There is a perception among a lot of folks that Christianity is a no-fun religion, that being a serious Christian is all about finding anything enjoyable and forbidding it. The great wit Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary, defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy”—a base slander on the real Puritans, incidentally, but one which has attached itself to them, and also to their descendants, the Presbyterians. To take one example, the 20th-century American novelist Ellen Glasgow described her father (a Presbyterian elder) this way in her autobiography: “He was entirely unselfish, and in his long life he never committed a pleasure.”
Now, to some extent, you can see where people, even Christians, might get this idea; it’s not easy being a disciple, and it often isn’t comfortable. If we’re serious about following Jesus Christ, there are pleasures and desires that we have to set aside; try telling someone that they can’t have sex with whomever they want or make money however they want or do whatever they think is going to make them happy, and there’s a good chance you’re going to get called a killjoy, or worse. After all, we’re Americans—don’t we have a constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness? (Actually, that phrase is in the Declaration of Independence, but that still makes it part of our national DNA.) Where the world goes awry, though, is in its belief that that sort of thing—unrestricted sex, lots of money, “follow your bliss,” and so on—is the best way to pursue happiness. It does seem logical, to be sure—find something that gives you pleasure and do it—but that doesn’t make it the best option for a good life in the long run, and it isn’t.
That might seem like an odd statement, but there are two reasons to say it. The first is that pursuing happiness through pleasure produces a form of happiness which is highly dependent on your circumstances: if you find your circumstances pleasurable, you’re happy, and if your circumstances aren’t providing you pleasure, you’re unhappy. There are things you can do to ease that a little, which is why we have the common emphasis on keeping a positive attitude and phrases like “the power of positive thinking,” and there’s some truth in that approach; to quote Ellen Glasgow again, “Nothing in life is so hard that you can’t make it easier by the way you take it.” Still, as the Cowardly Lion found out—for all his efforts to encourage himself, he wound up muttering, “I do believe in ghosts, I do believe in ghosts, I do I do I do I do I do believe in ghosts”—positive self-talk only goes so far to help you rise above your circumstances. To really get free of them requires more.
The second reason is that we were made for more than just seeking pleasure and pursuing happiness. A lot of folks don’t believe that; even among Christians, we see people justifying affairs, divorce, and other quite sinful behavior with the line, “You want me to be happy, don’t you?” Whether anyone believes it or not, though, it’s true. As such, while the pursuit of pleasure may be enjoyable for a while, ultimately, it won’t satisfy. Pleasure by itself just isn’t enough for us; we were made for pleasure, but we were also made for something deeper—joy—and pleasure without joy ultimately palls. Without joy, pleasure isn’t any more substantial than cotton candy, and how long could you eat nothing but cotton candy without getting heartily sick of it? Our bodies were made for real food, not just spun sugar; in the same way, our souls were made for real food, not just empty pleasure—which requires discipline in our spiritual diet, just as in our physical diet, and developing a taste for more than just the sweet stuff.
This is not without its rewards, either. After all, it’s not like Jesus’ motto is “Pain, no gain”; just like physical disciplines of diet and exercise, which bring real and worthwhile benefits for those who practice them—I’ve never met anyone who succeeded in getting in shape and then said, “You know, I think I liked being out of shape better”—so does spiritual discipline, and the benefits are part of the point. It’s not that Jesus tries to bribe us into holiness, but there were many times that he promised great rewards for those who follow him, and the rest of Scripture does much the same. Among those rewards—and there are many—one of the greatest is joy, which is rooted much deeper than our circumstances; joy is rooted in the presence and the character and the faithfulness of God, and the work of his Holy Spirit. Thus it can endure and even grow in hard times just as in good times, because it’s able to draw on the things God has done in the past and look forward in confidence to the things he’ll do in the future.