Is happiness and fulfilment through submitting to a Godly lifestyle without GOD, ever possible?
Is asking a non-God-centred society to live within the Biblical framework of relationships and morals with the exclusion of God, and promising happiness and fulfilment actually a lie? Surely living a God glorifying design for life needs God at its centre.
Caffeine, biscuit and ‘feminine mystique’.
I was sitting in my usual cafe on the weekend with the Fall 2009 JBMW (The Journal for Biblical Manhood & Womanhood) reading an article by Mary A. Kassian called ‘You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!’1
In her description of the feminist revolution she writes about the American political activist and journalist Betty Friedan. In the late 1950s Friedan asked the women of her fifteen-year graduating class reunion, a series of questions on their levels of happiness and fulfilment in their roles as wives and mothers in their marriages. After receiving the results Friedan then went on to interview numerous other women with the same questioning. She concluded from her research that there was a discrepancy between what society told women would make them feel happy and fulfilled, and what they actually felt.
In her resulting book, published in 1963, Friedan argued that women were trying to conform to a religious, male-dictated image of womanhood—the ‘Leave It to Beaver’ ideal she called the ‘feminine mystique’--but that doing so left them with vague feelings of emptiness, yearning, and wanting something more.
Mary A. Kassian, You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!. The Journal For Biblical Manhood & Womenhood 14 (2): 17.
Exclusive inclusion.
After reading this article I began to think that there is quite possibly a problem, that society is trying to live a Biblical model of relationship and community but with the exclusion of Jesus and his headship as their purpose and reason for doing so. That actually these ideals without God are at large, incompatible with us as natural humans and cause us to be frankly quite miserable.
For people to commit themselves emotionally and physically to restrained gender, specific responsibility and role relationships is not fulfilling but restrictive. And to limit sexual intercourse to the opposite sex and within the boundaries of a God ordained life long committed relationship under Jesus’ lordship, is not a recipe for happiness in the natural sense.
I am not saying that these Biblical models of community and relationship cannot be good in themselves, of course they can. What I am saying is that the natural human has desires in opposition and at odds with these models. To ask society to ignore their natural desires and adopt these models with the promise of happiness and fulfilment is a lie. People would not feel fulfilled with these arrangements ever, they will be always at a loss to their desires.
That is why I believe that a Biblical moral rule-set without God, will inevitably lead to unhappiness as people are restricted by an authority that they do not willingly submit to or even believe is objectively right and best for them. Submission to Biblical morality without God will never feel right.
It is ludicrous to tell someone who they can or cannot have sex with; within what context or boundaries they can have sex or express themselves physically; purely under the presupposition that this course of action is best for them in the long run. In the long run of what, life?
I do not say that there are not positives in the pursuit of the development of a society with Biblical morals but with the exclusion of God. There is the ‘Golden Rule’ that promotes a positive interaction. But the issue I believe is that promising someone happiness and fulfilment by asking them to adhere to a model of a life which has a primary purpose to worship and glorify Jesus; with the exclusion of God, is futile, meaningless and actually a lie.
People will never ultimately feel fulfilled without God.
Good without God?
Sex before marriage, sex with anyone, adultery, gossip, slander and tabloids, lust and violence, fetish and orgies—these are all naturally good without God.
We as Christians sacrifice our natural desires for these sorts of pleasures because and for the very reason we not only experience a greater pleasure in God but hope for an ever increasing pleasure and the promise of infinite pleasure in the age to come. The pleasure of fully knowing Jesus himself.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
ESV. 1 Corinthians 13:12-13
We cleave to marriage, taking on role responsibility and bringing up Godly children because we know that these are expressions of God’s heart and truth, that these only fit and work when in relationship with Jesus. They are the specific super-natural relationships and designs within which God operates and demonstrates his character and love for us.
They are the conduits with which God pours out his Spirit and good pleasure to us. It is these very things, this submission to Biblical God-breathed instruction and models which causes our lives to mirror God’s grace and love. The whole purpose of them is to be counter-natural, super-natural, to point us out of ourselves and to Jesus himself. They are all built upon self-sacrificial love, something which is completely alien to natural man without God’s common grace.
We are most happy because we have God, and so our lives reflect those things which are God’s designs. These designs do not fully work without God, actually they do not work at all, but produce guilt, resentment, lawlessness and unhappiness.
Jesus is the point of relationships, marriage, sex and children. Jesus is the point of sexuality, and identity. You cannot ask someone to adopt, let alone understand and be happy in the designs if they exclude God from them.
Rebel against death.
Life as a Christian is supposed to feel like sacrifice, it is supposed to be hard, it is supposed to feel awkward. But we are to be excited about rebelling against ourselves to humble ourselves at the loss of ourselves in the obtaining of that which will ultimately satisfy our greatest desires, God himself. And we do this by being in submission to Jesus and in service to others at the cost of our own lives.
We do this out of the power of the Spirit, not by our own effort; and out of the faith of who God is and what he has done for us through Jesus; and the hope in an infinitely glorious life with God and other Christians for all eternity.
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
ESV. Galatians 5:16-26
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgement, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
ESV. 1 John 4:7-21
Simply I believe we need to preach the Gospel, and let the Gospel transform people’s attitudes, lifestyles and choices. God is the good news, Jesus is the joy and not just now, but for all eternity. The Gospel is that we get God himself, and how through the reconciliation of the cross. Jesus being judged and punished in our place so we are given the freedom to enjoy the worship of God.
Asking people to change their lives by a moral framework with the exclusion of God, is setting up people to be let down by religious obedience and observance, not the eternal freedom of the cross which the whole Bible points to and was designed by and through.
Christ, Jesus Christ. Show people him, and let the Spirit convict, change and work in their lives for their ultimate joy.
-----
Footnotes.
1 Kassian, Mary A. 2009. You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!. The Journal For Biblical Manhood & Womenhood 14 (2): 13-23. http://www.cbmw.org/Journal/Vol-14-No-2/You-ve-Come-a-Long-Way-Baby/