This is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of Junk Drawer Jesus written by Matt Popovits (1517 Publishing, 2024). Available today!
Stuffed in the back of your spiritual junk drawer is a party hat—the pointed, paper kind, complete with the flimsy string that no one can stand. The hat is a reminder that we love a good time. We’ll go out of our way to try to fill life with as much fun as we can, even if it means looking silly in front of our peers or spending a fortune on our kids. I’m guilty of both.
It also represents a belief that many hold in regard to God. Many believe that God is a host whose highest aim is to impress his guests or that he’s the parent, dying to appease his daughter as she turns double-digits. There’s a belief that God exists to show us a good time and grant our wishes. We assume that if God exists and if he loves us, then—like any great host of a party or parent of a child—he simply wants to make us happy. And, after all, isn’t that what we deserve?
But is that true? Is my happiness the highest aim of a good God? Or does he have something different—something better—in mind for us?
A New Idea
The notion of a God who exists to appease our hunger for happiness or satisfy our desires (on our terms, of course) is, in the grand scheme of things, relatively new. In the eighteenth century, a school of thought known as utilitarianism emerged. Building on earlier ideas from the likes of Epicurus, Aristotle, Augustine, [1] and Aquinas, proponents of utilitarian philosophy articulated a strict, ethical position founded upon the belief that human happiness was the ultimate good.
A utilitarian would approach everything from moral issues to the mundane demands of day-to-day life with one ultimate question in mind: “Does it make people happy?” That which produced the greatest good, for the greatest number of people, was the right thing to do.
Utilitarianism had a profound impact on western life and, in particular, the founding of the United States. One could argue that the American revolution was driven—at the very least justified—by a utilitarian philosophy. The rebellion, and subsequent independence of the colonies, were seen as morally necessary because they aimed to protect and enshrine humankind’s inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” [2] By the nineteenth century, the notion of individual happiness as the highest of ideals had taken deep root, forming a strong hold on American and European culture and thought.
This marked a significant shift. Prior to this, civil life, personal decision-making, law, and government were largely anchored in and influenced by a shared belief in universal and external truths. These were truths said to be put in place by the divine and which existed to be discerned and obeyed by humanity for our flourishing according to God’s design. The question of “what is right?” was connected to another, ultimate question of “what is the will of God?” But utilitarian thinking turned the tables. Moral clarity and everyday direction were now unhitched from external truths. The new thinking told us that most of the answers we sought were not to be searched for outside of man but were found within and were defined by the heart of a man. The wisdom of Sheryl Crow had begun to rule the day long before she penned the hook for her hit single: “If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad.” [3]
Happy God
Our collective understanding of religion and spirituality was not untouched by this major shift toward the heart of man and the happiness of the individual. The new logic of the world quickly spilled over to our theological musings, and many spiritually minded people began thinking along these lines: “Well, if the highest good is the pleasure and happiness of man, then a truly good God must exist for my pleasure and happiness!” And let’s be honest, that’s a religious insight everyone can get excited about.
I have often wondered if this shift in spiritual and religious under- standing helped fuel the rise of what is referred to as “the prosperity Gospel.” In prosperity Christianity, the goodness of God is seen as something that largely exists to make American notions of success—a spacious, single-family home, two cars, three well-behaved children, and fit bodies that show few signs of age or illness—spring to life for the believer.
I once sat through a sermon given by the man considered to be the most famous preacher in America, a man with deep ties to prosperity theology. “God wants you to have the desires of your heart,” he said with a smile the size of a two-door 1983 Buick LeSabre. “Do you want that new job? Do you need the nicer house? Do you want your bills to be paid and have money left over? Then just call it in,” he urged. “Call upon the goodness of God to give you the desires of your heart.” The man seated in front of me raised his hand and shouted, “Amen!” in a show of approval. Earlier in the service, my wife had noted that roughly half of the seats in the massive sports-arena-turned-auditorium were empty. Attendance was light. After the preacher’s sermon had wrapped up, I pointed to a row of empty seats and whispered in her ear, “He must not have called it in.” As is often the case with my attempts at humor, she was not amused.
A theology built around the notion that God’s great aim is to make us happy, on our terms, has proven its ability to draw a crowd. But where it suffers is, well, in the face of suffering. What is one to make of a God who allows pain to permeate our lives, for desires to go unmet, and earthly hopes unfulfilled? A spirituality that tells you to simply “call it in” and request your own kind of hand-crafted happi- ness finds itself stuck when God seems to be ghosting us, leaving us “on read” or pushing us to voicemail and sending us back to our pain and problems empty-handed.
Perhaps you’ve personally experienced this weakness in modern spirituality. Chances are, you’ve found yourself in the midst of some terrible trial—miscarriage, betrayal, constant anxiety—angry at God and overflowing with questions:
“What kind of Father are you, anyway?”
“If you love me, then why am I hurting so much?”
“Don’t you care about my happiness?”
“Why isn’t God listening?”
If that experience and if those questions seem familiar to you, you’re not alone. Many of us have learned the hard way that there is a shallowness to the notion that God exists for our happiness. It’s an idea that simply can’t stand under the weight, the scrutiny, the reality of the lives we are actually asked to live in God’s world. There must be something more. God must have something better in mind for us than mere, earthly happiness. And he does.
The truth is that God likes it when we are happy. But happiness alone is too shallow and unsatisfying of a goal. Instead, God’s plan for his people is something better: holiness.
Holiness
That word “holiness” carries a bit of baggage with it.
Many people understand that word, especially as it relates to other people, in a negative light. Holy people are self-righteous people; they act as if they’re somehow better or more refined than everyone else. Imagine your little brother, now grown, coming over to enjoy dinner with you and your family. Mind you, this is the same kid who, throughout most of his life, would eat nothing but chicken nuggets and spend every spare minute playing “Army,” turning everything he found into a toy gun. Imagine that this same brother shows up for dinner and announces that he no longer eats meat. “Not a problem,” you think. “I can swap out the nuggets for some steamed broccoli. Yum.” But it doesn’t end there. He makes his announcement and then proceeds to proudly declare that being any- thing other than vegan—like him—is cruel and that he’s “disgusted to dine in the presence of animal murderers.” Your first thought would be, “Wow. Somebody thinks he’s holier than everyone else.” You get the idea. For many, to be holy is to be proud, arrogant, and self-righteous.
According to Peter, the church is a collection of holy people, but this holiness has nothing to do with us being exceptionally moral or righteously picky about our food.
Others perceive holiness as something unattainable. “Holy” is too high of a standard for one to actually meet—with the exception, of course, of the extremely rare person who happens to embody the best of humanity. “Holy” is reserved for the likes of Mother Teresa, [4] who dedicated her entire life to the poor, and for Betty White [5] whose joy and comedic genius endured for nearly a century and made her something of a secular saint. Holiness, in the minds of many, is something out of reach for the average person, reserved instead for compassionate nuns and Golden Girls.
In the Christian faith, to be “holy” simply means “to be set apart.” Specifically, it means to be marked and set aside for service to God. The apostle Peter, in the New Testament letter that bears his name, uses the Greek word, hagios—translated to English as “holy”—to describe the Christian church. He writes:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9 - emphasis added)
According to Peter, the church is a collection of holy people, but this holiness has nothing to do with us being exceptionally moral or righteously picky about our food. It’s not about some level of perfection the church has attained or an attitude of superiority we’ve adopted. No, the holiness spoken of in the Christian faith describes the fact that the baptized, the believing, have been chosen by God despite our immorality and our unrefined sensibilities. In our baptisms God established in us a dependence upon the person and work of Jesus Christ, a relationship of utter reliance upon his perfection, his faithfulness, his sacrifice for our sins, and his rise from our grave. And this faith, this dependence and reliance, makes the church distinct and set apart. There is a whole new theme and focus in the lives of the forgiven. Before, your life may have been dominated by some other idea, such as success in your field, shame carried from sin, political passions, or sexual orientation. All of that has been supplanted by something better. Your life no longer exists for you, but to love and serve this person, Jesus, upon whom you’re fully dependent. You are set apart. You are holy.
[1] Augustine famously noted, “...that all men agree in desiring the last end, which is happiness.” (On the Trinity, Book XIII)
[2] Quote in context: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The influence of utilitarian philosophy on Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, is well documented. (Thomas Jefferson, et al., July 4, Copy of Declaration of Independence. -07-04, 1776. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mtjbib000159/.)
[3] If It Makes You Happy is the hit single off of Sheryl Crow’s eponymous sophomore album. This song, paired with Every Day is a Winding Road and her first hit, All I Wanna Do, serve as the soundtrack to roughly 97 percent of all memories from the mid 90s.
[4] In 2007, some of Mother Teresa’s personal and private correspondence was pubiished, revealing that the saint’s own spirit was often in anguish, struggling for a half-decade with a sense of God’s absence; proving that even the “holiest” among us are not immune from spiritual anguish. Teresa’s struggle should not shake less publicly pious believers, but rather comfort them. We all face difficulties, spiritual and otherwise. And there is no lasting peace to be found even through the most profound acts of service and love on our part, but only through the sacrifice and love of Jesus, who is stronger than us all, even Mother Teresa.
[5] Seriously, White was around longer than the Hollywood sign itself (1922), endearing herself to multiple generations, cementing herself as an entertainment icon, and doing it all without a hint of scandal. If Betty ain’t holy—in a secular sense—then who is?
