Longing, Hope, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In the first chapter of Engaging God’s World Cornelius Plantinga takes a quote from the book a Separate Peace. The quote describes a scene of imaginable beauty on a summer day in New Hampshire. The main character, Gene says that “I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because those mornings were too full of beauty for me.” After reading the quote a few times I was faced to ask myself two questions. One had I ever felt a natural beauty to the decree that Gene had seen. Then secondly how is this overwhelming natural longing for beauty related to hope and longing for God. After some pondering, I could think of a few natural landscapes that took the breath right out of me, but there was one experience I’ve had that trumps all other. However  I’m  sure I can’t describe what I saw to its full  glory but I will try. Last year, I when on an interim trip to the Galapagos Islands. During one of the nights, we were traveling from Espanola back to the largest island of Santa Cruz. It was getting late prolly around midnight and one of our guides wanted to show the people that were still up all the stars. So he turn off all the lights on the boat and the whole night sky instantly came alive. It was as if we could see every single star ever created, and because we were on the open ocean the stars stretched at far as could be seen in every direction. All I could do was lay on the bow of the boat and take the experience in as the waves slowly bobbed the boat up and down. I remember the great joy that I felt, It was like God had created something amazing and then said okay now enjoy it.  Using this experience helps me understand what Plantinga talks about later when he describe a time when there will be shalom. He says that “these earthly things are solid goods, and we naturally relish them. But they are not our final good. They point to what is “higher up” and “further back”.” From this I wonder, because I see tons of beauty in creation so I can’t really imagine what else God has waiting for me since the pleasure that we get from natural things is only a crude example of what is to come.

In C.S. Lewis essay Have No Right to Happiness Lewis describes a trend that was becoming prevalent in his day and now is out of control in ours. He tells about the pursuit of happiness at the expense of others.  Lewis explains this with the paradigm of two couples that that leave their spouses for reasons like, they lost their good looks in after giving birth and growing old, or their husband got injured in the war and he isn’t the same. Then he claims that these are poor excuses to leave a spouse and they aren’t justifiable, but somehow they are legal. Later Lewis talks about how a pursuit of happiness(sexual) attitude leads to the centralization of immoral behavior. When sexual impulses are fulfilled the guilty often sight that they are only doing what is natural so they don’t feel the burden of what they are doing to others. The others that are victimized in many cases end up being women, this is because they have the deck of card stacked against them. Since every year after maturity they lose their beauty and they are the greater of the two genders to get hurt physically (STDs/unwanted pregnancies) and emotionally by sleeping around.  Additionally  the guilty person also ends up making themselves a victim as well because sexual sin can act like a virus and spread to other areas of people’s lives. Paulo gave the example of wanting to ask people whom were being interviewed for a job position about past divorces because the job called for a person of integrity. When someone can’t be trusted to stay with his wife, than he can’t be trusted with anything because all of his validity is gone.  After reading the essay and having class discussions I was troubled because I know of many Christian families going through a divorce right now and its sad to see people that were so strong being tricked into thinking that what they are doing is okay.