Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity being and other people’s, as well as material objects whose Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense, high gloss positively seems to invite a big fat scratch. Now, I by Francis Spufford hope, we’re on common ground. In the end, almost everyone recognizes this as one of the truths about themselves. You Chapter 2, “The Crack in Everything,” pp. 26-33 can get quite a long way through an adult life without having to acknowledge your own personal propensity to (etc. etc.);

maybe even all the way through, if you’re someone with a

very high threshold of obliviousness, or with the kind of If I say the word “sin” to you, I’m basically buggered disposition that registers sunshine even when a storm is (as we like to say in the Church of England). It’s going to howling all around. But for most of us the point eventually sound as if I’m bizarrely opposed to pleasure, and because of arrives when, at least for an hour or a day or a season, we the continuing link between “sin” and sex, it will seem likely find we have to take notice of our HPtFtU (as I think I’d that at the root of my problem with pleasure is a problem better call it). Our appointment with realization often comes with sex. You will diagnose me as a Christian body-hater. at one of the classic moments of adult failure: when a You’ll corral me among the enemies of ordinary joy. You’ll marriage ends, when a career stalls or crumbles, when a class me with the holy life-haters William Blake was relationship fades away with a child seen only on Saturdays, thinking of, in the poem in his Songs of Experience in which a when the supposedly recreational coke habit turns out to be chapel appears “where I used to play on the green”— exercising veto powers over every other hope and dream. It

need not be dramatic, though. It can equally well just be the And tombstones where flowers should be: drifting into place of one more pleasant, indistinguishable And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, little atom of wasted time, one more morning like all the And binding with briars my joys and desires. others, which quietly discloses you to yourself. You’re lying

in the bath and you notice that you’re thirty-nine and that So I won’t do that. Because that isn’t at all what I the way you’re living bears scarcely any resemblance to mean. What I and most other believers understand by the what you think you’ve always wanted; yet you got here by word I’m not saying to you has got very little to do with choice, by a long series of choices for things which, at any yummy transgression. For us, it refers to something much one moment, temporarily outbid the things you say you more like the human tendency, the human propensity, to wanted most. And as the water cools, and the light of fuck up. Or let’s add one more word: the human propensity Saturday morning in summer ripples heartlessly on the to fuck things up, because what we’re talking about here is bathroom ceiling, you glimpse an unflattering vision of not just our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by yourself as a being whose wants make no sense, don’t accident, our passive role as agents of entropy. It’s our active harmonize: whose desires, deep down, are discordantly inclination to break stuff, “stuff ” here including moods, arranged, so that you truly want to possess and you truly promises, relationships we care about, and our own well-

1 want not to, at the very same time. You’re equipped, you Kill some zombies on your Xbox. Let the net’s unending realize, for farce (or even tragedy) more than you are for flutter of opinions tickle you, and keep you tickled. happy endings. The HPtFtU dawns on you. You have, indeed, When our desires do conflict sharply enough to cause fucked things up. Of course you have. You’re human, and us an unhappiness we can’t distract away, there is a strong that’s where we live; that’s our normal experience. contemporary feeling that it ought to be possible to fix the The HPtFtU is bad news, and like all bad news is not situation by a change in the rules, an alteration of what is very welcome, especially if you let yourself take seriously and is not permissible. We’ve been telling ourselves a very the implication that we actually want the destructive things popular story recently, about a person poisoned by anxiety we do, that they are not just an accident that keeps and self-hatred because they think they are forbidden to do happening to poor little us, but part of our nature; that we something essential to their nature; then they discover that are truly cruel as well as truly tender, truly loving and at the the prohibition is groundless, that it’s a meaningless taboo same time truly likely to take a quick nasty little pleasure in left over from less enlightened times which they could and wasting or breaking love, scorching it knowingly up as the should discard. And so they do the thing they’ve wanted and fuel for some hotter or more exciting feeling. We would, on feared to do— they go to bed with someone of their own the whole, very much like this not to be true, and our culture gender, they leave the violent husband who belittles them, conspires to help us avoid and defer and ignore the sting of they explore the polyamorous lifestyle— and it’s OK. The it as much as possible. The purveyors of flattering images do sky doesn’t fall. The ground is still solid under their feet. And their damnedest to keep us feeling that we can be as we they relax into freedom. Think of Stephen Fry in Wilde, when wish ourselves to be. It would not be very cool or he’s lying next to another man for the first time, saying “I aspirational if we had to imagine our biographies being feel like a city that’s been under siege for years, and sculpted out of some awkward substance over which we had suddenly the gates are thrown open . . .” This is a potent limited control. In the ideal land of marketing, you can contemporary myth, and like all potent myths, it has a large choose what you are. Each minute is supposed to be the amount of truth in it. Over the last fifty years, we really have solvent of the one before. All that is solid is supposed to melt been escaping, as a culture, from a set of cruel and into air. If you do get upset about some aspect of your own constricting rules, particularly about sexuality and gender actions, the advice you get is not to dwell on it; to banish it, roles, which (yes) did have the sanction of religion behind in effect, by applying a sense of proportion. Think of all the them. (Not that religion caused those rules to exist, on the good stuff that’s also true about you! Well, yes: yet seeing whole. There was a malignant cultural consensus in place in your virtues clearly is difficult for exactly the same reasons their favor, of which religion was a part.) But the truth that that seeing your HPtFtU is, so the advice amounts to a some problems of conflicted desire can be solved this way, suggestion, really, that you should distract yourself. Keep some cases in which we desperately both want and don’t yourself busy with stuff. Don’t look inside. Shop. Rent a DVD. want to do something, doesn’t mean it’s true that all can. Any more than the possibility of abolishing particular rules

2 of behavior means that we could plausibly abolish all rules unacceptable, between kind and cruel, between clean and of behavior. There’s always, necessarily, going to be stuff it’s dirty, we’re always going to be voting on both sides of it, all right to do and stuff it’s emphatically not all right to do. despite ourselves. Not all of us, on every subject, all the time, We discover new immoralities to take seriously at the same of course; but all of us on some subject or other some of the speed that we abolish old ones. Just as much as our time. ancestors, but about different things, we’re sure that people And this is a state of affairs in the face of which we are rightly horrified if they find they have certain feelings. are, for the most part, currently clueless, tool-less, Make the thought experiment of turning the man who wants committed to alarmed denial rather than to any more useful and doesn’t want to want sex with other men into a man or hopeful response. who wants and doesn’t want to want sex with children: immediately our feeling vanishes that it’s the existence of a prohibition which is the problem. And no, I’m not saying that those two desires are in any way morally equivalent. I’m saying that soluble problems of conflicted desire represent a lucky subset of a much larger class of insoluble ones, states of tangled wanting we aren’t going to reform away. There can never not be a situation in which people will find it essential to be a certain way, will want and need to be a certain way, and find that they cannot manage it. We are creatures who don’t get to decide what we are, whose natures are always partly hidden from our conscious understanding, who always pull several ways at once. It’s an insight that can be restated in radically different analytical terms, and still have the same implications for experience. You can put it as Freud did, and say that there are unconscious processes which resist and subvert conscious intentions. You can think of it in terms of evolutionary biology, in which case one of the best expressions of it is the geneticist Bill Hamilton’s wonderful description of the human animal as “an ambassador sent forth by an unstable coalition.” Or you can quote St Paul: “What I would not, that I do. What I would, that I do not.” Wherever the line is drawn between good and evil, between acceptable and

3 Making Sense of God, the more common is depression. 3 The things that human by Timothy Keller beings think will bring fulfillment and contentment don’t. What should we do, then, to be happy? Chapter Four: “A Satisfaction That Is Not Based on Haidt says that the answer— of the Buddha and Circumstances” Chinese sages like Lao Tzu in the East and the Greek Stoic philosophers in the West— constituted the “early happiness

hypothesis” of ancient times. The principle was this: We are

unhappy even in success because we seek happiness from Psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book The Happiness success. Wealth, power, achievement, family, material Hypothesis provides a historical survey of thinking about comfort, and security— the external goods of the world— happiness. 1 He begins his chapter with a book of the Bible can lead only to a momentary satisfaction, which fades we have just looked at, Ecclesiastes. The author writes: “A away, leaving you more empty than if you had never tasted person can do nothing better than to . . . find satisfaction in the joy. To achieve satisfaction you should not seek to their own toil” (Ecclesiastes 2: 24), but that is exactly what change the world but rather to change your attitude toward eludes him. He describes a life of accomplishment that very the world. Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher, wrote, “Do not few achieve. seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead

want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself go well.” 4 If we do that, the Buddha taught, “when pleasure and planted vineyards. . . . I amassed silver and gold or pain comes to them, the wise feel above pleasure and for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I pain.” 5 In short, don’t try to fulfill your desires; rather, acquired male and female singers, and a harem as control and manage them. To avoid having our inner well— the delights of a man’s heart. . . . I denied contentment overthrown by the inevitable loss of things, do myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart not become too emotionally attached to anything. 6 no pleasure.” (Ecclesiastes 2: 4,8,10) However, many people have found this approach to

satisfaction not very satisfying. Haidt, for example, believes Nevertheless, he says, “I hated life. . . . My heart began that Buddha and the Greeks “took things too far.” 7 to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun.” He argues that modern research shows some external (Ecclesiastes 2: 17,20) Haidt summarizes, “The author of circumstances do correlate with increased satisfaction. In Ecclesiastes wasn’t just battling the fear of meaninglessness; particular, love relationships are important, and therefore he was battling the disappointment of success. . . . Nothing the advice of emotional detachment may actually undermine brought satisfaction.” 2 This is an abiding human problem, happiness. 8 Philosopher Alain de Botton agrees that loving and there is plenty of modern empirical research that backs relationships are fundamental to happiness. Indeed, he it up. Studies find a very weak correlation between wealth thinks our quest for the external goods of status and money and contentment, and the more prosperous a society grows,

4 is really just another quest for love. 9 Another obvious forebears did and doing a worse job of it, if we use the rise of problem with the ancient happiness hypothesis was that it depression and suicide as an indicator. undermined any motivation for seeking major social change. The author of Ecclesiastes deserves the final word Rather than change the world as it is, we were to resign here. “Whatever is has already been, and what will be has ourselves to it. been before.” (Ecclesiastes 3: 15) Despite all our modern Haidt takes a very modern attitude toward our efforts, with regard to happiness we are essentially back ancestors. He says we can agree with any wisdom from the where we started. past that is backed by empirical research. The ancients warn One response is to ask, “So what?” and insist that us about the disappointment of overacquisitiveness, and the there is little real problem here. Julian Baggini thinks that social science confirms that, he says. But what Haidt there is no genuine problem, that no one is perfectly happy describes as modern culture’s operational “happiness or needs to be. Most people get by fine without it, so we hypothesis” is only a slightly chastened version of what the shouldn’t worry about how happy we are but instead should author of Ecclesiastes was trying to do. While warning simply do things that matter. 11 Thomas Nagel observes against overdoing it, modern culture encourages its that, according to empirical studies, most people are pretty members to find satisfaction through active efforts to happy most of the time. 12 change our lives, not to just accept life as it is. 10 Terry Eagleton, however, responds that the problem is masked rather than revealed by the term “happiness.” The very word is a “feeble, holiday-camp sort of word, evocative Back Where We Started of manic grins and cavorting about.” 13 For most people— including those who answer researchers’ survey If we stand back to ask what we have learned about questions— the term does not have much depth to it. It happiness over the centuries, it is striking to see our lack of refers to a range of conditions from simply “being okay” to progress. Think of how we have surpassed our ancestors in “having fun.” To be okay is not too hard to achieve. When our ability to travel and communicate, in our asked by either friends or social psychologists, “How are you accomplishments in medicine and science. Think of how today?” we instinctively say, “Fine, thanks.” But conflicts and much less brutal and unjust to minorities many societies are anger flare up so quickly, and the statistics on depression today compared with even one hundred years ago. In so and suicide always startle, and all this indicates things are many ways human life has been transformed, and yet not as good as we say they are. though we are unimaginably wealthier and more To get at our condition more accurately, we should comfortable than our ancestors, no one is arguing that we ask about joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction in life. Are we are significantly happier than they were. We are struggling achieving those things? The thesis of this chapter is that we and seeking happiness in essentially the same ways our have much thinner life satisfaction than we want to admit to researchers or even to ourselves. On the whole, we are in

5 denial about the depth and magnitude of our discontent. The “had the feeling that something was missing. I don’t know artists and thinkers who talk about it most poignantly are what, but when it was over I said to myself, ‘Is that all there seen as morbid outliers, but actually they are prophetic is to a circus?’” Later she says that she fell “so very much in voices. It usually takes years to break through and dispel the love” with the “most wonderful boy in the world.” And then denial in order to see the magnitude and dimension of our one day he left her, and she thought she’d die. “But I didn’t. dissatisfaction in life. And when I didn’t, I said to myself, ‘Is that all there is to love?’” At every turn everything that should have delighted and satisfied her did not— nothing was big enough to fill her The Dimensions of Our Discontent expectations or desires. There was always something missing, though she never knew what it was. Everything Roman poet Horace asked, “How comes it to pass . . . left her asking, “Is that it?” that no one lives content with his condition . . . ?” He So every stanza of her life, like a song, went back to concludes that “all . . . think their own condition the the same refrain: hardest.” 14 Why is no one content with his or her life? One reason can be seen in a line from the poem Is that all there is? “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens. “But in contentment I Is that all there is? still feel the need for an imperishable bliss.” 15 As we have If that’s all there is my friends, seen, travel, material goods, sensual gratification, success, Then let’s keep dancing. and status give quick spikes of pleasure and then fade. Let’s break out the booze and have a ball, Stevens’s line helps us understand why. Even as we taste a if that’s all— moment of contentment, we sense how fleeting it is, that it there is. will soon be wrenched from our grasp. It begins to fade away even as we try to embrace it or even to savor it. The The lack of any deep or lasting satisfaction drives her ephemeral nature of all satisfaction makes us long for to joyless partying. As we gradually discover that everything something we can keep, but we look in vain. However, this is we thought would be fulfilling is not, we become less able to not the whole problem. We do not only want a satisfaction look forward to life, more numb, jaded, and cynical, or that lasts longer but also one that goes much deeper. worse. The woman speaking in the song realizes that her In 1969 the singer Peggy Lee recorded the song “Is listeners might wonder why she doesn’t commit suicide. But That All There Is?” written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller she predicts that the experience of dying will be every bit as and based on an 1896 Thomas Mann novella called disappointing as life has been, so there is no reason to hurry Disillusionment. 16 The woman speaking in the song tells it. about being taken as a twelve-year-old to the circus that was called “The Greatest Show on Earth,” but as she watched she

6 I know what you must be saying to yourselves. Though there is a spectrum of experience, nobody in the end “If that’s the way she feels about it why doesn’t she just has ever been different. That’s what the wisdom of the end it all?” ancients and all the anecdotal evidence in the world will tell Oh, no, not me. you. C. S. Lewis put it in perhaps the classic way in his I’m in no hurry for that final disappointment. wartime BBC radio talk on hope. ’Cause I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you, Most people, if they really learn how to look into their That when that final moment comes and I’m breathing own hearts, would know that they do want, and want my last breath acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. I’ll be saying to myself— There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to Is that all there is? give it to you, but they never keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or The Leiber-Stoller song echoes the experience of first think of some foreign country, or first take up Village Voice columnist Cynthia Heimel, who saw friends go some subject that excites us, are longings which no from anonymity to Hollywood stardom only to find, to their marriage, no travel, no learning can really satisfy. I am horror, they were no more fulfilled and happy than before, not speaking of what would ordinarily be called and the experience actually deepened their emptiness, unsuccessful marriages or trips and so on; I am turning them “howling and insufferable.” She surmises that speaking of the best possible ones. There is always “if God really wants to play a rotten practical joke on us, he something we grasped at, in that first moment of grants our deepest wish and then giggles merrily as we longing, that just fades away in the reality. The spouse begin to realize we want to kill ourselves.” 17 Henrik Ibsen, may be a good spouse, the scenery has been excellent, the Norwegian playwright, helps us understand what it has turned out to be a good job, but “It” has evaded happened to Heimel’s friends. “If you take away the life- us. 19 illusion from an average man, you take away his happiness as well.” 18 Within Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck, a life illusion is the belief that some object or condition will finally bring The Strategies of Our Discontent you the satisfaction for which you long. But this is an illusion. At some point reality will destroy it, and nothing So what do we do when we discover that we lack destroys it like actually achieving your dreams. “it”— the “something missing but we don’t know what”? If you are younger, it is natural to say to yourself, “I There are at least seven strategies that people take toward have heard about these disillusioned celebrities and wealthy their discontent. There are two broad approaches— you can people who say their life isn’t happy. But if I get anything either live life assuming that satisfaction in life is quite like what I’m hoping for, I’ll be different.” No you won’t. possible, that “it” is still out there, or you can live in the

7 conviction that satisfaction is not possible, that there is no constructive anger, such as complaining and venting, can in “it.” But within these two categories we can discern four the short run be a kind of relief— but it is only in the short strategies in the first and three strategies in the second. run. And if our efforts actually break the barriers and get us to the next level of accomplishment, we will find that “it” is still not there to be found. That means we will need the third “IT” IS STILL OUT THERE strategy.

The young. The normal way people start adult life is The driven. By definition, a secular culture puts the to travel hopefully in anticipation of a joyful arrival. We most emphasis on the here-and-now. We think that accruing think, “If I get the right love partner, if I get the right spouse, possessions and accomplishments will bring satisfaction. if I get the right career and make some money— then I will What happens if, unlike the young and resentful, we find we have life satisfaction.” James Wood refers to the pursuit of actually reach many of our material goals? We will, as “jobs, family, sex, and so on— the usual distractions” by the ancients did, still find something significant missing. which we hide from ourselves the emptiness of our lives. 20 What do we do? Many people begin to blame the things we Actually we may be quite discontent, but we don’t recognize have. We assume that if we got a better spouse, a better job, it because we are so busy in the process of getting ready to a better income, or a better home, then we would feel much be happy. “Of course I am restless. I haven’t gotten to do all better too. If we take this path, we may become among the things I am going to do.” We think we just have to get society’s most productive members— and also the most over this hill or get around that bend and then things will be driven. We go through houses and spouses and jobs and the great. This strategy, of course, is only effective temporarily. constant reinvention of our lives, assuring ourselves that at the next level “it” is going to finally be there. But The resentful. However, as time goes on, we begin to psychologists call this merely speeding up the “hedonic realize we are not getting “it.” One of the main reactions is to treadmill.” 21 On an exercise treadmill a change of speed blame the obstacles that have kept us from achieving the does not translate into a change of location; we only work things we think will satisfy us. We may be the victim of harder to maintain our position and eventually become too prejudice or discrimination, or we may find ourselves in a weary to keep on going. So too the enjoyment that community that is not open to many of the things we want attainment initially brings wears off, so that we need more to be and do. Rather than social structures, we may identify and more of the same kinds of attainment just to maintain individuals who blocked our progress or who have wronged the same pleasure. Eventually, as on a physical treadmill, we us. And so we blame them, saying “I would be quite happy if will find ourselves too exhausted to continue. it wasn’t for (fill in the blank).” Now, this might in the short run lead to some good— we might channel our anger The despairing. What if we don’t find “it,” even after constructively into becoming social activists. Even less removing obstacles and achieving more and more, but we

8 nonetheless continue to assume it exists? In some cases, Altruism. Often people who have devoted the earlier rather than blaming other things, we may blame ourselves. part of their lives to personal advancement turn away from That means saying, “There is something wrong with me— it toward social causes, philanthropy, and improving the I haven’t done well enough. I haven’t gone far enough up the lives of others. Sometimes their story goes like this. “I career ladder. I haven’t attracted the best romantic partners. thought I would find satisfaction in acquisition, but now I I’m a failure.” If we take an honest look at ourselves, it is realize that it is only through giving and serving that I can never too hard to see some ways we have contributed to our have a fulfilling life.” Of course, this is to be fully encouraged. own frustration. British author Francis Spufford writes that One writer in the New York Times, typical of this approach, for a time we can live in denial of our active tendency to relates how in earlier years he thought that satisfaction and “break stuff—‘ stuff’ here including promises, relationships self-esteem could be found. He sought to fill his “sense of we care about, our own well-being, and other people’s.” But deficit”— his inner emptiness and need for satisfaction— the day comes when “you’re lying in the bath and you notice through success and wealth. But then he learned a better you are thirty-nine and that the way you’re living bears way: “We feel best about ourselves when we stop focusing scarcely any resemblance to what you thought you always obsessively on filling our own sense of deficit. Making others wanted, and yet, you realize you got there by a long series of feel valued makes us feel more valued.” 23 Instead of trying choices.” 22 So we hate ourselves. to better ourselves, we get far more satisfaction from trying to better others. But many have pointed out the problems that result “IT” DOESN’T EXIST when people turn to benevolence and social activism as a way to find more fulfillment for themselves. This approach All of these strategies are based on the assumption is ultimately, and ironically, extremely selfish. Your that human beings can and ought to live a life of satisfaction supposed generosity is really just building yourself up. The and fulfillment. However, many people question that very most famous of the critics is Nietzsche, who argued that premise. They conclude that it is our expectations of life that modern people help the needy out of a sense of moral are out of line. We may start out life naively in pursuit of “it,” superiority. 24 They feel superior to their former, but eventually we see that it does not exist, and we unenlightened selves, as well as to earlier times and should get used to life as it is. This has affinities with the societies which were not committed to equality as they are. ancient “happiness hypothesis.” There are at least three In short, they are not serving others as much as serving ways to live based on this outlook, and all three of them themselves. They are using the needy and poor to achieve seem to be an improvement over the naïveté, resentment, the self-worth they need. This not only can lead to anxiety, and despair we have been looking at. But on closer paternalism but can also turn to disdain and contempt if look, each one of these strategies is extremely problematic their altruistic efforts are not met with respect and as well. gratitude. Helping others in response to your own

9 discontent will not work in the long run, either for others or for others does not increase satisfaction but only for you. undermines it. Even though ancient stoic detachment has a better philosophical pedigree than the jaded Western Cynicism. By the time many sophisticated and cynicism that sneers at everything, it ultimately also urbane people in our culture reach middle age, they come to hardens your heart and dehumanizes you. a position that could be expressed something like this: “Yes, when I was younger I thought fulfillment was out there. I thought sex and love and career success would be much Understanding Our Discontent more satisfying. But now, of course, I have grown up. I realize nobody is ever content and satisfied, but there’s no We want something that nothing in this life can give need to obsess about this. I have stopped chasing rainbows; us. If we keep pursuing it in this world, it can make us I have stopped crying after the moon. I have lowered my driven, resentful, or self-hating. If we try to harden our expectations of life and learned to enjoy what I have, and I’m hearts so that it doesn’t bother us, we harm our humanity getting by fine.” As sensible as this sounds, it is problematic and those around us. If, however, we don’t harden ourselves, in at least two ways. One is that this stance almost always and fully feel the grief of desire’s lost hope, we may find self- creates a certain amount of condescension toward anyone destructive ways of drowning it, as did the woman in Peggy who is not as sophisticated and as ironic as you. This can Lee’s song. All of these approaches look like dead ends. make you as bigoted and self-righteous in your own way as What is the cause of this seemingly inescapable the legalistic religionists you despise. But there is a more condition, of this enduring discontent? serious effect. As we heard from Martin Heidegger, what One modern theory is summarized by Haidt as the makes you a human being and not an animal is that you “Progress Principle.” People find more pleasure in working want joy, meaning, and fulfillment. If you decide that toward a goal than they experience when they actually fulfillment, joy, and happiness are not there, and you harden attain it. Evolutionary psychologists opine that this is an your heart against hope, you can dehumanize yourself. adaptive mechanism. That is, they conjecture that our forebears who experienced post-attainment disappointment Detachment. We might ask why we don’t revert to a were more likely to work harder to achieve higher goals. purer form of the older “happiness hypothesis” of the These people were then more likely to live longer and so, Buddha and the Greek Stoics. Their counsel was not to love having more children, they passed down their genes to us. anything or hope for anything too much. Epictetus wrote, Therefore, the discontent— the feeling that nothing in the “What harm is there while you are kissing your child to world fulfills our deepest longings— is actually a chemical murmur softly, ‘Tomorrow you will die’?” 25 But here I must response in the brain that helped our ancestors survive. The side with the modern research, which supports a deep sense we have that “something is missing” is therefore an human intuition, namely, that diminishing your love illusion, a trick played on us by our genes to get us to be

10 more industrious. Haidt even briefly uses this evolutionary but by what we love. “For when we ask whether somebody theory to explain the Peggy Lee song “Is That All There Is?” is a good person, we are not asking what he believes or 26 hopes for, but what he loves.” 29 For Augustine, what we call But the woman’s life depicted in Peggy Lee’s song human virtues are nothing more than forms of love. Courage undermines the theory. She finds the repeated is loving your neighbor’s well-being more than your own disappointments of life not a motivation to work harder but safety. Honesty is loving your neighbor’s interests more than rather a disincentive for doing anything but getting high at your own, even when the truth will put you at a parties. And surely this is realistic. Though disappointment disadvantage. And because Jesus himself said that all God’s may, in the short term, drive some people to more law comes down to loving God and your neighbor (Matthew attainment, it can just as likely undermine initiative and 22: 36– 40), Augustine believed all sin was ultimately a lack drive. And over time it usually will. Therefore, the feeling of love. 30 Look at injustice. You may say that you believe in does not necessarily or even normally lead to survival social equality and justice and think that you do, but if you behavior. The evolutionary explanation of our make business decisions that exploit others, it is because at constant discontent doesn’t seem to hold up. the heart level you love your own prosperity more than your A more time-tested explanation comes from the great neighbor’s. In short, what you love most at the moment is Christian philosopher Augustine. what controls your action at that moment. “A body by its As a nineteen-year-old, Augustine read Cicero’s weight tends to move toward its proper place. . . . My weight dialogue Hortensius. This work considered the paradox that is my love: wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me.” every person “sets out to be happy [but] the majority are 31 You are what you love. thoroughly wretched.” 27 Cicero concluded that the extreme Augustine did not see our problems as stemming scarcity of human contentment might be a judgment of only from a lack of love. He also observed that the heart’s divine providence for our sins. He counseled his readers not loves have an order to them, and that we often love less to seek happiness in the pursuit of material comfort, sex, or important things more and the more important things less. prosperity but rather to find it in philosophical Therefore, the unhappiness and disorder of our lives are contemplation. The book was electrifying to the young caused by the disorder of our loves. A just and good person Augustine. 28 One of his lifelong projects became to discover “is also a person who has [rightly] ordered his love, so that why most people are so discontent and bereft of joy. He he does not love what it is wrong to love, or fail to love what concluded that our discontent has both a functional cause should be loved, or love too much what should be loved less and an ultimate source. (or love too little what should be loved more).” 32 How does The functional cause of our discontent is that our this work? There is nothing wrong with loving your work, loves are “out of order.” but if you love it more than your family, then your loves are Augustine taught that we are most fundamentally out of order and you may ruin your family. Or if you love shaped not as much by what we believe, or think, or even do, making money more than you love justice, then you will

11 exploit your employees, again, because your loves are restless until it rests in you.” 35 We were made for God, and disordered. so nothing can give us the infinite joy that God can.

All things are precious, because all are beautiful, but The Infinity of Our Discontent what is more beautiful than He? Strong they are, but what is stronger than He? . . . If you seek for anything The ultimate disordered love, however— and the better, you will do wrong to Him and harm to yourself, ultimate source of our discontent— is failure to love the first by preferring to Him that which He made, when he thing first, the failure to love God supremely. In his would willingly give Himself to you. 36 Confessions, Augustine prays to God: “For there is a joy that is not given to those who do not love you, but only to those You harm yourself when you love anything more than who love you for your own sake. . . . This is happiness and God. How does this work? If you love your children more there is no other. Those who think that there is another kind than you love God, you will essentially rest your need for of happiness look for joy elsewhere, but theirs is not true significance and security in them. You will need too much joy. Nevertheless their will remains drawn towards some for them to succeed, be happy, and love you. That will either image of the true joy.” 33 drive them away or crush them under the weight of your Augustine here distills the biblical view of humanity. expectations, because they will be the ultimate source of Human beings were made in the image of a God who is your happiness, and no human being can measure up to that. tripersonal— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From all eternity If instead you love your spouse or romantic partner more those three divine persons have been loving one another in than God, the same things occur. If you love your work and infinite degrees of joy and glory. We were created to know career more than God, you will necessarily also love them this joy by loving and glorifying God preeminently. Whether more than your family, your community, and your own we acknowledge God or not, since we were created for it, we health, and so that will lead to physical and relational will always look for the infinite joy we were designed to find breakdown and often, as we saw above, to social injustice. in loving communion with the Divine. We turn to things in If you love anything more than God, you harm the world to give it to us, but “[ we] sin when, neglectful of the object of your love, you harm yourself, you harm the order, we fix our love on the creature, instead of on Thee, world around you, and you end up deeply dissatisfied and the Creator.” 34 The reason even the best possible worldly discontent. The most famous modern expression of goods will not satisfy is because we were created for a Augustine’s view was the ending of Lewis’s radio talk: degree of delight and fulfillment that they cannot produce. As Augustine famously says to God at the beginning of the Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction Confessions: “You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well,

12 there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desires: about a selfishness and hardness but also weakens our love well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a relationships, thus undermining the greatest source of desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, joy we know. We need not only to receive love but also to the most probable explanation is that I was made for give it. 40 another world. 37 Augustine breaks through this logjam. He does a radical critique of love-as-attachment, and presents his own The Augustinian analysis does justice to our pre-Christian self as a case study. He had attached his experience. As we saw, the evolutionary explanation of our happiness to a friend whom he loved intensely but who died perennial discontent fails to account for it. The idea that suddenly. He later realized that he had “loved a person sure “most people are basically happy” trivializes it, but it is not to die as if he would never die” (Confessions, book IV, trivial at all. Some have, as it were, sought to fill the inner chapter 8). This happens because our souls “become stuck emptiness with billions of dollars and virtually unchecked and glued to these transient things,” which “rend the soul power to gratify their impulses and appetites. Yet the with pestilential desires and torment” because “the soul testimony of the ages is that even goods on this scale cannot loves . . . to take its repose” in them. Yet “in these things fill the vacuum. That is powerful evidence that the cavern in there is no point of rest, for they . . . flee away” (Confessions, our soul is indeed infinitely deep. 38 book IV, chapter 10). 41 However, after Augustine confirms the deadliness of love-as-attachment, he turns and says that such love is good, The Healing of Our Discontent right, and essential when given to God. Though idolatrous attachment to earthly goods does indeed lead to Here, then, is the conundrum we face. Our unnecessary pain and grief, the solution was not to love the surprisingly deep discontent leads us to lock our hearts onto things of life less but to love God more. The problem is not things with profound intensity. The ancients wisely taught that you love your family or job too much but that you love that the only way to avoid unhappiness is to avoid this “love God too little in relationship to them. Intense attachment as attachment,” that is, to attach ourselves so powerfully and and detachment kill. Don’t harden your heart against exclusively to an object or person that we cannot imagine love, Augustine says, but don’t give your heart ultimately to life without it or him or her. 39 Not only do such things that you can lose and cannot satisfy. Instead infuse attachments lead to envy, resentment, anxiety, and even your heart with a sense of God’s love and incline your heart violence in order to defend our possession, but they also to love him in return. This will be transformative. make us fragile and vulnerable to the inevitable changes and Consider this: If you live a long life, it will tear you up disruptions of life. to see the people who matter most to you put into the However, we have seen the dangers of finding ground one by one. If your greatest source of contentment contentment through detachment. That not only brings and love is your family, that will be intolerable. But if you

13 learn to love God even more than them, your greatest source it is not the case with Christianity, the faith that I know by of consolation, hope, joy, and value will not be diminished by far the best. Christianity teaches that we are saved by God’s grief. Indeed, the sorrow will drive you to drink deeper from free grace and pardon. Unlike some forms of religion, it. You will not find yourself empty, and you won’t always be Christianity does not say that we merit blessing through hardening your heart in order to deal with how your losses depriving ourselves and turning our backs on the world in tear you up. The love of God can never be taken from you, order to earn heaven. Once we know through faith in and in his love, the Bible says, you live with loved ones Christ’s work for us that we are reconciled to God, and that forever. 42 the Creator is now not just our sovereign but our father, we Of course, not even the strongest believers love God can begin to have a more “sacramental” experience of the perfectly, nor does anyone get close to doing so. Yet to the world. We see everything as a free gift from Father and a degree you move toward loving him supremely, things begin foretaste of the glory and goodness to come in our eternal to fall into order, into their proper places in your life. inheritance. In short, as Miroslav Volf puts it, “Attachment to Instead of looking to the things of the world as the deepest God amplifies and deepens enjoyment of the world.” 44 It source of your contentment, you can enjoy them for what does not diminish it. they are. Money and career, for example, become just what Here, then, is the message. Don’t love anything less; they are supposed to be. Work becomes work, a great way to instead learn to love God more, and you will love other use your gifts and be useful to others. Money becomes just things with far more satisfaction. You won’t overprotect money, a great way to support your family. But these things them, you won’t over-expect things from them. You won’t be are not your source of safety and contentment. He is. constantly furious with them for not being what you hoped. There is another powerful dimension to this Don’t stifle passionate love for anything; rather, redirect reordering of loves. Paul Bloom, in his book How Pleasure your greatest love toward God by loving him with your Works, argues that what matters most for pleasure is not the whole heart and loving him for himself, not just for what he simple impact on our senses but what it means in can give you. 45 Then, and only then, does the contentment relationship to other persons who matter to us. A painting start to come. that we think is an original by an admired artist gives less That is the Christian view of satisfaction. It avoids the pleasure when we find out it is not. A chair may be pitfalls of both the ancient strategy of tranquility through comfortable, but if it is our mother’s favorite chair from her detachment and the modern strategy of happiness through sitting room, it will give us even more pleasure. To use acquisition. It both explains and resolves the deep theological language, “we enjoy things most when we conundrum of our seemingly irremediable discontent. experience them as a sacrament— as carriers of the presence of another.” 43 Some have charged that religion drains ordinary life of its joy by devaluing it in deference to “higher,” more spiritual interests. This is not true— at least,

14 How to Love God our neighbor, we sin, and for God to forgive our sin, the Son of God became mortal and graciously died in our place on It may be that, reading this, you think Augustine’s the cross. This is an offensive idea to many people, but for analysis and solution make good sense. The magnitude of the moment just consider the two ways this message can our discontent points to something beyond this world. We bring about the love relationship with God, which solves the harm ourselves if we try to satisfy our deepest longings in human dilemma. human love, and we also harm ourselves if we detach our First, the knowledge of our sin softens our hearts. If hearts too much from love. Augustine’s solution is that only you were to raise a child and work your fingers to the bone the love of the immutable can bring tranquillity, and only an to send that child to college, and the child only occasionally infinite love can satisfy our hunger for infinite joy. sent you a Christmas card and never gave you the time of Even if this all makes sense to us, how do we actually day, that would be wrong. It’s wrong because the child owes know that love? You can’t just tell yourself “God loves me” not just deference but love. Now, if there is a God who and expect your heart to change. Nor can you just say, “From created us and keeps us alive every minute, then the love now on I will love God.” Love cannot be generated simply by we owe God would be infinitely greater. To not love him an act of the will. Children learn to speak only by responding supremely would be infinitely worse. If you believe that, you to speech and learn to love only by reciprocating love. So we begin to see how much we have wronged him. It begins to cannot love God just by thinking of an abstract deity who is draw your heart outward toward him in humility and grief. loving in general. We must grasp and be gripped by the true Second, the knowledge of his grace ignites our hearts. story of God’s actual sacrificial, saving love for us in Jesus. If you want to forgive someone who has wrongfully cost you In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks to a crowd about a great deal of money and can’t afford to pay you back, you the “bread of life,” such that whoever eats it “will never go must absorb and pay the debt yourself. If God was going to hungry” (John 6: 35). He is talking metaphorically about forgive us, he had to pay the debt we owed himself. And something that gives both strength and delight, an image Jesus Christ pays it by going to the cross. Keep in mind that of fulfillment and satisfaction. He also observes that human outside of salt and a couple of minerals, everything we eat beings seek this in the wrong places. He warns against has died so that we may live. If you are eating bread, not “work[ ing] for food that spoils,” that does not in the end only did the grain die, but the bread has to be broken into satisfy (John 6: 27). But he does not just say, “I am the pieces. If the bread stays whole, you starve and you fall dispenser of the bread of life.” Rather, he says, “I am the apart. If the bread is broken into pieces and you take it in, bread of life” (John 6: 35) and “This is my body given for then you live. When Jesus Christ says, “I am the bread of life. you” (Luke 22: 19) and “This is my body, which is for you” (1 . . broken for you,” (John 6: 35; Luke 22: 19) he is saying: “I Corinthians 11: 24). am God become breakable, killable, vulnerable. I die that you The heart of the Christian faith is the simple Gospel might live. I am broken so you can be whole.” message of sin and grace. Because we fail to love God and

15 Only if you see him doing this all for you— does that begin to change your heart. He suffered and died for your sake. Now out of joy we can love him just for his sake, just for the beauty of who he is and what he has done. You can’t force your heart to love. A kind of vague god, a god of love, an abstract god will never change your heart. This is what will change it, draw it off its inordinate attachments to other things, and turn it away from the food that spoils. Someday, then, you will be able to say, “Because your love is better than life . . . I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you” (Psalm 63: 3a, 5). This is “it”— or at least its foretaste (1 John 3: 1– 3).

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