Chapter 2
I would rephrase it this way. Those who have God may still struggle with happiness, but those without God can’t have true happiness. God has built this into reality.
Psychiatrist Paul D. Meier writes, ”I have had millionaire
businessmen come to my office and tell me they have big houses, yachts,
condominiums. . . , nice children, a beautiful mistress, an
unsuspecting wife, secure corporate positions—and suicidal tendencies. They
have everything this world has to offer except one thing—inner peace and joy.
They come to my office as a last resort, begging me to help them conquer the
urge to kill themselves.”
Psychotherapist Lynne Rosen and motivational speaker John Littig
cohosted an hour-long radio show on WBAI in New York called The Pursuit of
Happiness. But this Brooklyn couple’s final act was putting plastic bags over
each other’s heads and committing suicide.
Charles Darwin, near the end of his life, spoke of what he called
his “loss of happiness”: Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many
kinds . . . gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took
intense delight in Shakespeare. . . . Formerly pictures gave me
considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot
endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and
found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my
taste for pictures or music. . . . I retain some taste for fine
scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did.
. . . My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding
general laws out of large collections of facts. . . . The loss of
these tastes is a loss of happiness…
Questions: If it is true that there is no true happiness apart from God, how do we explain all the happy secular people we see all around us on TV, Hollywood, and Facebook? Are they faking it? Are they really happy? And for those who do know God, how do we explain the lack of happiness that we experience?
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