"Work, work, till we die...."

The phrase, “….work, work, work till we die”, which bemoans the futility of life, was the sentiment of C.S. Lewis before his conversion to the Christian faith at the age of 32 years old. This indeed is the undeniable sentiment of many who are atheists or even those who possess some religious beliefs but whose idea of the after world is nebulous and uncertain. 

Nevertheless, to maintain some form of sanity in daily living and escape from the fear of death they would live a life of denial, disregarding the conflicted sentiments that their life would eventually end in oblivion against the truth of eternity embedded in their heart, so as to cherish meaning and success in work and in familial life while pursing happiness. The Psalmist, in Psalms 4:9, seems to allude to the joy that earthly gains bring in the form of corn and wine for the wicked in comparison to the gladness that God puts in those who trust in him. 

So, like you and me, most people would draw up some form of yearly resolutions at the beginning of each calendar year to achieve their goals in life, be it financial, career, marriage, setting up a family or even retirement depending on their particular phase in life. This can be likened to the pursuit of happiness. If you ask Fredrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, what is happiness? He would answer that happiness is “The feeling that power increases – that resistance is overcome”. Abstractedly, achieving the goals or even some of the goals in our yearly to-do list would provide some sense of happiness in this life.

Happiness then seems to be the pursuit of most people. If you do a google search on “happiness studies”, you will find many. In fact, there is even a peer-reviewed journal called Journal of Happiness Studies. For example, there are studies on the increase in one’s happiness with respect to one’s yearly income on one hand and having jobs that give them meaning or purpose, irrespective of how much they are paid, on the other. There is also a recent article published in The Atlantic on how you can escape the psychological gravitation (that is, agony of professional decline) and be happy[i] in your declining years. Of all the studies, perhaps the most famous and longest running study on the secret of happiness is the one by Harvard University[ii]. The central thesis of the studies is that there is “strong association between happiness and close relationships like those with spouses, family friends and social circles,” given that “personal connection creates mental and emotional stimulation, which are automatic mood boosters, while isolation is a mood buster”. The preponderance of “happiness studies” would seem to imply from the anecdotal experiences, that you and I have come across in our own life or the lives of others, that most people are unhappy! In fact, Sigmund Freud would agree that happiness is difficult to attain while “unhappiness is much less difficult to experience” and that “the suffering which comes from this last source (relationships) is perhaps more painful to us than any other”. C. S. Lewis indeed concurred with Freud’s sentiment on this specific source of pain while differing in other aspects. C. S. Lewis surmised that “three-fourths of our suffering fall into this category”[iii] of misery that is inflicted by fellow humans.

I trust by now the answer as to why human relationships cause the most pain in our life, is ringing in your heart if you have learnt some fundamental Christian teachings from the Bible, given the primacy of relationships accorded in the Bible. Let us begin with the concept of Love. The Bible teaches that God is love and we are commanded to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves as given in the Ten Commandments. But really when the Bible speaks about God is love (1 Jn 4:8), it also speaks of the Love that exist within the Triune God, the tri-personal God of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Positively, this love is experienced from all eternity and can be seen in the high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus in John 17:5,24 which speaks of the glory and love that he has from the father before the world existed. When the Bible uses the word “glory” it means praises and delights expressed from God to man and vice versa. Negatively, if God is uni-personal, then he would only experience love, not from eternity, but only when he created humanity in his own image. If God is triune and indeed, he is, this follows that when God created Adam and Eve, he did so to share the Triune Love, that exists within the Godhead from all eternity, with the creatures that he created in his own image. Jesus has this sentiment expressed in the redeemed humanity in his high-priestly prayer as well, in John 17:24. This is perhaps what the Psalmist alludes to in Psalm 8, “For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour”. In fact, the reason as to why God created us can be seen in Revelation 4:11b, “Thou are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure thy are and were created.” In short, we are created for his pleasure, for his delight, for his love and in return we are to give him His ultimate worth in Worship!

So whence come unhappiness in this life? We all know that the rupture came in the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, this was not just the breaking of God’s commandments, it was tantamount to the denial of the Kingship of God in the creature. In other words, the enthronement of Self is the essence of sin. It means that we identify our self as the ultimate authority. This leads to disastrous consequences in the rupture of fellowship and love between God and man as well as the enmity between man and man. The enthronement of self is manifested in inordinate love. While money, career, family, and health are good things, they become idols when they take the place of God. In fact, given that we are created for God it means that everyone worships something. If someone does not give God His worth, he or she would give himself or herself to idols in the form of Career, Wealth, Health or Children. It goes without saying that when God created us in his own image in Adam and Eve, he has provision for happiness in the context of a right relationship with him and with this relationship in the right place our relationship with others will be right. This is reflected in the Ten Commandments in loving God with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves. But, as you know, we are fallen creatures at birth (Rom 3:23), and the only way to be right with God is to rely on the Lord Jesus (John 3:16). In him we are reconciled with God the Father and declared righteous just as if we have never sinned. When God sees us, he sees Christ in our stead, living the life we cannot live in perfect love and obedience to God and dying the death we ought to die because of the penal requirements of the law of God. But it is easy to miss this important point because of the deceitfulness of our heart! How do you know that you are reconciled with Christ? How do you test your faith? Going back to the essence of sin we mentioned which is the enthronement of self, the question would be whether we have dethroned ourselves or not? Whether we respond to God in love as we have in the Psalms rather than from the sense of duty. This is clearly set forth in Matt 16:24,25, specifically where Jesus mentioned if one is to save his life, he shall lose it but, on the contrary, he who loses his life for Christ sake shall find it. Wow! this manifestation in a believer is indeed possible, real and the corollary of true faith in Christ. If you think about it carefully, you can testify that it is a reversal of what happened in the Garden of Eden through the heavy price of the death of the second person of the Triune God giving himself for us on the tree of the Cross!

The question is, Is this a reality in your life? Can you honestly say that more and more you have given up the enthronement of Self for the enthronement of Christ? If this is indeed true, then your new year resolution would reflect the primacy of this priority in getting your relationship with God right, in giving yourself to Christ’s Kingdom, such that you give more and more of yourself to Jesus, as losing your life for his sake. Is this true of your resolutions for 2021? Secondly, that you would give priority to getting relationships right with those around you, first, with those in Christ and then those outside Christ in winning them. Do you give yourself to one another? Does coming together to worship God with your fellow brothers and sisters excite and enthuse you? Or you would rather be alone and grumbling and insisting that everything should be about yourself or at your convenience?

Certainly, you can experience the abundant life that Jesus has promised to give (John 10:10) in 2021. Then as we walk this journey of faith, it would be “work, joy, peace and Glory” and this will never end, and you would even have a second go in the renewed humanity in the new heaven and new earth to come! Amen.

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[i] “Your Professional Decline is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think”, Arthur C Brooks, July 2019.

[ii] “The Secret to happiness? Here’s some advice from the longest-running study on happiness” Matthew Solan, Harvard Medical School, 28^th March 2019.

[iii] “The Question of God, CS Lewis and Sigmund Freud debate God, Love, Sex and the Meaning of Life”, Armand M. Nicholi Jr, Free Press.