Why I Cannot Abide “You’re Only as Happy as Your Least Happy Child”
She meant well. My friend was only trying to sympathize.
Kelly wasn’t the first to say it after she heard about our son. In my younger mothering days, I believed it, too—that I could only be as happy as my least happy child.
But now I don’t think it’s true.
Content Means Sufficient
Because I’m learning “the secret of being content in any and every situation” (Philippians 4:11). “Any situation,” I am coming to think, must include parenting an unhappy child, or sharing life with a disgruntled father or mother or husband or wife.
The Greek word translated “content” in Philippians 4:11 is “autarkeia” — a compound of two words that mean self (“autos”) and full or sufficient (“arkeō”).
Contentment comes when, by God’s grace and power, we carry on “independently of external circumstances.” Its secret is to know the God who “is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
The Greek word in translated “sufficiency” above could just as well be translated “contentment.” Sufficient means enough. It means we’ll have all we need to abound in every good work. It means that no matter how happy the people around us are, we have all we need to be happy in Jesus.
“To be content is to have an attitude that what I have is sufficient,
—Jerry Bridges, “Lifestyle of Contentment”
and that God is sufficient for me in the situation I find myself.”
Contentment is an inward sense of peace and joy independent of circumstances. While we may desire a change in our situation, and pray for it, we are not dependent on it for our peace and joy.
Contentment means that in Christ I have enough to be happy.
Enough to be happy even when my children are not. Enough to be content when my husband and I disagree, and enough to have peace when my day job does not fulfill me.
It means I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).
Happy and Content
Yes, I do mean to mix peace, joy, and happiness into the blessed loaf of contentment. They’re all in there. You can’t be content without some measure of these.
For it is in the presence of the Prince of Peace thatwe find fullness of joy, and iat his right hand that we find pleasures for evermore. We don’t have to know the Hebrew word for “pleasures” (naʿim) in Psalm 16:11 to know that the people who enjoy God’s presence will, in fact, also be happy.
“In him the day-spring from on high has visited the world;
—Matthew HENRY, commentary on Genesis 1:3-5
and happy are we, for ever happy, if that day-star arise in our hearts.”
Author Randy Alcorn has taken up the cause of Christian happiness against a hyper-spiritualized and under-realized joy.
“When people today say, ‘I have got the joy of Jesus way, way deep in my heart, even though my life is pretty miserable.’ It is like, ‘Well, you know what? I think that joy needs to work its way to your face once in a while.’ After all, we are called to “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.”
“Happiness” need not be superficial and fleeting. It can simply mean “pleased.” And as Christians, we ought to “take delight in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4), which is, I think, to be happy, and pleased.
So let’s not throw the happy baby out with the murky bath water.
Contentment is Not Denial
But this sort of otherworldly contentment might look like denial.
It might look like we are refusing to accept the truth of a diagnosis. It might appear that we are rejecting the reality of a situation.
It might.
But it might be that in the face of sin’s stains on us and those we love, on strained relationships, and in seasons of sorrow and pain, there is a deeper reality.
Yes, Sam, “Everything sad will come untrue.”
It might be that we are focused on that deeper, happy truth. And that power to focus is only possible because the Holy Spirit of the only happy, blessed God is upon us.
Our Blessed, Happy God
If God himself were not happy, he could not rightly call us to be happy?
Furthermore, Randy Alcorn points out, “if God were not happy, he could not be the source of our happiness, because God can’t give us what he doesn’t have.”
God is perfectly happy. In 1 Timothy 1:11 and 6:15, the Greek word makarios is variously translated as “blessed” or “happy”—as in, “the happy God.”
But Doesn’t God Get Sad?
The Bible does say God grieves over our sin (Genesis 6:6). But he doesn’t feel sadness the same way we do, because God is completely in control (1 Samuel 15:29). He does not change (Malachi 3:6). The Holy Spirit is always full of joy (1 Thessalonians 1:6-7).
Plus, God loves us. Which means, please don’t miss this, that our Heavenly Father, who genuinely loves his children, remains the “happy God” even whan his children are sad.
When we are anxious and sad, God sees and cares for us (Matthew 10:29; 1 Peter 5:7). Jesus Christ, the God-man, expressed that both divine love and human emotions perfectly. The story of Lazarus (John 11) paints a striking picture of our Lord who got sad, angry, and glad.
I love how Aaron Rothermel sums this all up,
“The Bible gives us this good news. Though Jesus is sad over our sin and hurt, he doesn’t stay sad. And he makes sad people glad (Revelation 21:4).
What God wants is always perfect, and he’s always able to accomplish what he wants. This means God is always happy. He’ll always be happy to hear from us because he’s never having a bad day, or feeling blue. He’s always full of life and joy (Psalm 16:11).When we learn to trust that God is always doing the right thing, it will make us happy too.”
God is a happy God, even when all all his children are not. He is the model and the power for us to rest content, no matter how unhappy our least happy family member may be.
But You Don’t Know How Bad It Is
You are right, I don’t.
But I do have friends. Two of them have texted me in the last 24 hours. One has a son who is addicted and checked himself in, and another whose son is wreaking havoc and won’t stop.
And I know one King David, whose family life was in tatters and whose own son Absalom usurped (see 2 Samuel 15-17). Yet David refused to yield his joy.
In Psalm 4, likely written when he was fleeing for his life, he prays to the God who filled his heart “with more joy than when their grain and new wine abound.” This is defiant joy, and indefatigable gladness.
But some of you have the added trial of one who is actually trying to use their sadness to keep you sad.
So before I close, I want to address those of you who bear the burden of a friend or family member who intends to block your happiness and put a stranglehold on your joy.
For that sage counsel, I turn to C.S. Lewis.
No More Emotional Blackmail
A scene in the second to last chapter of Lewis’s, The Great Divorce keeps playing in my mind. In this story, a ghostly group of visitors from hell take a daytrip to heaven.
In this scene Frank, a dwarf ghost, meets his former wife, a bright Lady who is a joyful citizen of heaven. On earth Frank had used other people’s pity, in the wrong way.
Frank had manipulated others’ pity “for a kind of blackmailing,” and used his misery to “hold joy up to ransom.”
Frank, we find, had learned this as a child.
“Instead of saying you were sorry, you went and sulked in the attic…because you knew that sooner or later one of your sisters would say, ‘I can’t bear to think of him sitting up there alone, crying.’ You used their pity to blackmail them, and they gave in in the end.”
When a shrinking Frank denies this charge, the bright Lady pushes back,
“Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat?” she asks. “Always defenceless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed? . . . You can no longer communicate your wretchedness… Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light.”
If that sounds a little callous, Lewis has one last word for you.
Be Happy
Zoom out. Look ahead, he advises. For it is not right that,
“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”
It shall not. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy (Romans 14:17).
All of this means that our gladness be held hostage by a negative spouse. We need not have our peace be taken captive by a gloomy colleage. Our happiness need not be capped at the level of our least happy child.
We can be content and happy and smile.
For Immanuel.
“Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”
—Isaiah 12:6 (RSV)
