Preached · June 21, 2015
Who Wants to Be Happy?
So this morning we are in week three of a series called "Helting People Find Your Way to Walk to God." And Pastor John introduced us last week to the topic of regret—this wish that we've all experienced: "I wish I could start over." We're using the parable of the prodigal son, or the two lost sons, to explore questions like, "Is there more to life than this? I wish I could start over—how do I?"
So this week we're going to take a quick diversion out of the prodigal son's story and take a look at the words of Jesus. But before that, I want to introduce you to a question. Who here wants to be happy? Oh, we even have a "woo." All right. Yeah, I think this is probably the easiest question we'll be asked today.
Being happy is a basic human desire. Any of you remember, in our philosophy classes, Plato's Republic explored this question. Socrates asks what is the point of the law, and got to the end of it and decided the point was happiness. And so you would ask, "Well, what's the point of happiness?" And Socrates would say, "Well, happiness." And this is kind of the foundational idea that our civilization is based on: the reason for existing is being happy.
And I think the way we best embody this, or know how this is true, is that we all want our lives to look like a beer commercial, right? We all want to be the most interesting man or woman in the world. We want to be surrounded by beautiful people. We want to have lots of fun and no consequences, right? So this is our idea of happiness. This is the idea of the good life. This is what we're all driving and striving for.
The American Gospel
And this idea of what happiness is, of what the good life is, is constantly being shaped by commercials and advertisements. It's constantly being shaped whenever we experience jealousy or covetousness or envy over someone else's stuff or things or who they know. So our idea of what happiness is, is being transformed.
And I think there's something called the American gospel—"gospel" meaning good news. I think there's something called the American gospel that maybe we don't consciously believe in, but it's constantly being pushed at us. I think this commercial, shown a couple of Super Bowls ago, really summarizes what the American gospel is. Did you catch it? The American gospel: work hard, create your own luck, and believe anything is possible.
And I think there's a religious version of this, too, that can sneak in: work hard, do good things, follow your morals, create your own luck, rely on God only when absolutely necessary—which is practical atheism—and believe anything is possible, because the point of life is feeling good. It's being therapeutic, feel-good-ism.
Regret Valley
But we don't often meet that goal of feeling good or feeling happy. And I think that's what's called regret. Our actions are trying to get to happiness, and instead they kind of fall down into regret valley. "Oh man, that was a great idea to party hard with all those people"—until the next morning. "Oh man, this relationship was such a good idea"—until you realize that person wasn't good for you. "Oh man, this is a really great idea, buying all these things"—until the credit card bill comes. And so our actions, trying to land on the other side of happiness, just fall down into regret after regret.
The Happiest People on Earth
Now, here's something that will make you a little bit upset. People whom you would consider in far worse conditions than you are, on average, far happier than you. The four nations with the happiest people on earth, according to research, are El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Trinidad and Tobago. I bet a lot of you couldn't place those on a map. And when you think of them, you probably think of poor, impoverished people who can't possibly experience the same amount of happiness as you. But in any report or research done on the happiness of people in different nations, the U.S. ranks at best 15th. We rank below Mexico and Costa Rica—each nation which has one-fifth of the per capita GDP, one-fifth of the wealth creation by its people. But they're happier.
In another study, while wealth was shown to increase happiness, it was also shown to decrease the meaningfulness of life. So, yeah, you got richer, you got happy, but you asked more and more, "What's the point of it all?"
Life to the Full: John 10:10
Now, why do I tell you all this? Because I'm going to bring up a verse, I'm going to say something that Jesus said, and it's going to bring to mind ideas of what happiness—of what the abundant life—is about, that I want to remind you are possibly wrong. What you think of as the good life, what happiness is, has been shaped and formed not by God, but by culture. So when you hear this verse, be suspicious of what you think Jesus is talking about.
In John 10:10, Jesus says this:
I have come that my disciples may have life and have it to the full.
One translation says that they would have life and life abundantly. One paraphrase puts it this way: "I came so that they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of."
Now, there's an image of the good life that's entered into your mind. Set that aside for a moment. Most of us, when we hear this verse, think of it in one of two ways. There's "trick"—"That can't possibly be true, because I have either been a Christian, or I know Christians, and they aren't happy at all. So how could what Jesus is saying be actually true? We're not talking about real abundant life. Christians are miserable. They're always giving away things. How can they possibly be happy?"
Or we think of it as "treat"—"Yes! Finally! I get all the riches and wealth that I could possibly want. Jesus is going to make me fat, rich, and happy." And we think of the image of the good life that's entered into our minds, and we think that Jesus is talking specifically about that, and that our wildest dreams would come true.
But what if there's a third way of thinking about what Jesus is saying?
Two Words for Life: Bios and Zoe
In order to explain this third way, I want to introduce you to two Greek words in our New Testaments that talk about what life is. The first is bios. Now, bios, of course, is where we get the word "biology," and this is chronological life. This is life that you can count. It's about quantity—heartbeats and breaths. We sleep for 250,000 hours on average. We eat 76,000 meals. We take 200,000 trips to the bathroom. This is bios life, right? You can count it. It has quantity.
But there is a second word for life, and that's zoe. No, not that Zoe. Zoe. Now, while bios is about quantity, zoe is about quality. And this is what John 10:10, what Jesus, is talking about—the kind of life that God the Father has innate within him.
Now, it's always a hard concept to nail down. You can't count it. It's hard to measure. It's kind of like your senses. It's like trying to explain what the color red is to someone who's blind, or trying to explain the taste of your favorite food to someone over the telephone. It's like when your friend comes back from vacation and they've seen mountains and oceans. What do you ask them? You don't ask them counting questions—"How heavy was the mountain? How many gallons of water did you see?" No, you ask them, "What was it like?" You ask about the feelings, the emotions. This is the kind of life that God has. It's eternal. It's everlasting. It's hard to put language to. It's hard to describe unless you experience it yourself.
A Little Theology
Now, I want to introduce you to some theology here. So buckle in for a second. Hold tight. Stay with me.
God the Father, the book of John says, has zoe—has this kind of life as part of his being. And of course he does. God is being. He is the ground of all existence. He is life. He is is-ness. And so God the Father, filled with zoe, created humanity, and gave them the gift of bios. He gifted us with heartbeats and breaths. But in his infinite mercy and goodness, he was not content with us having only bios.
And so God sent the Son. And Jesus, the Son, by virtue of being God, of course had zoe. But because he was born human—because he took on flesh and skin and bones and had heartbeats and breaths—he also had bios. Why? So that, God taking on the qualities of humans, humans could take on the qualities of God. In other words, we can have zoe.
This is how the ancient church writers put it: God became human, so that humans might become like God. Others in your New Testament write about it, calling it "participating in the divine nature." For all you mystics out there, the ancient church fathers called it experiencing oneness with the divine.
Now, for all you theologians, you're asking, "Where's the Holy Spirit?" There's the Holy Spirit. John 7 says that the Spirit is the giver of zoe, the giver of life. And the Spirit is the one who connects us all together—connects us with the Father, connects us with the Son, connects the Father and the Son.
Three Reasons You Should Care
For the other 99% of you, you're asking, "Why do I care?" Let me give you three reasons.
Number one: this makes better sense out of the idea of eternal life. I've had conversations with plenty of people—and I might have been one of them. When we think about eternal life, we're not all that interested. Some of us are afraid, not so much of the dying, but of what comes next. Life has too much pain anyway. Life is filled with regret. Life is filled with sorrow. "I don't need any more heartbeats, please." And so when we think of eternal life, what we think about is just more bios. But that's not all that we're promised. When we're promised eternal life, we're not just promised quantity. We're promised a whole different quality of life. We're promised zoe. We're promised life with God—a whole new way of living, of existing. Jesus says, "I came that my disciples may have life, and life to the full, life abundantly." Zoe to the full. Life with God always.
Reason number two you should care: people who spend time with this God of life, this God of zoe, are shown to be more compassionate, and empathetic, and patient, and joyful. And yeah, I could point you to Scripture and verse that says this. Galatians talks about the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, faithfulness. But research shows this too. Scientists look at people who worship, who pray to a loving God, and they are shown to quantitatively, as best as they can measure, be a more compassionate, empathetic, patient, joyful people. And if that's not reason enough to spend time with this God of zoe, to be known by this God of life, I don't know what is.
Reason number three: the primary question of these two weeks has been, "Can I start over?" And the answer is yes. Not because God takes your pain and erases it, or takes your life and makes it like it doesn't matter anymore, but rather because God is with us in our regret. He joins us in our darkest moments. Psalm 23 puts it like this:
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he, the Lord, is with me.
God, the source of zoe, zoe himself, joins us in our bios through Jesus. He joins us in our heartbeats and our breaths—even the hard ones, even the ones we regret. And he sanctifies them. He makes them holy. He gifts each of our moments with a zoe kind of life, with an ineffable quality that is the source of true and lasting joy and happiness.
He Joins Us in the Valley
So as we move forward in this series and we ask questions like, "Is there more to life than this? Can I start over?"—the answer is yes. Because the God of life doesn't just leave us, doesn't just forsake us, doesn't just abandon us to figure it out on our own. But he joins us in the valley. And he shows us the way forward. And that's what we'll be talking about as we continue on in this series. Thank you.
