Does God want us to be happy? What does the Bible say about happiness?

“Happiness” may seem like a passing thing, and hardly the ultimate goal in most belief systems. In fact, though, it is the Lord’s greatest goal for us: He wants us to be happy. If we allow it, He will lead and guide us to be as happy as we are able to be.

The whole reason the Lord created us was so that he could love us, and what else but happiness do you wish for someone you love? But the happiness the Lord wants for us is not the passing joy of satisfying our bodily desires but the exquisite eternal joy of conjunction with the Lord and true love of the neighbor, things that are harder to see and harder to attain but ultimately far more delightful.

Swedenborg distinguishes heaven’s happiness from worldly happiness of satisfying our bodily desires. In heaven, all happiness is felt from loving the Lord and being of use, living for the sake of others. Everything the Lord does is part of his attempt to lead us to that state, and in everything that happens to us - even the things that are the most tragic on the natural level - he provides opportunities for us to move toward that state.

In Arcana Coelestia 6392, there's this: "...performing good deeds without thought of recompense is that in which heavenly happiness consists." A couple of sentences later, there's another key statement -- i.e. that this real love of the neighbor has to be rooted in a "new will" in us, a will that can only be implanted by the Lord when we make room for it, and seek it.

In the American Declaration of Independence, the "pursuit of happiness" is one of the 3 enumerated inalienable rights that our Creator endows us with. Certainly, the Lord wants our happiness, and wants us to pursue it. In a way, though, if we pursue it directly, externally, we will probably not get it. If we pursue happiness for others, we will be making our minds open and ready for that new will. (See Arcana Coelestia 454 for more about this.)

The Lord also leaves us in freedom. We can reject his efforts and turn away if we choose to, and while that choice may seem to us to lead toward happiness, it's a passing, low-level happiness that is ultimately only a shadow of the joy he desires for us. However, people in hell are "happy" being there - at least as happy as they CAN be - because the life there matches the self-centered love they cultivated while on earth. If people in hell could be lifted up to heaven, they would feel tormented.

From Psalm 65:9-13:

Thou visitest the earth, and blessest it; thou makest it very plenteous.

The river of God is full of water: thou preparest their corn, for so thou providest for the earth.

Thou waterest her furrows; thou sendest rain into the little valleys thereof; thou makest it soft with the drops of rain, and blessest the increase of it.

Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy clouds drop fatness.

They shall drop upon the dwellings of the wilderness; and the little hills shall rejoice on every side.

The folds shall be full of sheep; the valleys also shall stand so thick with corn, that they shall laugh and sing.

From John 15:11:

I have told you these things so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 1153 [2]; Divine Providence 37)

201. Of the Lord's temptations.

The Lord beyond all others ¹ endured the most grievous and dreadful temptations, which are but little described in the sense of the letter of the Word, but much in the internal sense (n. 1663, 1668, 1787, 2776, 2786, 2795, 2814, 9528). The Lord fought from the Divine love towards the whole human race (n. 1690, 1691, 1812-1813, 1820). The love of the Lord was the salvation of the human race (n. 1820). The Lord fought from His own power (n. 1692, 1813, 9937). The Lord alone was made justice and merit, by the temptations, and victories which He gained therein from His own power (n. 1813, 2025-2027, 9715, 9809, 10019). By temptations the Lord united the Divine itself, which was in Him from conception, to His Human, and made this Divine, as He makes man spiritual by temptations (n. 1725, 1729, 1733, 1737, 3318, 3381, 3382, 4286). The temptations of the Lord were attended with despair at the end (n. 1787). The Lord, by the temptations admitted into Himself, subjugated the hells, and reduced to order all things in them, and in heaven, and at the same time glorified His Human (n. 1737, 4287, 9315, 9528, 9937). The Lord alone fought against all the hells (n. 8273). He admitted temptations into Himself from thence (n. 2816, 4295).

The Lord could not be tempted as to the Divine, because the hells cannot assault the Divine, wherefore He assumed a human from the mother, such as could be tempted (n. 1414, 1444, 1573, 5041, 5157, 7193, 9315). By temptations and victories He expelled all the hereditary from the mother, and put off the human from her, until at length He was no longer her son (n. 2159, 2574, 2649, 3036, 10830). Jehovah, who was in Him from conception, appeared in His temptations as if absent (n. 1815). This was His state of humiliation (n. 1785, 1999, 2159, 6866). His last temptation and victory, by which He fully subjugated the hells, and made His Human Divine, was in Gethsemane and on the cross (n. 2776, 2803, 2813-2814, 10655, 10659, 10828).

"To eat no bread and drink no water for forty days," signifies an entire state of temptations (n. 10686). "Forty years," "months," or "days," signify a plenary state of temptations from beginning to end; and such a state is meant by the duration of the flood, "forty days"; by Moses abiding "forty days" upon Mount Sinai; by the sojourning of the sons of Israel "forty years" in the desert; and by the Lord's temptation in the desert "forty days" (n. 730, 862, 2272-2273, 8098).

Footnotes: