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)

1153. That 'the sons of Gomer' also means those who possessed external worship, but an external worship derived from that which existed with the nation Gomer, follows from what has been stated and shown several times already about the meaning of 'sons', as well as from the fact that Gomer is one of those nations which possessed external worship corresponding to internal. Seven nations which possessed such worship are mentioned by name in the previous verse, and seven again, called 'the sons of Gomer and of Javan', in this. The specific differences however between one nation and another cannot be stated, as only their names are given here. In the Prophets however when the subject is specifically this or that type of Church-worship the differences can be established. In general all variations of external worship, as also of internal, arise according to the adoration of the Lord in the worship, and the adoration is according to the love to the Lord and love towards the neighbour that exist there. For it is within love that the Lord is present, and thus within worship. The differences of worship therefore existing among the nations mentioned here depend on the nature of His presence within.

[2] To make it easier to talk about how types of worship differ and how they did so in the Ancient Church among various nations, let it be realized that all true worship consists in adoration of the Lord. Adoration of the Lord consists in being humble; and being humble consists in the self-acknowledgement that with oneself there is nothing living and nothing good, but that with oneself everything is dead, indeed corpse-like. Being humble also consists in the acknowledgement that everything living and everything good come from the Lord. The more a person acknowledges these things not just with the lips but in his heart, the more humility he has; and consequently the more adoration - which is true worship - and the more love and charity, and the more happiness. The first contains the second, and they are so linked together as to be inseparable. This shows what these differences of worship are and the nature of them.

[3] Those who are mentioned here and are called 'the sons of Gomer and of Javan' are people who likewise possessed external worship corresponding to internal, but it was somewhat more remote than that of the people mentioned in the previous verse. This also is why they are called 'sons'. Generations descending one after another, or derivatives, here progress from what is interior towards things that are exterior. The more someone relies on the senses, the more exterior he becomes, and consequently becomes further removed from true worship of the Lord. For when it is more concerned with the world, the body, and the earth, and less with the spirit, it consequently becomes more remote. Because these people called the sons of Gomer and of Javan relied more on the senses, they focused worship even more on external things than those referred to as their parents and cousins had done. Consequently they form a second group here.

7502. 'behold, the hand of Jehovah will be on your livestock that are in the field' means the laying waste of the truth and good of faith which they had acquired from the Church to which they had belonged. This is clear from the meaning of 'the hand of Jehovah being on someone' as a plague or punishment, for 'hand' means power, 4931-4937, 6292, 6947, 7188, 7189, and 'the hand of Jehovah' almighty power, 878, 3387, and since those who are confined to the superficial things of the Church are led by appearances to believe that every plague or punishment comes from Jehovah (for they attribute all things to His power), 'the hand of Jehovah being on someone' means punishment, in this instance laying waste or vastation (for the stages In the vastation of those who molested were punishments); from the meaning of 'livestock' as forms of the truth and good of faith, dealt with in 6016, 6045, 6049; and from the meaning of 'the field' as the Church, dealt with in 2971, 3310. 'The field' is the Church because 'seed' which is cast onto the field means the truths of faith, and also because 'the products of the field', such as wheat, barley, spelt, and forms of the good of charity, and truths of faith, thus the kinds of things that belong to the Church.

[2] To understand why it is that hellish spirits who molest the upright in the next life undergo vastation in respect of the truths of faith taught by the Church, it should be recognized that those who molest the upright belonged to the Church. Those who have not belonged to the Church cannot molest others who do belong to it. They cannot do so because falsities, which are opposed to the truths of faith taught by the Church, are what spirits use when they molest, and those who have been outside the Church cannot molest anyone by means of such falsities because they have never come to know them. It is those who have claimed to be believers but have lead an evil life that turn to falsities in the next life and molest the upright with them, see 7097, 7127, 7317. Therefore to prevent the truth of faith which they had acquired from the teachings of their Church while they were living in the world from affording them any light at all from heaven (for they take with them into the next life everything they have come to know in the life of the body; nothing whatever is missing), and to prevent them from using things seen in the light of heaven to lend support to the falsities and evils belonging to hell, everything like that is taken away from them, and they are left finally with the evils forming their life and with the resulting falsities. This vastation is the subject at present.

[3] The reason why those who have belonged to the Church but led an evil life are devastated in stages in this way before they are cast into hell is that they had come to know the truths of faith, which put them in contact with heaven. The heavenly communities with whom they were in contact in the world, and with whom they are still in contact in the next life, cannot be separated from them except in stages. For in heaven such is the nature of order originating in the Lord that nothing is carried out in a violent manner. Everything people do they do in freedom, of their own accord so to speak. Therefore those communities are not wrenched away from them, but separated gradually, so that those people may seem to depart of their own free will and accord. From this one may now see what vastation is like for those who have known the truths of faith taught by the Church and yet have led an evil life.

[4] Without revelation no one can be aware of what such vastation is like; for without revelation people have no knowledge of things that take place in the next life. And since people show little concern to find out from the Word about the truths and forms of the good of faith, because they have no affection for truth for its own sake, let alone for life's sake, neither are such things revealed to them. Yet these things are discernible in the Word; indeed the whole sequence in which they occur and the course they take is presented in its internal sense. Since therefore people in the Church have no affection for knowing truth from the Word, only an affection - for worldly reasons - for substantiating the teachings of their Church, whether true or false, they know nothing whatever about the state after death, nothing about heaven, and nothing about hell. They do not even know what makes heaven or what makes hell with a person. In fact their ignorance is such that they teach and believe that anyone can be admitted into heaven, some believing that a person can be admitted by the power which they have arrogated to themselves, others by the Lord's mercy, irrespective of the life the person has been leading. Scarcely any know that heaven is given to people while they live in the world, through a life of charity and faith, and that this life is enduring. These matters have been stated in order that people may know what members of the Church are like who advocate faith alone but are unconcerned about the life of faith; for these are the ones who are represented by the Egyptians here and in what follows below.