Holiness is Hedonism Without the Hangover

Can you put your finger on the moment your joy was hijacked? I can’t. But I know it happened. Death by a thousand, disappointing cuts, I suppose. I also know, now, that God was not happy with my lack of happiness!

Human beings can’t help pursuing happiness. It’s like trying to hold your breath. You can do it for a minute, but eventually, you’ll have to breath or you’ll cease to exist.

Same thing with desiring to be happy. Or experience joy. Embrace pleasure.

It’s woven into the fabric of creation. Is there anything better than the sound of an infant belly-laughing? Isn’t this at least part of why Alysa Liu captured the attention of the world?

You may feel like I’m encouraging you to step on a slippery slope. So let’s examine some of the techniques the bandits of joy employ.

Spiritual-ish but Actually Dangerous Platitudes

“God isn’t committed to your happiness, but your holiness.”

Have you heard this one? It makes for a nice, punchy, tweetable line. But it sets up a false dichotomy. I’m confident that holiness and happiness are not at odds.

“Joy is deeper than happiness.”

I mean….yes? But in virtually no language in the world can you define joy without using some synonym of “happy.”

“Deny yourself, take up your cross….”

Yes – 100 billion times – yes! But to think that this says pleasure or happiness are bad is a terrible misunderstanding.

“The good news doesn’t sound good until bad news is understood.”

Some feel that people need to be utterly convinced of the stench of their sinfulness before grace feels amazing. I don’t think that’s right. In fact, the opposite may be required. But we’ll get back to that.

“I am a sinner saved by grace. I deserve wrath. Therefore, I should only be grateful to receive any scrap of mercy God gives.”

Sure. But I submit to you that this posture wildly misunderstands God’s heart. There is a cosmic, eternal difference between being humbled by amazing grace and viewing yourself as a second-rate, no-good, yellow-bellied beggar of a Christian.

I could go on. I’m sure you could too. But let’s turn our attention to some good news, shall we?

Do You Remember How Your First Love Felt?

Do you remember the day the love of God first gripped your heart? I do. Vividly. It was like a wet, weighted blanket was lifted off my shoulders, the dreary fog cleared, and uncontainable joy burst from deep within me, like a geyser.

I felt loved. Seen. Like anything was possible. Hope danced with laughter in my heart. I was reborn into an enchanted world of beauty, potential, delight, wonder, mystery, safety, and worship.

Of course, the high didn’t stay. A girl dumped me. Two, actually. I didn’t get the job I wanted. I struggled with sinful actions and desires that I thought would never tempt me again. I was also introduced to some angry preachers who seemed to burn for holiness and purity while ranting and railing against sinful passions and pleasures.

How do you make sense of this? How can God bless or approve of a person being happy eating ice cream and watching nonsensical movies with their friends - while refugees are risking their lives to seek asylum? Isn’t that just ignorant and lazy at best or utterly selfish at worst?

But – when and why did I, did you, did we, lose our ability to see how utterly enchanting God created this world to be? Even in the midst of heartbreaks and soul-shattering disappointments, God has constantly shown Himself to be personally engaged and transcendently involved.

Without question, every time, I can say with unshakable confidence, that God has used every awful thing I have experienced and created to bring about a greater good in my life and the world than had the terrible things never happened.

God is committed to your happiness because He’s committed to your holiness. That is, He wants you and me to be just like Him. And He is soooooooo good!

Do You Think God is in a Good Mood?

Consider who God has revealed Himself to be. Shall we start with love? 1 John 4:8 says that God isn’t just loving. God is love.

How about what the Bible says is the fruit of the Spirit? That is, the character qualities of the Holy Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.

Ummmm….yes please. I think I’ll have that! This is getting good. Shall we continue?

Jesus describes Himself as gentle and lowly. He offers rest to weary souls. The Psalms say that in God’s right hand are pleasures forevermore. Shouts of joy resound from the tents of the righteous. It’s better to spend one day in God’s presence than a thousand elsewhere.

But wait, there’s more!

How many parables did Jesus tell to describe the Kingdom of God? A lot! Many paint a picture of feasts, celebrations, and weddings. Sometimes He talks about the joy of finding treasure so unquantifiably valuable that a person would happily sell everything they own just to get a piece of it.

Are you with me?! What’s that you say? You wonder if the Bible also says that we have to suffer and so forth?

Ubetcha! But for what purpose? 1 Peter 1:7 says that our suffering produces and refines faith in us that’s more valuable than gold! Romans says that suffering produces character that produces hope.

Why did Jesus endure the cross? Wasn’t it for the JOY set before Him?

I could go on. Feel free to do some more digging. If you do, you’ll find that suffering is not the point. Joy is. Hope is. Happiness is on the horizon of everything we suffer!

How Does Suffering Fit In?

When we suffer because we’re pursuing holiness, we will never suffer alone. Jesus promised that He not only suffers with us, but absorbs the pain so we can have His joy instead.

Matthew 5:10 – 12 says we should “Rejoice when people insult you, etc.”

“Rejoice” is an interesting word choice, isn’t it? We rejoice when something is so good we have to hoot and holler. How can that be in the midst of being insulted, mocked, and rejected?

Because we experience the tangible presence of God with us. It’s not a calculated decision. It’s an instinctive reaction, an impulse, to encountering God.

I don’t know how it happens, I just know that it does. I’ve experienced it, and the Bible expresses it. Look at the first Christian martyr, Stephen.

While he was about to get stoned (not like that 😉), he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That vision transcended His experience. And in some mystical way, Jesus absorbed the rocks that extinguished Stephen’s life as he entered the unfiltered, unending presence, glory, and happiness of God.

This is also, I believe, how we can care for the poor and vulnerable – and feast and celebrate. Jesus said that the poor are blessed because the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them. The Bible promises that God is near to the brokenhearted.

Who do you think has more joy? Elon Musk – or Mother Theresa?

We can celebrate and feast, even while others grieve and suffer, if that’s what God invites us into. Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding. Don’t you think there were people suffering in the world at that moment? How could Jesus be fully present with people partying while others were in pain?

You see, God is not limited like we are. We have to choose, move into and out of moments, prioritize some things at the expense of others. He doesn’t. He can infuse every moment of everyone’s life with His presence, producing a joy that cannot be contained or explained.

Aren’t Love and Happiness a Better Motivation than Fear?

God gives us a better motivation than being afraid of consequences. High-control religion teaches people to be afraid of their freedom. I mean, what might happen if people were free to choose what they were most passionate about or found the most pleasure in?

I believe that if you taste and see just how good the Holy Spirit is, you will freely, passionately, pursue experiencing the pleasure of the presence of God as fully and frequently as you can.

And that, by the way, IS holiness.

Holiness is not some staunch, stoic, lifeless, loveless, tempered religious state of being. Holiness is wildly passionate. It is being set apart for God. The God who is a consuming fire of love.

Don’t believe me?

How did Jesus respond to people who threw themselves at Him with reckless abandon? The women who would pour out their most precious treasures on His feet and dry them with their hair?

Or the people who ripped off roofs to get near Him?

Didn’t He embrace them without condition? He even held them up as an example to follow. Jesus’ love for you isn’t calculated and measured. God is eager to enjoy lavishing His love on you so that He can dance with delight as you receive every good gift He longs to give you.

If you’re afraid to let your heart experience this kind of hope – don’t be. Holiness IS the path to having your deepest, most visceral hopes honored. Cherished. Respected. Protected. Fulfilled.

Besides, isn’t this how God loved us? As Brennan Manning put it, this is the Furious Longing of God. He is a Father who charges down the street when He sees the prodigal son come home. He loves us with a holy passion that overcomes death itself.

Holiness Provides Pure Hope

There are many false and fickle lovers in this world who will try to tempt you with counterfeit love. Counterfeit holiness, even.

Our hearts can’t help but hope. We want to be happy. Safe. We desperately want to be fully alive. You want to take risks and experience the exhilaration of giving it your all with no safety net.

There’s a reason that a first kiss sends electricity shooting down to your toes. Those beautiful pieces of art transport you to another world. That a Broadway musical enraptures your attention. A line in a book or blog that creates clarity and invites adventure.

I recently watched a performance at SeaWorld with whales. I started crying. I don’t know why. It was so moving. Something happened to me that I did not ask for, could not control, and made me feel like a human being connected to something beyond my limited humanity.

If we do not believe that God approves of this kind of passionate, transcendent experience, we will seek it from some other source. Again, like breathing. We must.

The Devil knows this. So he takes the scraps of the majestic, pure, potent beauty God wants to freely give us, and twists them into something destructively addicting.

And that’s where we get mixed up. God is good. His world is good. Just check the beginning of the Bible, God says so. But we get deceived into thinking God is holding out on us and that if we want these desires satisfied, we’ll have to look elsewhere.

That’s sin. That’s unholy. And that isn’t just breaking a rule. It’s breaking God’s heart. Which is why one of the metaphors God uses to describe sin is adultery.

Do you know what the Bible prescribes as the penalty for adultery?

Death.

Holy Love Kicks Death in the Teeth

So Jesus came to this earth to rescue us. He fought off every cruel and crooked false lover that has seduced our souls.

He showed us what pure love looks like. It is patient and kind. Doesn’t envy. Isn’t arrogant, rude, or selfish. Pure, holy love isn’t irritable or demanding. Instead, righteous love refuses to give up, always hopes, and will not back down.

When the God who is love wrapped Himself in skin and walked on this earth – sickness and disease fled from His presence. Outcasts gathered with joy to feast and celebrate. Demons shrieked in terror and bolted. Victims were defended, made safe, and invited into wholeness.

And if that wasn’t enough, Jesus then went to the cross to pay the penalty our wandering hearts deserved. He died on the cross, paying for our sin – and carrying in His body the pain of every way we’ve been sinned against.

After offering His body as our sacrifice, Jesus was buried. But three days later, the Holy Spirit raised Him from the dead, eternally proving that no one and nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Love and Happiness You Long for is Found in Holiness

When this love kisses your soul, you will be born again. To a living hope. We no longer need to temper our hopes or prepare for disappointment – our God has defeated the grave and with it, everything that could ever hinder our access to the source of our greatest joy – Himself.

God is the best part of every good thing you enjoy. Love. Laughter. Beauty. Justice. Pleasure. Community. Mystery. Wonder. Awe.

In His presence and with His approval, we experience all of the best parts of life in complete purity. No objectifying others. Or being objectified. No dismissing, gaslighting, or virtue-signaling. Pure pleasure without guilt, shame, or a nagging fear of consequences. There is no end to the goodness and pleasure we can experience in and with God.

And I can’t even believe that I get to write this and we get to experience it, but the truth is, when we embrace this kind of holiness, not only do we not bring pain into the world or our lives, but we actually usher in beauty, grace, and goodness as it overflows from deep within.

This is what it looks like to have streams of living water welling up from our souls and pouring out onto the world around us.

We don’t even realize it’s happening. We’re too amazed by and satisfied in God’s manifest, tangible, transcendent presence to even be aware of ourselves.

So you see, holiness is the path to happiness. It’s not a contradiction. It’s God’s intention to satisfy you with Himself.

Jesus is the source of every good thing you love. He is the best part of every good thing you enjoy. Holiness is being set apart to enjoy the richest of fair now and forever.

It’s accessible to you today. Just give Jesus your heart. He won’t let you down.

This article originally appeared on Pete Z’s Substack: Surrendered Scribbles