Happiness

First off, thank God for this semester to be winding down enough that I have time to read what I want to read and to write what I want to write. I only have one final on thursday and a paper due on friday. Both of which I am not worrying about for a couple of days.

Nevertheless, Something that has been bothering me lately is ironically, Happiness. Through many conversations with people and a general observation of the world, I have been distraught by the amount of people that mention happiness as a goal to strive for or as something that makes life meaningful/worth living. In many different forms of rhetoric I have heard what seems to be the idolization of happiness.

There is something deeply wrong with thinking that happiness is something to hope for, strive for, or think of as what will make life meaningful. As Christians, we believe in a god that is ALIVE, TANGIBLE, and PRESENT. And we reject the idea that god is an IDEA, that god is a SMOKESCREEN, or that god STANDS FAR OFF.

So then... What is the Goal? 'I think' the goal is to be. Just to BE with Jesus, rather than to be concerned with secondary goals, feelings, transformations, helping people, etc.. If God is not an idea but a very real and tangible person to be connected with, than what more can be asked of us rather than just to BE with Jesus.

Thats the best I can make of it. Life is full of reactions. And the hip "idolization" of happiness and even spirituality are reactions to a dreary institution that presented a watered down version of the Gospel. What I am trying to point out though, is that the reaction may have gone to far the other way to miss the essence of Christianity. Which is not to be happy but to just be with the Creator of the universe revealed in Jesus and whose presence is known and experienced in a tangible way daily through the Spirit. Thanks only to the grace of the cross.