Is My Happiness Moral or Not?
00:00:00.000 | Today we field a fairly technical question about whether or not our happiness is moral.
00:00:08.680 | It's a question from a listener named Eric.
00:00:10.880 | "Hello Pastor John, this podcast is a tremendous gift to me.
00:00:14.560 | I've listened from my conversion until now in seminary."
00:00:18.200 | That's incredible, Pastor John.
00:00:19.760 | We've been doing this for the duration of someone getting saved and entering seminary.
00:00:24.200 | Eric continues, "I have a question regarding happiness.
00:00:28.120 | What would you say to this line from theologian John Frame?
00:00:32.880 | Only persons and their actions and attitudes can be good in a moral sense, but happiness
00:00:37.320 | is a condition or a state of affairs, so it can be considered good only in a non-moral
00:00:44.720 | sense."
00:00:45.720 | That's from the Doctrine of the Christian Life, pages 91 and 92.
00:00:50.560 | He goes on to say this, "There are many things that human beings value more than pleasure.
00:00:55.040 | One example is sacrificing one's life to save the life of another.
00:00:58.720 | If we define pleasure so broadly as to include all other values, including self-sacrifice,
00:01:03.760 | then it loses its meaning.
00:01:05.220 | It doesn't distinguish pleasurable from non-pleasurable activities."
00:01:10.360 | That's page 93.
00:01:12.760 | My immediate reaction to this was, "That's not right.
00:01:16.120 | Piper and Edwards and Augustine all say that pleasure is what we all desire most, and it
00:01:21.560 | is a moral good that God commands our joy," in Philippians 3.1, "Rejoice in the Lord."
00:01:27.120 | But then Frame surprised me in the next chapter by saying this, "For Scripture, duty and
00:01:32.360 | happiness are not opposed, but in the long run reinforce one another."
00:01:36.720 | That's page 101 of Frame's book.
00:01:40.260 | That seems more in line with Christian hedonism, namely that our happiness and God's glory
00:01:44.560 | are not two separate things, but we must seek them both together.
00:01:48.840 | My question for you, Pastor John, is this.
00:01:51.080 | Am I misunderstanding Christian hedonism?
00:01:53.480 | Is happiness a non-moral good, or is it a moral good?
00:01:58.120 | Pastor John, what would you say to Eric?
00:02:00.720 | It is very risky and unwatched to criticize a great Christian thinker on the basis of
00:02:07.240 | a sentence or two that I don't see in context.
00:02:10.720 | John Frame is a great and sound and helpful theological guide, and my guess is that if
00:02:19.280 | he and I had time, he and I would discuss this and we probably would be pretty close
00:02:28.680 | in the end.
00:02:29.680 | So what I'm going to do then, since this is such an important question, is take these
00:02:35.960 | statements and Eric's question and use them to illustrate two very important principles
00:02:42.600 | in answering such questions, as well as give my answer along the way.
00:02:47.160 | So the first principle is this.
00:02:49.520 | Before you disagree or agree with anyone, be sure you have a clear sense of the definitions
00:02:58.020 | of the terms they are using as they're using them, a definition that they would agree with.
00:03:06.160 | Otherwise, you'll talk right past each other in your argument.
00:03:09.680 | It happens over and over again.
00:03:11.580 | You can watch it in the internet.
00:03:12.860 | You can watch it in conversations.
00:03:14.680 | So let's take Frame's main statement.
00:03:17.200 | Here it is.
00:03:18.200 | "Only persons and their actions and attitudes can be good in a moral sense, but happiness
00:03:26.320 | is a condition or state of affairs, so it can be considered good only in a non-moral
00:03:33.920 | sense."
00:03:35.320 | So the term "persons," I think, clear enough, I think we know what persons are, so I'll
00:03:41.320 | skip that one.
00:03:43.000 | What about the term "actions"?
00:03:45.920 | Actions can be good in a moral sense, he said.
00:03:49.400 | Does he mean, I would ask, bodily actions, namely the mere movement of muscles and the
00:03:56.520 | electronic and chemical processes that trigger the muscle contraction that moves when you
00:04:01.400 | hug somebody or give them a finger?
00:04:04.880 | Or does he mean actions of the soul, volitions, decisions, choices?
00:04:11.280 | Surely soul actions, choices, can be morally good, but mere muscle movements?
00:04:18.520 | Well, he would probably say—this is why we need to talk—not mere, no, not mere,
00:04:27.480 | he would say muscular actions insofar as they are triggered by volitions can be morally
00:04:35.000 | good or bad.
00:04:36.000 | I would say, yes, yes, okay, good, got that clarified now.
00:04:40.800 | And the combination of choice and movement of muscle make the movement good or bad.
00:04:47.200 | It isn't movement of muscles or actions, legs or shoulders or arms or hands or facial
00:04:55.080 | expressions, smile, frown, those movements are not in themselves evil or good, they are
00:05:02.480 | evil or good insofar as they are triggered by, carried by, expressing volitions that
00:05:09.040 | are good or bad.
00:05:10.400 | What about the word "attitudes"?
00:05:11.400 | He says attitudes can be good in a moral sense.
00:05:16.080 | Well, what is an attitude?
00:05:18.720 | He must consider it different from happiness.
00:05:21.240 | Hmm, okay, that helps a little bit.
00:05:24.200 | Now, what's an attitude?
00:05:25.520 | I assume he means perhaps the fruit of the spirit, like patience, that be an attitude,
00:05:32.480 | kindness, in other words, dispositions of the soul not yet turned into action that incline
00:05:39.840 | a certain way to good or bad.
00:05:43.560 | And then he calls happiness a state of affairs, which can't be good morally, but only non-morally,
00:05:54.360 | like having a sore throat, I suppose, is non-morally bad, but being in good health is non-morally
00:06:01.800 | good.
00:06:04.680 | He's free to define happiness that way.
00:06:08.560 | I assume it's something like that.
00:06:11.160 | We just need to be aware that's what he's doing.
00:06:14.560 | If happiness is in that category in this sentence, namely it's like getting rid of a headache,
00:06:21.320 | of course then we need to decide how the Bible uses the term if we're going to talk about
00:06:27.600 | biblical meaning for happiness.
00:06:31.560 | So that's the first principle.
00:06:32.640 | I'm just illustrating what I have to go through when I deal with what I read or what people
00:06:37.920 | say.
00:06:38.920 | I want to be sure to define your terms in your way so that I can either agree or disagree.
00:06:46.760 | And it's not easy to do that often.
00:06:49.720 | Second principle.
00:06:51.440 | Instead of getting entangled in complicated philosophical conceptions, go to the Bible
00:06:57.480 | as quickly as you can to find some clear statements about the very meaning, the very thing, the
00:07:04.640 | very reality you are arguing about.
00:07:07.440 | It's wonderful, amazing how the Bible enables us to cut through so much fog in our arguments
00:07:16.360 | with people if we have a few clear biblical statements that shed light on what we are
00:07:24.640 | arguing about.
00:07:26.000 | Now, Frame is right.
00:07:28.120 | Surely he's right to say that if we treat the word pleasure so broadly that there's
00:07:35.920 | no difference between pleasurable and non-pleasurable activities, language loses its meaning.
00:07:43.840 | That's right.
00:07:44.840 | That just is self-evident.
00:07:45.840 | Now, the question is, does that settle the issue over whether happiness or pleasure can
00:07:54.080 | be a moral good?
00:07:56.720 | So we turn quickly to the Bible.
00:07:59.520 | That's what I do anyway.
00:08:01.640 | First we find a verse that helps us appreciate the distinction.
00:08:05.680 | I want to frame the absolute benefit of the doubt here with a text like this, 2 Timothy
00:08:11.640 | 3:4.
00:08:13.120 | Paul says, "There will be evil people, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."
00:08:20.600 | Now, for a Christian hedonist like me, that's a jarring statement because it makes love
00:08:26.680 | for God look like an alternative to the desire to experience pleasure.
00:08:34.680 | So we step back and we say, "Okay, I'm not God.
00:08:38.200 | I am not the Bible.
00:08:39.400 | I'm not the final authority.
00:08:41.000 | The Bible is the authority, and I will adjust my thinking to the Bible.
00:08:45.680 | That's what we should do."
00:08:47.180 | So what does the Bible mean?
00:08:49.520 | It means here pretty much what Frame means.
00:08:53.780 | Pleasure is very often used in the narrow sense of physical gratification, sensations
00:09:01.500 | of bodily satisfaction, like a back rub or sexual arousal or getting high with drugs
00:09:08.280 | and alcohol or caffeine or scratching an itch.
00:09:12.120 | It is indeed possible to want these physical sensations more than we want God.
00:09:21.320 | It is possible to make a God out of physical satisfaction.
00:09:25.200 | And I suppose that's what Frame is getting at here.
00:09:28.680 | He is saying that if you try to take that meaning for pleasure and spread it over everything
00:09:35.320 | in life, then you have to drop the word "pain" out of your vocabulary because pleasure understood
00:09:41.960 | in this narrow way is the opposite of pain.
00:09:44.360 | And you can't say everything ought to be pleasurable because that would rule out the existence
00:09:49.400 | of anything like pain if you define pleasure the way Paul does in 2 Timothy 3:4 and the
00:09:56.040 | way Frame is.
00:09:57.920 | However, what Eric is very aware of in his question is that the Bible does not treat
00:10:05.200 | happiness and pleasure and joy, which are often used interchangeably in the Bible, as
00:10:12.080 | mere states of affairs that have no moral significance.
00:10:16.480 | Now we're getting close to the problem.
00:10:19.320 | And the easiest way to see this is to notice that happiness or delight or gladness or pleasure
00:10:25.960 | are regularly commanded in the Bible as a Christian duty.
00:10:30.760 | Psalm 100, "Serve the Lord with gladness."
00:10:34.480 | 2 Corinthians 9, "God loves a cheerful giver."
00:10:38.600 | Philippians 4, "Rejoice in the Lord, and again I say rejoice."
00:10:42.760 | Psalm 37, "Delight yourself in the Lord."
00:10:46.280 | Hebrews 13:17, "Pastors, do your ministry with joy because if you'd groan in it, it
00:10:52.480 | will be of no advantage to your people," and on and on and on.
00:10:57.120 | And then we noticed that just like patience is a fruit of the Spirit when we were defining
00:11:04.400 | the word attitude, so is joy a fruit of the Spirit.
00:11:10.520 | So if one is a gift and can be a moral good, why not the others?
00:11:18.960 | And I think they are.
00:11:19.960 | I think joy is a moral good as Paul is using it in these contexts where he commands it
00:11:27.800 | or calls it a fruit of the Spirit.
00:11:29.720 | So my conclusion is that if you define joy or happiness or delight or gladness biblically,
00:11:42.880 | all of them are moral.
00:11:45.360 | That is, they are evil or good, depending on whether they are grounded in and reflecting
00:11:52.000 | the greatness and beauty and worth of God.
00:11:54.760 | It's possible to have gladness in evil, and that's not good.
00:12:00.040 | But gladness in God is a moral good.
00:12:02.480 | It is sin to find your greatest happiness, delight, gladness, joy in created things.
00:12:11.300 | And it is virtuous or morally good to find your greatest happiness, delight, gladness,
00:12:17.600 | or joy in God.
00:12:19.680 | I don't think John Frame would disagree with that.
00:12:22.640 | I hope not.
00:12:23.640 | I think when he rejected happiness as a moral good, he meant something more akin to physical
00:12:29.880 | pleasure than to spiritual attraction to God's glory.
00:12:35.560 | So is happiness a non-moral good, or is it a moral good?
00:12:43.600 | Defined biblically as the positive experience of treasuring God above all, it is a moral
00:12:49.080 | good.
00:12:50.080 | Very good.
00:12:51.080 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:12:52.680 | And Eric, thank you for the detailed question.
00:12:54.320 | We really appreciate it.
00:12:55.560 | And thank you for listening.
00:12:56.880 | You can send us your own question like Eric did, or you can search our 1600 past episodes
00:13:01.880 | that we've released to date, or you can subscribe to the podcast.
00:13:04.640 | You can do all that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:13:09.100 | Up next, a very good question about prayer.
00:13:11.120 | We know from scripture that a husband who is harsh with his wife will have his prayers
00:13:15.320 | ignored by God.
00:13:16.720 | We see that in 1 Peter 3.7.
00:13:19.920 | But is that principle at play more broadly?
00:13:22.560 | That's the question on Monday.
00:13:23.640 | Do all of our sins hinder our prayers?
00:13:28.120 | That's a great question.
00:13:29.120 | It's the topic up on Monday when we return.
00:13:31.640 | And I am Tony Reinke.
00:13:32.640 | Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime pastor and author
00:13:36.640 | John Piper.
00:13:37.640 | We'll see you on the other side of the weekend.
00:13:39.440 | [END]