God Is Not the Obstacle to Your Happiness — He's the Fullness of It
Human Happiness and the Glory of God Pt. 2
This article is Part 2 of a series based on my Durrington Award-winning essay — Human Happiness and the Glory of God: Does the Pursuit of Man’s Highest Good Fulfill His Chief End?
In Part 1, I established the terms at the center of this question. The "highest good" is the final object toward which all desires are rightly ordered. Man's "chief end" is his ultimate purpose, which the Westminster Assembly identifies as “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” The apparent conflict between these two ideas is what this series is working to resolve. In this section of the essay, I seek to determine what man's highest good actually is, and what the rightful pursuit of it looks like in action.
What is Man’s Highest Good?
To argue that the pursuit of man’s chief end and the pursuit of man’s highest good are mutually dependent requires determining what man’s highest good really is. This essay claims that God is man’s highest good and, for this reason, most valuable in himself, not as a means to achieve some greater object of value. For this claim to be true, an examination of scripture must reveal that 1) God is the source of all human flourishing and therefore is the resting place of desire, 2) God is most pleasing in himself, and in turn no greater happiness can be found beyond him, and 3) the happiness found in God is unwavering and self-sustaining.
First, scripture reveals God to be the source of all human flourishing. In the book of Jeremiah, God states, “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13, ESV). In calling himself the “fountain” of “living waters” (i.e., satisfaction and flourishing), God denounces the idea that he is merely a stream of pleasure, but rather is the source of it himself. Accordingly, if God truly is the source of human flourishing, he must be the good at which all desires are rightly ordered. David states, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9). As the fountain, God reveals himself to be the source by which all is properly perceived. As Cicero taught, the existence of a highest good requires that every human desire, when it is aimed at something less, will remain unsatisfied. Thus, any pursuit that follows one’s perception of something to be the highest good when it is in fact not is ultimately meaningless. In sum, scripture reveals that God is the author of human happiness and, as author, the final good by which all desires may be properly ordered and understood.
Secondly, God must be the object of the greatest potential human pleasure, and not merely a means to some greater pleasure. Based on Aristotle’s principles, the value of a good is determined by the level of satisfaction to be experienced in the attainment of its pleasure (i.e., how much happiness it provides). Accordingly, scripture must show that God himself provides more happiness than any other good. David writes describing God in Psalm 16:11, “in your presence there is fullness of joy…” The most important feature of this verse, as it pertains to the argument at hand, is the word “fullness,” which reveals the amount of joy to be experienced in the presence of God. Simply put, “there is nothing fuller than full.” According to scripture, if the fullness of human happiness is to be experienced, then it will only happen in the presence of God. There is therefore no greater joy to be experienced than the one derived from God himself.
Lastly, if God is to be man’s highest good, then scripture will reveal the delight found in him to be unwavering. Accordingly, Habakkuk reveals God as the only source of stable, unwavering happiness, saying,
“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls — yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17-18).
Two implications can be drawn from this text about the nature of goods and God as man’s highest good. First, every pleasure derived from a good that is not the highest good will inevitably leave the subject unsatisfied, as every other good is subordinate to the highest. Second, the happiness that is found in God does not waver with temporal circumstances but remains when every other pleasure falls short. Thus, scripture reveals a God who provides unwavering, unshakeable, stable delight, revealing God to be man’s highest good.
The Pursuit of the Highest Good
Before making the case that man’s highest good fulfills his chief end, it is appropriate to determine how man should pursue his highest good. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle gives his expectation for how one should do this:
“Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is...for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them…it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from…so that this end must be the good for man” (Aristotle, Book 1.2).1
Aristotle notes that when this highest good is discovered, it should become the foremost effort of society to pursue it, since it will enable mankind to flourish most completely. Thus, a pursuit of the highest good will involve intentionally ordering everything in one’s life toward that object on the basis that it will provide the most happiness. Additionally, it will involve abstaining from anything that hinders or distracts from the pursuit of the highest good.
It follows then that, if God is man’s highest good, scripture will call for that same action to be taken in pursuit of him. The New Testament necessitates this kind of action from believers in passages such as Matthew 6:33, which commands the ordering of all life toward God’s kingdom first; Colossians 3:1–2, which demands the intellectual reorientation of the mind toward heavenly things; and Hebrews 12:1–2, which calls for actively stripping away whatever hinders that pursuit. In each case, the Bible commands what Aristotle portrays as the rational response to discovering the highest good. Therefore, the Bible clearly demands that believers align with what is expected from one in pursuit of man’s highest good.
Scripture has made the case: God is not merely one pleasure among many — he is the source, the fullest expression, and the only unwavering ground of human happiness. But knowing what the highest good is and knowing how it connects to man’s deepest purpose are two different things. That’s where Part 3 concludes the series, and where the apparent conflict between happiness and glory finally dissolves as both find their fulfillment within one another.
Aristotle. “Nicomachean Ethics, Book I.” The Internet Classics Archive, translated by W. D. Ross, MIT, classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html.