Happiness is not just a feeling

Comments

1. Ted says:

   March 9, 2010 at 1:34 pm

   I couldn’t help but think of Eccle­si­ates with this posting:

   Ecc 2:24–26
   24 A man can do noth­ing bet­ter than to eat and drink and find sat­is­fac­tion in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for with­out him, who can eat or find enjoy­ment? 26 To the man who pleases him, God gives wis­dom, knowl­edge and hap­pi­ness, but to the sin­ner he gives the task of gath­er­ing and stor­ing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is mean­ing­less, a chas­ing after the wind.

   and;

   Ecc 3:9–14
   9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the bur­den God has laid on men. 11 He has made every­thing beau­ti­ful in its time. He has also set eter­nity in the hearts of men; yet they can­not fathom what God has done from begin­ning to end. 12 I know that there is noth­ing bet­ter for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That every­one may eat and drink, and find sat­is­fac­tion in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that every­thing God does will endure for­ever; noth­ing can be added to it and noth­ing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.

   and;

   Ecc 3:22
   22 So I saw that there is noth­ing bet­ter for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will hap­pen after him?

   Not sure if I’m drag­ging those out of con­text? But I won­der is what we seek in hap­pi­ness is really contentedness?
2. Jeremy says:

   March 9, 2010 at 1:53 pm

   That’s a good thing to won­der. In my expe­ri­ence we seek two things, and we would prob­a­bly call these things “hap­pi­ness” and “con­tent­ed­ness”. We want to be happy, and to be happy most fol­low our own pursuits–we seek a state of happy, a feel­ing. We then want to be con­tent; and to be con­tent, we must first be happy. But, as (I’m assum­ing) Solomon says, we can’t find hap­pi­ness (Ecc. 3:12 seems to speak of the “hap­pi­ness” I talk about above) out­side of our pur­pose, oth­er­wise, our pur­suit is fruit­less and never ending.
3. Ted says:

   March 9, 2010 at 2:01 pm

   So I guess our pur­pose ends being in the summary:

   Ecc12:13–14
   13 Now all has been heard;
   here is the con­clu­sion of the mat­ter:
   Fear God and keep his com­mand­ments,
   for this is the whole duty of man.

   14 For God will bring every deed into judg­ment,
   includ­ing every hid­den thing,
   whether it is good or evil.

   (I love the book of Ecclesiastes.)
4. Jeremy says:

   March 9, 2010 at 2:07 pm

   v. 14 is the kicker, isn’t it? Who wants to have their evil, hid­den things brought into judg­ment? Euch… Some things I’m not too proud of. But it seems to me a very wise man wrote that book, even if it sounds so depressing.

   v. 13 reminds me of Job 28:28, “And to man He said, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wis­dom; And to depart from evil is under­stand­ing.’” Sim­ple, yet profound.
5. Ted says:

   March 9, 2010 at 2:20 pm

   I think one of the tragic things is how Solomon’s final years seem to have flown in the face of his wis­dom he penned.

   As far as the v13, this is where I won­der how many get tripped up com­par­ing this wis­dom espe­cially when deal­ing with sci­en­tific mat­ters? (The favourite verse from Romans I think — where the wise are ren­dered fool­ish — you know the one). Sorry that’s a sloppy reply.
6. Jeremy says:

   March 9, 2010 at 2:33 pm

   I think with respect to Solomon, that shows how utterly depen­dent we are on God, and how impor­tant it is to “fear God and keep his com­mand­ments”. Maybe it even makes some won­der the value of wis­dom, if it was unliv­able for one of the wis­est men in history.

   Sloppy replies are fine No more “reply” but­ton after 5 com­ments, I guess. But I imag­ine there is much con­fu­sion, yes. I don’t think wis­dom comes through this sort of knowl­edge, or is even what the bible has in mind.