
place of rejoicing but sometimes the relief from pain does not come. The darkest of all these psalms, Psalm 88,
ends with the claim that darkness is the psalmist’s closest friend. The psalms are given for us to pray. They are talking about experiences that we
can expect to feel in this life.
A friend pointed me to Psalm 31 where the psalmist speaks of
gladness and rejoicing in God and at the very same rime being in distress, weak,
sorrowful and filled with grief (verses 7-9).
He explained that joy here seems to be more than simply a good feeling –
it is confidence in God – and therefore joy and sorrow can exist in the same
heart. This was certainly the experience
of the apostle Paul, who wrote of being sorrowful but always rejoicing (2 Cor.
6:10).
The man of sorrows who
was familiar with grief
Remember that Jesus prayed these Psalms. These were feelings that He experienced. Hundreds of years before he was born in
Bethlehem it was foretold that He would be a man of sorrows who was familiar
with grief (Isaiah 53:3). Jesus
experienced the pain of living in this dark world. He cared about the pain that He saw people
going through. Yet surely Jesus was also
a person of joy (Luke 10:21).
Jesus wept with grief.
While we are told not to grieve as those who are without hope (1 Thess.
4:13), we are to grieve. As a pastor I
am never impressed when I meet someone who is passing through grief too
lightly. I am worried for them. Maybe they are not able to face the sorrow of
their situation.
Jesus grieved over those who refused His offer of
forgiveness and life. Looking over
Jerusalem, and thinking of the judgement that was coming their way, He cried,
‘… how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers
her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing’ (Matt. 23:37). A rich young man refused to accept Jesus on
His terms and walked away spiritually empty, we read that Jesus had looked at
him and loved him (Mark 10:21). Surely
it hurt Jesus to watch that man follow a path that would lead to his doom.
Sorrow over the lost
Caroline was at a funeral when someone suggested that her
faith must bring her great comfort at such said times. She replied that sometimes her faith makes
her grief worse. She has watched people
she loved die who have had no interest in Jesus. It pains her to think through what that means
for them.
The apostle Paul shared such grief. He wrote of being his deep sorrow and
unceasing anguish at the fact that his own people the Jews had largely rejected
the gospel (Rom. 9:2-3). There is no
easy solution for such deep pain. I
sometimes think that such sorrow will only find its relief when God wipes away
every tear from our eyes at the end of the age (Rev. 21:4).
Of course, our concern for people will also cause us to pray
for and reach out to those who do not yet know Him in the hope that they will
respond to Jesus’ love. That may cause
us to share in the very rejoicing in heaven over every person who repents and
finds new life in Christ’s love (Luke 15:7).
The sorrow that leads
to life
Because I have had some awful experiences of anxiety I
actually find it hard to read of times in the Bible when people felt great
anxiety over their sin which led them to reach out for life (e.g. Acts
16:28-29). I don’t enjoy reading of
times of revival when people came under great conviction of their sin and
trembled before God.
Yet such sorrow is God’s pathway to joy. Not just at the beginning of the Christian
life but throughout the Christian life.
The apostle Paul explained to the Corinthians that godly sorrow leads to
repentance, and this repentance leaves no room for regret (2 Cor. 7:10). Such sorrow is to bring us to a place where
we can experience the happiness of knowing that we are forgiven (Psalms 32:1).
There is something wrong though if our grief over sin
remains. Remember that we are told that
repentance should leave no room for regret.
If we bring our guilt to God, even when the struggle with temptation may
still be a hard battle, and accept His forgiveness then it does not honour God
to go on wallowing in shame. Such shame
may in fact be a sign that we are proud and unwilling to take God at His
word. We might not understand how we
could have done such a thing, yet but for the restraining grace of God we might
actually have done far worse. It does
not please Him to see a forgiven people not enjoying His kindness.
The growth that comes
through pain
I was helped by reading how pursuing maturity can change the
way we view our sorrows. Dora looked to
me with exasperation and asked, ‘but why doesn’t God just give us what we
want?’ However, when do we grow
most. Most people would say that the
matured most when times were difficult.
They had to lean of Jesus more.
They realised that many of the things they built their life on were
shallow.
We are actually told that Jesus learned obedience through
what He suffered (Heb. 5:8). If
suffering was essential for His maturing, how important it must be for ours
too. A friend told me that her favourite
verses of the Bible are where we are told that suffering produces perseverance,
perseverance produces character, and character produces hope, which does not
disappoint us (Rom. 5:3-4).
James wrote something very similar. He told us to consider it pure when you face
trials of many kinds, for the testing of our faith produces perseverance which
will leave us mature and complete (James 1:2-4). Such verses need to be handled with
care. I remember preaching from this
opening chapter of James and looking down at my friend Joy who had lost her
father just a few weeks before. I am
sure these were truths that were hard to feel at that moment.
Let sorrow make us
compassionate
I remember one of my early experiences of extreme
anxiety. I was a student in Dublin. I was too distressed to sleep and went for a
walk in the centre of the city. There I
saw a young man whose bed was in the doorway of a shop. My heart went out to him in a way that it had
not done so for people in his situation before.
I felt something of his despair.
I resolved that if I could get myself together I would work to help
people like him. Pain can increase our
empathy.
This truth is underlined in the opening chapter of 2
Corinthians. There the apostle Paul
writes of the God who comforts us in our distress so that we can comfort others
with the comfort we have received from God (2 Cor. 1:4). Often the most caring, understanding and
gentle people you will meet are those who have walked in the paths of
suffering.
But there is a temptation that accompanies our pain. Suffering presents us with a trial. Sadly, there are times when we respond to our
suffering with resentment and jealousy towards those whose lives seem better
than ours. If we are not careful
suffering can make us bitter and harsh.
Some of the hardest people we will meet will be those whose suffering
hardened them.
God made humankind for
nothing but pleasure
So, was Jonathan Edwards right to claim that God made man
for nothing but happiness? Yes,
but. God wants us to find our joy in Him
(Neh. 8:10). But this joy does not mean
that we are immune from suffering. In
fact, there is supposed to be a happiness, or we might say a joy, in knowing
that God can use our suffering to make us more like Jesus. Pursue happiness for its own sake and you
will be disappointed. Pursue maturity
and we may find that we get that we will experience true joy.
The sufferings of this life are not meant to be experienced
on their own. So, next week we will look
at the happiness that is found in community.
But before that, let’s pray.
‘Father, help me, because I am addicted to comfort and
ease. I don’t want to go down and road
that leads to suffering. Help me desire
to be made more like Jesus, even though that might involve the experience of
pain. Help me trust you, even when I
don’t understand what I am going through.
Help me know your presence when I am tempted to feel you have abandoned
me. Please let the troubles and trials I
face make me gentle and compassionate, and not hard and resentful. That people would see that you are faithful
even when life is dark. Amen.’
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