Finding happiness in a world of suffering

All that time at EMU is supposed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but at the end of the more than 1600 hours of lectures and labs on all things from polymerization and environmental cost accounting to restorative justice and Gandhi, I feel neither warm nor fuzzy. Where is the joy which comes with earning an undergraduate degree? In true graduating senior style, I will seize the opportunity to reflect on the topic of happiness. I mean the deeper, total happiness that we call contentment or satisfaction.

First, there’s something to be said for having your basic needs met: food, water and the like. Yet, I am increasingly conscious of the fact that material things don’t make me feel fulfilled. In my life, I always have plenty of food, shelter, clothing, computers, bicycles, candy bars and cameras. Yet, I am not always happy. Beyond basic needs, things don’t make me happy.

Second, I know that certain experiences – reconnecting with an old friend, learning something new about an interesting topic, capturing an important moment on film – make me feel fulfilled, but only for a while. Economists call it decreasing marginal benefits, and I call it the fact that everything gets old after a while.

Third, in my search for deep, penetrating and lasting satisfaction of the okay-I-can-die-now type, I have begun to suspect that it does not exist. All I have known in my life is the dynamic, short-lived satisfaction that comes and goes. This leads me to think that perhaps happiness is a process, rather than a static state of being.

Finally, the fourth principle: some of the meaningless-ness of my life is the product of knowledge about the world. I was the kid who got depressed after hearing about the depletion of the ozone layer in third grade, and if you are brave enough to open a newspaper, and you will see that things haven’t gotten any better in the years since. From civil wars and sexual abuse to the destruction of rainforest lands, it seems clear that our planet is sick.

Here in the Middle East, I hear the theme that I can only find everlasting fulfillment in God; that God has a wonderful plan for my life and that I need only listen to God’s voice to be fulfilled. That’s a great idea, and one that I wish I could agree with. My problem is the philosophical dilemma of evil: how can we reconcile the idea of a just, powerful and loving Creator God with the brokenness of the world?

From Genesis, many Christians would suggest that human suffering has its roots in Adam and Eve’s original sin. Fair enough, but such an understanding seems difficult to reconcile with the concept of God’s justness when it is related to the suffering of children and those who are unable to defend themselves. Can the starvation or torture of small children be understood as part of God’s justice?

Or, in a context of conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews, complete with a weekly double-digit death toll, how exactly is the statement, "God is here" operationalized? Does it really mean something, or is it merely a way to console our brains when we can’t fit all of the pieces together? Where is God when pieces of metal tear into the flesh of Israeli commuters as they ride the 8:00 bus in West Jerusalem?

Faced with the reality of suffering around the world, I must confess that I haven’t found much consolation in the affirmations of God’s goodness, omnipotence and omniscience that we often claim in our hymns and our prayers. How is God all three of these at the same time in light of a world of sexual abuse and civil war? I resolve this problem in a way that is somewhat Jewish: I embrace God as a mysterious being. Instead of revealed and completely knowable through scripture, God is only partially understood, and God’s plan for the world is so beyond our comprehension that the human labels of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ become useless.

With this understanding, I return to the first question. I haven’t found one experience or accomplishment that will make me happy for the rest of my life, but I know that I often feel fulfilled when I feel that I am making a contribution to society. I feel satisfied when I help other people feel satisfied. Thus, I suggest that the quest for satisfaction in our personal lives and the quest for a better world may be one and the same thing that the redemption of our tormented spirits and the redemption of humanity are dependent, not exclusive, of each other.

With a mere 22 years of life experience, perhaps my being ‘happy’ isn’t the point. I don’t have a good theological handle on suffering, but if we seek meaning in our lives, I suggest that it’s worthwhile to pursue that which makes for better relationships, stronger communities and ultimately, a more whole and integrated society of human being.

So, until the next thousand or so hours of lectures, I declare that our world is suffering, that God’s goodness, power and knowledge is couched in mystery, and we can find meaning in our lives by living creatively in the tension between our knowledge of both. That’s not all warm and fuzzy, but it is honest, and that’s what counts the most.