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I finished the previous episode by asking the question, how much trouble do you want in your life? Well you have time to think about it and I would like to suggest that maybe, we all need something to contend with in life.  Maybe God wants us to content with stuff in life so that we can live the kind of live where he can bring out the best in us. You know if all your problems were solved you wouldn’t grow? So maybe we should want some challenging things that we need to work through?  Maybe there's really something valuable about overcoming problems and the spiritual maturity that comes along with that. 

How about getting married and having a family that certainly brings responsibility and challenges. Here is something that I think is really interesting. Professor J Peterson from the University of Toronto in his early book, Maps of Meaning says this[i] 

The psychological literature is quite clear, if you do a moment-to-moment comparisons of people who have children and people who don't have children. People who don't have children are happier, moment by moment than people who do have children.

Maps of Meaning by Jordan B. Peterson (1999 Random House)

Did you know having children makes you unhappy. That’s what some psychologists thought in the early 1950’s when this research was first published. Some jumped to the conclusion but only because they were teaching that happiness should be our goal in life. They concluded there is something about having children that make you unhappy. However, rational people quickly came along and said, maybe moment by moment happiness is the wrong way to measure a fulfilling life. Day to day happiness was perhaps the wrong thing to measure when assessing the important things in life. Of course, you're less happy, they said, because once you have children you have something to worry about them. Forget the arguments among the psychologists in the 1950’s and 60’s. A very smart old Christian women I knew as a child once said to me many years ago, “I can only ever be as happy as my unhappiest child”. There’s a really cleaver insight, right there. Because that old woman knew something that it took those psychologist’s 20 years of research to discover. It not that having children makes you unhappy. It’s don’t be so dumb as to make day by day happiness your main goal in life. I’m not saying you should be unhappy or depressed. Just don’t be stupid enough to make happiness the ultimate goal in life. Because satisfaction in life can never be achieved outside of choosing to live a meaningful and productive life through which other people will benefit. 

Trying to be happy all the time is not the answer to the meaning of life. A deep sense of satisfaction can only ever be achieved in the pursuit of something worthwhile. If I use the example of becoming a parent again, the moment that new life arrives you know you're responsible. As a new parent you going to be worried about this little defenseless soul that you brought into the world. Your happiness level in life will now always be linked to the wellbeing of the new little one you now love and feel a sense of responsibility for. Becoming a parent means what is good for you will now become what is good for someone else. 

By the way that principal applies in all good marriages as well. The best marriage are always made up of a couple who try and do what is best for their partner, not themselves. A marriage build on trusting each other to do what is best for the other one.The best in me, serving the best in you. Trust is unbelievably powerful force, between husband and wife and between parent and child. Having a relationship with someone and you trust means you make certain assumptions about the past and the present and you also make plans together about the future. Because when things are stable you can stand on solid ground. Which is why if a person betrays you it so catastrophic. That is why if you're in an intimate relationship and the other person has an affair its so catastrophic. One moment you are in a place right where everything is secure because you built your perception of the world on the principle of trust and the second that trust is broken, you're in a completely different place. Not only is that place different right now, but the place you thought you were in years ago is questioned and the place you thought you were going to be in the future years is also different. So all of that certainty that you used to inhabit can collapse into feeling of loss of control. If someone betrays you think well you aren't who I thought you wereI thought I knew you, but I didn't know you at all. All the things we did together those weren't really happening at all because you were someone else.

God call upon or lives particular in family relationships in a way that builds a foundation of doing what is best for the other person and allows us to create something that is held together by a secure framework of trust. That is why it is important that Christian believers marry and share their lives with someone who shares their faith and values. I don’t believe we can experience a true sense of Gods calling unless at some level we accept taking on responsibility to do that. This starts by taking on responsibility for our own life and our own decisions, and not to betray people. I do not believe in spite of what most of the current so called life coaches teach, is that happiness is the purpose of life. The Bible suggests otherwise. 

Happiness will come along you should be thrilled at that but the notion that happiness is what you should pursue in life is just plain wrong. In fact, it’s self-centered, and it’s narcissistic and it’s the lowest possible notion of who and who God wants you to be. Jesus summed up the entirety of God’s call on our lives when questioned on this issue. “Teacher which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus replied.

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’

(Matt 22: 37-39)

We shall unpack how we might really begin to do that in the next episode.

[i] Maps of Meaning and the Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson (1999 Random House)