Lessons:

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #1
The Good and Beautiful Life

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #2
The Gospel You May Not Have Heard

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #3
The Grand Invitation

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #4
Anger

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #5
Lust   

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #6
Honesty

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #7
Bless Those Who Curse You

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #8
Learning to Live Without Vainglory

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #9
Learning to Live Without Avarice

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #10
Learning to Live Without Worry

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #11
Learning to Live Without Judging

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #12
Living in the Kingdom

Some of us are introverts, some are extroverts. Some of us like cats, others like dogs. Some of us like to take risks, others play it safe. Each of us is unique. But there is one thing that every one of us has in common: everyone wants to be happy. No one seeks a dull, lifeless, boring, meaningless life. I have never met a person whose goal was to ruin his or her life. We all want to be happy, and we want it all of the time. And we want it for those we love. Recently there was a poll taken that asked this simple question: “What did your parents want most for you—success, wealth, to be a good person, or happiness?” Eighty-five percent said happiness.*

Do you agree that everyone wants to be happy?

Ben wanted to be happy. He never set out to live a sad, joyless life. Ben did not decide, “I think I will make a series of selfish decisions in an attempt to ruin my life.” He thought he was pursuing happiness. Ben was pursuing happiness, joy, contentment and prosperity, just as all of us do all of the time. The problem is Ben had adopted a set of ideas about what success and happiness are, and they were all wrong. He was simply obeying a false narrative about what constitutes a good and happy life. His dominant narrative, like all dominant narratives, dictated his behavior and justified the outcomes. No one ends up in a situation like Ben’s all at once. It takes a long time to ruin a life. It all starts with the stories we live by.

To be sure, in our day there is a difference between being happy and being joyful. Happiness is a temporary condition based on our circumstances. Joy is an inner disposition not based on external circumstances and therefore not subject to change. The old devotional writers, notably people like John Wesley, used happiness to describe the good and virtuous life. True happiness meant that a person was also good. Wesley said famously, “You cannot be happy without being holy.” This is the sense I am using happy to describe the good life.

James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ, The Apprentice Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2009), 15–16.

Check out our Bible Study on The Good and Beautiful Life by James Bryan Smith.

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