Obedience over Happiness

Call it laziness but Chrisso over on Gush has a point and I’m going to quote it all – with permission.

In the last week, four separate people have justified different sins or inappropriate / harmful behaviour to me (or i’ve heard from someone else) by saying that God wants them to be happy.

Scenario one – mate of mine, is moving in with his girlfriend in a couple of weeks’ time because he ‘knows that they have something special together and God knows their hearts and knows they are happy’. Isn’t that what God wants?

Scenario two – a friend of a friend of mine! She has been doing topless waitressing at a bar in Melbourne and doesn’t see a problem with it. Now they have offered to train her as a stripper (heck, I didn’t even now you needed training!!). She enjoys her job and says that its ok because she’s not ‘doing anything’.

Scenario three – (a little closer to home) A guy I know will get high often, sometimes before church, because he feels the Spirit moving better. He’s in the greatest state of happiness during that time, so it must be of God?

Scenario four – my old youth leader and his wife. She cheated on him because they had marriage issues and she had been unhappy and depressed for ages without him even noticing. She was happy with while it lasted but came to realise that sin was not outweighed by the fact that she enjoyed it.

Which brings me to the point. God certainly wants us to be happy. In fact, several times he asks us to be joyful always. But, as comfortable as the idea is, God is not ‘our mate’. He isn’t a ‘good bloke’ and He won’t sit back and smile indulgently as we, His children, make mistakes. He doesn’t justify them as long as we’re happy.

I think, on the contrary, that our happiness in sin is repulsive to Him. He wants our obedience above any amount of happiness for us. If we are sinning to get it, that happiness is both pointless and hurtful. And God is not mocked.

God doesn’t promise happiness. In truth, he promises hardship, the narrow and steep path. He promises persecution and hate from our peers. And, to top it off, He wants us willing to die for Him. So willing, that in fact, we should already be dead to what we want so that our death shouldn’t come as if we lose anything at all.

I’ve been really convicted lately about the things I do. I mean, I might not be moving in with my boyfriend, and I mightn’t work at a strip club, but I do make countless choices each day that God hates. The selfish choice to stay and watch tv when I know someone else is washing the dishes. It might not be huge in humanistic terms, but I perceive at the time that my greater happiness lies in watching tv. So I ignore doing the right thing, and in so doing, have done just what so frustrates me about some other people.

I have chosen my version of how I can be happy above how I know God wants me to act, and therefore over His version of happy.

PEACE OUT. But not too peaceful.