THE MODERN CRY: I HAVE A RIGHT TO BE HAPPY
“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (HEBREWS 13:5).
A selfish desire for happiness is as sinful as any other selfish desire because its root is in the flesh which can never have any standing before God!

People are coming more and more to excuse every sort of wrongdoing on the grounds that they are “just trying to secure a little happiness!” That is the hedonistic philosophy of old Grecian days misunderstood and applied to everyday living in the twentieth century.

It destroys all nobility of character and makes milksops of all who consciously or unconsciously adopt it; but it has become quite the popular creed of the masses. Now I submit that the whole hectic scramble after happiness is an evil as certainly as is the scramble after money or fame or success. It springs out of a vast misunderstanding of ourselves and of our true moral state.

The man who really knows himself can never believe in his right to be happy. A little glimpse of his own heart will disillusion him immediately so that he is more likely to turn on himself and own God’s sentence against him to be just.

The doctrine of man’s inalienable right to happiness is anti-God and anti-Christ, and its wide acceptance by society tells us a lot about that same society. No man should desire to be happy who is not at the same time holy. Seeking fully to know and do the will of God, he leaves to Christ the matter of how happy he should be!

A. W. Tozer