Happiness, Holiness, and Fullness

Americans worship happiness.

A few things I've noticed:
*Happiness is a vision. When we think about what we want to do, who we want to be, where we want to live, the main question we ask ourselves is, "Would I be happy doing that?"
*Happiness is a necessity. Oftentimes people will leave a situation they should be faithful to because they no longer feel happy.
*Happiness is a justification. How many times have you told yourself that it's OK to keep doing something because it "makes you happy?"
*Happiness is a synonym. (Literally, in the thesaurus) for joy, satisfaction, and well-being.

Is it possible that all of these different faces of happiness only make us miserable, and rob us from knowing real joy? It's the almost right, but not on the money...which is the perfect description of a "counterfeit."

Counterfeits are hard to detect because they are (by nature) smiling, misleading, and confusing. I think that the pursuit of happiness counterfeits the pursuit of holiness. The two can appear similar, but when you peel off the layers, they are drastically different. Almost at odds.

Tim Keller says this "We were created to worship and live for God's glory, not our own. We were made to serve God and others. That means paradoxically that if we try to put our own happiness ahead of obedience to God, we violate our own nature and become, ultimately, miserable. Jesus restates the principle when he says, "Whoever wants to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." He is saying, "If you seek happiness more than you seek me, you will have neither; if you seek to serve me more than serve happiness, you will have both."