Pursuit of Happiness as Worldview Fragment

This blog's intent is to throw some light onto the fault line(s) between Christianity and current U.S. culture. While the title "Christianity Unbowed" correctly indicates that the blog's focus is on the Christian side of the line(s), I think looking at the other, more fashionable side makes sense from time to time, if only to contrast the Christian side.

Of course, just as the Christian side is really a diverse collection of ideas that happen to share a strong connecting thread, so with the non-Christian side. A non-Christian viewpoint under analysis is therefore more accurately described as a worldview fragment than a definite and explicit worldview. Calling a viewpoint a "fragment" is not a subtle insult but a suitable label for a set of ideas that can (and often do) serve as a component or flavor in a complete worldview held by some specific individual. Moreover, since people commonly believe in an implicit set of ideas (living an "unexamined life" and all that), those implicit ideas don't claim to be more than fragments anyway. Also, a set of ideas may be logically or conceptually compatible with any number of complete worldviews, which again points to that set constituting a worldview fragment.

The Pursuit of Happiness is a worldview fragment defined as "the goal of human existence is the pursuit or maximization of happiness". This worldview fragment has undeniable popularity and lack of controversy. In politics in any democracy, the Pursuit of Happiness is an excellent platform to assure some votes, when promising it to at least a majority. On a personal level, nothing could be more natural than seeking pleasure and avoiding pain; animals do it.

Yet the Pursuit of Happiness has an easy application beyond the personal level, too: if the goal is to increase all happiness (of sentients), any personal decision that would lessen someone else's happiness level is wrong. The principle is then "do whatever you like to pursue happiness, on the condition that those actions don't make anyone else unhappy". Therefore the Pursuit of Happiness tells us that the ultimate moral question for a society to ask is whether a personal action hurts anyone; if so, disallow it, if not, ignore it so the personal Pursuit can continue without interference. What could be easier?

I'm not discussing this worldview fragment to discredit it, but to relate it to Christianity. Here are some areas to consider.

• One needn't read too far into the Bible to realize that the goal of existence is not defined by each person's pursuit of happiness. Rather, the goal of existence is defined by the Creator of existence, who knows what is best. And this goal...
• ...is not necessarily happiness as people imagine it to be. Paradise was people living in perfect harmony with God, their own natural drives, other people, and their surroundings. Without that paradise of harmony intact to serve as a guide and support, people have proceeded to have an incredible array of erroneous ideas about everything, including what real happiness is. Confessing one's errors is the essence of humility. God is good. One statement I have read is the suggestion that human-defined happiness is in actuality aiming too low.
  
• The Bible's ideas about community may seem strange, too. Individualism and independence are highly cherished ideals/rights for protecting citizens from the excesses of government, but we must also acknowledge the collective and dependent nature of humanity. This doesn't stop with the tribes and kingdoms of the Old Testament but continues into the New Testament, when Jesus declares the arrival of the "kingdom of heaven" and the group of Christians takes on the name "Body of Christ". As a result, the boundary line between public and private Christian holiness is blurry. In this context, the notion of my Pursuit of Happiness not affecting someone else's Pursuit of Happiness (for good or bad) is nonsensical.
  

Agent of Harm?

Of the statements one may hear or read about Christianity or religion, one is almost shocking or laughable in its overgeneralization: "Religion is an agent of harm". I've tried to express the statement in its purest form, because the variations are legion; some say "blight" or "pestilence" or "plague", and not all with the same level of virulence. In some cases, it's even irreverently humorous to hear, when someone more or less switches from saying "all viewpoints should be respected" to saying "I spit on the religious viewpoint" without acknowledgment of any contradiction...

In my opinion, an overgeneralization is hardly worth discussing, because by definition each side has evidence, and the only fallacy is one side ignoring contrary evidence. I'll just cover some evidence on both sides of the overgeneralization. First, some reasons why the simple assertion, "religion is an agent of harm", is not true. Obviously, I'm heavily biased on this side.

• The opposite statement, "religion is an agent of aid", clearly has some evidence, and since the two statements contradict one another, therefore neither can be absolutely true. Charity is a religious virtue, followed by innumerable believers who continually give. Moreover, principled religious believers have worked to rectify systemic social problems like slavery. To try to say that religion played no part in their beliefs and actions is ridiculous; their own quotes disprove that.
• Serene happiness requires a sense of purpose. Religion is a common way of meeting that need. Christians might even go so far to say that other ways of obtaining purpose are relatively ineffective and unsatisfying. "Man cannot live on bread alone". In any case, the fact that religion fills a (existential?) void in life is evidence that religion is not all harmful.
• Stable societies are upheld by their institutions. While I would argue that Christianity is meant to be treated as far more than one of many social institutions (institutions in which people participate just because it's what people do), religion generally has traditionally played an important role in the majority of cultures. Religion is often, if not directly at least indirectly, a basis for ethics, customs, etc. People have a tendency to take religious elements and embellish them (witch-hunting? angels?) like any other cultural artifact, but that again is evidence for the importance of religion in culture. If a society is stable, and religion is (likely) a part of that society, then religion may be serving as a stabilizing force. There is a negative way to view this effect, expressed as "religion is the opium of the people", but that's reality for ya. It transcends categories.
• A possible companion statement of "religion is an agent of harm" is the somewhat more modest "without religion, on the whole the world would be better off". Here are a few responses. 1) Religion is so entwined into human existence, this speculation borders on meaningless fantasy (try asking "would the world be better off without government?"). 2) Instead of trying to imagine a world without religion, one could calculate religion's "net worth" by tallying and comparing its upsides and downsides. Must it really be said that such an undertaking would be extremely inconclusive, not to mention subjective? I mentioned this when I offered some thoughts on the Crusades. 3) Is the "track record", measured by whatever metrics, of non-religious people uniformly superior to religious people? I don't think so. In fact, the Christian doctrine of human depravity would lead me to believe that religious or not, people can find ways to be desperately wicked. Also, people often say that someone believes in something "like a religion". Is it at all surprising such beliefs would be subject to many of the same objections as religions per se?
  

Now, some reasons for why "religion is an agent of harm" is true. Someone else would probably be more qualified to fill in this section, but here goes. I can't help myself offering immediate counterarguments to these points, sorry.

• Among certain personalities in particular, religion can be twisted (some easier than others) into a justification for atrocities. Sadly, the killing of heretics and infidels is well-documented and oft-referenced. The counterargument is that disturbed individuals, who are truly motivated by revenge or delusion or power, would act maliciously with or without a veneer of religious justification. For someone on a rampage, religion's role is dubious in the same way a violent video game's role is dubious.
• "Religion blinds people to reality" is an argument that is a perennial favorite, especially for the "if I can't experiment on it or measure it, it don't exist!" crowd. And as usual, there is a nugget of truth. Religious people have been known to act irrationally. Yet I fervently affirm irrationality is not a prerequisite of faith. People of faith should act rationally, with faith suppling a larger context for the facts instead of a replacement for the facts. For instance, I don't believe people of faith are obligated to trust someone who has proven to be untrustworthy every time. However, if someone sincerely wishes to repent of his past deeds, showing genuine resolve, I believe people of faith are obligated to offer that person a chance to earn new trust. Consider the difference between optimism and pessimism. The facts are the same, but one's outlook on those same facts is radically different. I agree that it's harmful for religion to blind people to reality, because religion should not be escapist. However, I strongly disagree that faith implies blindness. Those who say they don't believe in religion based on lack of proof also may just be evasive.
  
• Intolerance is another popular accusation of damage wrought by religion. Nugget of truth? You betcha. Intolerance is something I dislike too! As I've already said, though, this argument applies to more than religion. Any time someone believes in anything, there is an opportunity to not grant others the same freedom.
• This last reason is the counterpoint to the second reason for religion not being harmful, sense of purpose. Those who follow their (non)belief systems to the logical conclusion may state that there's no reason for religions. Whether or not it's right, it's a self-consistent position to take. If there is no afterlife, and humans are animals with oversized brains, and abstractions in general are to be valued not as independent but as pragmatic entities, and ethics are created in the same way art is created, and all of existence is a fortunate accident, then religion is rather pointless and wasteful, isn't it? There is no existential void. There is no such thing as purpose; it's a question devoid of concrete meaning. The best thing to do, when such concerns overwhelm, is to lie down until they go away or drown them out with pleasure or pain. If this is reality, if this is all there is, then religion is an agent of harm because it gives answers to nonexistent questions and thereby distracts from real questions, where "real" means "artificial" or "man-made". Ready to believe this?
  

Humility

Of all the barriers that can prevent a person from connecting with God, pride is one of the strongest. While pride is as old as the very first person, I seem to see growing acknowledgment and acceptance of personal pride as a normal state for someone to be in. And what I mean by "pride" may not be what you think.

At this point I will digress to address a reaction some people may have, which I've heard before: "Christians lecturing others about pride? That's ridiculous. What group is more arrogant about its own morality, or more vocal about the way other people should behave?" There's a germ of truth in that, no doubt. I agree that even when advising non-believers about moral issues, Christians should not be haughty about it. Rather, they should always keep in mind their own reliance on God's grace, not to mention the clear Biblical assertion that teaching the Law, without teaching redemption through Jesus, "brings death" because a person in his or her natural state will fail to live holy. The Christian mission is not to sort out Us from Them - and then derive satisfaction that God will only protect Us from Hell! That is a perversion of Christianity that also has the tendency to redirect attention to external behavior instead of the internal condition of the soul. (On the other hand, it is not prideful for someone to contribute to a conversation about what is right and wrong as long as it is done in a non-hostile fashion; refer to the Tolerance entry. Pride is viewing oneself as superior, but being without pride does not mean having the lowest common denominator of moral ideals.)

So pride has its own way to smuggle itself into an unwary Christian, and in general nobody is invulnerable from pride. However, particular flavors of pride are becoming steadily more acceptable in the culture around me. Pride is the vice of exalting oneself, especially above God.

• Intellectual pride. By this I don't mean pride taking place in the intellect, as all real virtues and vices take place holistically (even "passion" sins like lust or anger aren't real vices unless the sinner feels the impulse in the flesh, allows the impulse to adversely affect his mental judgment, and chooses to obey the impulse in his soul or will). Intellectual pride is clinging to the basic belief that knowledge and wisdom have no "God component". Another way of stating this is that the intellectually proud believe that their own faculties are sufficient, apart from God, for arriving at all truth - even if they don't know everything on their own power, they think they could. A result of intellectual pride is the inability to trust the substance of Christian thought. However, I think it's also incorrect for someone to veer into gullibility by deactivating his or her brain! Earnest believers should be thorough in weighing and testing what others say about God, because such matters warrant it. The pride is not in carefully considering what other sources of knowledge, including God and His body the church, seem to say, but in not considering those other sources at all.
• Moral pride. Moral pride is the attitude of making up one's own rules as one sees fit. A telling but unsurprising observation is that the morally proud often profess the precise set of morals and values that match their behavior. The morally proud person who has rage problems will tell you personal expression is the right and privilege of each individual. The morally proud person who embezzles will tell you wealth redistribution is a prime way to make society fairer. Moreover, the morally proud reserve the right to shift their set of rules, perhaps whenever convenient. The Christian answer to moral pride is to derive one's holiness from the Holy God, of course. But the opposite, also incorrect, extreme of moral pride is moral rigidity and the resulting inability to operate in the wide region of the "gray", meaning everyday situations in which moral decisions are hard.
• Economic pride. Economic pride goes beyond money, which is ultimately merely a medium of exchange anyway; economic pride is separating resource considerations from God, whether the resource is a job, a vehicle, another personal possession, inborn talents, or is in fact money. Economic pride consists not only of withholding resources from God, but also manifests in the failure to trust God in any dealings with those resources, whatever the expression of that trust may be.
  
• Intentional Pride. In other words, pride of intention or pride pertaining to intention. Intentional pride is when one's intention is solely determined by oneself. People intend to accomplish goals with their actions, whether the goals are large or small, important or trivial. The intentionally proud believe that they are and should be completely self-directed in all they do. Christians believe differently, of course. Calling any part of the Trinity "Lord" should be more than a habit or custom or figure of speech. Some parts of the Bible go to the point of characterizing Christians as "slaves", slaves to righteousness and to the Savior. In my opinion or taste, applying the word "slave" to humans who: 1) have been freed from the corrupting influence of sin, and 2) presently and for eternity share existence with a benevolent God, is quite misleading. Anyway, the point is that Christians have Someone to answer to, so they cannot have intentional pride, pride of intention.

The above qualities may seem directly opposed to the vibes emanating from current and even past US culture. Deep humility is hard to achieve and maintain in any culture throughout history (rooted as it is in fallen human nature), but it is still if not more necessary here and now. Humility is also one of the firmest dividing lines between Christians and the rest, regardless of to what degree the rest call themselves "Christian". The conflict between humility and pride strikes at the issue of control, so it is pivotal.