No Right to Happiness?- Impressions

Definitely a controversial paper, CS Lewis’s discourse on this topic left me with a lot to consider. The query as to whether we have a right to happiness leads to another question, perhaps more pertinent: Do we in fact, have a right to anything at all?

In fact, if we examine that question within a biblical context, we do not. Everything we have has been given us by grace, and we can therefore claim no right to anything on this earth. We cannot then demand to be happy, because we have no stated right to this state of being. Even the government realizes this in stating that we have a right to the “pursuit of happiness”, not the guarantee that we will find it.

Now that we have established that we have no inherent right to this we must examine the actual nature of happiness. Although we may not be guaranteed it, we do often feel it. However what we realize is that happiness is fleeting, and as such to live our lives in such a way that chases after such an impermanent high would be detrimental to us, and distracting from the more important things that God would have us aspire towards, such as joy.

The most poignant thing I realized about this was that happiness is a hint at joy; it can be a manifestation of joy but must not be mistaken for it. Joy is deeper and is assured us in The Lord. As CS Lewis says “we are too easily pleased” when “infinite joy is offered us”. Why should we be content with mere happiness that comes and goes?


Lewis’s essay is for the most part examining one aspect of happiness that we will all encounter in our lives, and is the most often confused with true fulfillment: Sexual happiness. He speaks of how Sexual Happiness has been given many exceptions and been used to “condone all sorts of behaviour that if it had been any other end in view would be condemned as merciless treacherous and unjust.” This is clearly evident in our current society, where sexual happiness has been made precedent over everything else, and whatever means are used to attain it are justified as long as the person is “happy”
In this what we realize is that one person’s happiness will simply impede another’s. Compare this to joy, which can only encourage and find strength in another’s joy.

Lewis warns us that if we continue to assign this privilege to sexual happiness, we will eventually extend it to everything else, causing a total breakdown of our morality, we would have “died at heart”. We must therefore be careful what motives we assign to our pursuit of this intangible stae of being we call happiness.

The Bible says in Matthew 6:33 that we should “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” When we apply this to our topic of happiness, we realize that it is good to be happy, and God can add this to our lives, but instead of searching for that, we must search for its source.