There was a time when John Stuart Mill subscribed to associationism, believing that all our ideas come from outside our selves and assuming that it was external circumstances alone that shaped our characters. So Mill sought to improve the lives of people by seeking to change external circumstances through radical societal reforms.
But “the black dog” was constantly at Mill’s heels. When he had barely turned 20 he experienced a particularly serious bout of depression, during which his thinking became suicidal. Through poetry, music, Romantic authors and falling in love with a girl he was able to pull himself out of this state. In the process Mill moved away from associationism, coming to see the self as self-conscious and capable of being self-developing and self-creating. He now believed that it was possible for what he called “individuality” to be created not merely by the influence of outside circumstances but also by a choice-making and reflective self informed by its ideas about what is good, right, noble, beautiful, perfect and sympathetic. Against associationism, Mill now believed that if two people were subjected to the same external stimuli their responses would differ in accordance with how theyindividually reflected on such stimuli and what their respective notions were concerning how to respond rightly to them.
Indeed, for Mill the pursuit of happiness presupposes such a self-created individuality. To pursue happiness a person needs to have formed an idea of what it is he wants to pursue, that is, what he believes will make him or her happy. This in turn depends on how one has reflected on circumstances and on one’s own ideas and feelings, as it also depends on what choices one has made and what one has done by way of building a character. In the same process one also comes to conclusions about what is considered to be right. Mill contended that it is impossible to be happy if a person is not doing what he or she believes to be right. In addition, Mill reasoned that happiness presupposes that one experiences the sympathy, admiration and affection of others and also that one also feels sympathy, admiration and affection for others.
For Mill the most important ethical goal is happiness and this can only be achieved through the free development of individuality. Hence the immense stress Mill placed on personal autonomy.
Notwithstanding our sympathy for Mill in his ongoing battle with depression, this does make him a dubious authority on the subject of happiness.In a most extraordinary statement uttered in the shadow of death, Jesus urged his disciples to remain in his love adding: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). Jesus was the most fulfilled man ever to walk the earth. Personally, it makes more sense to look to what Jesus has to say about joy than what Mill has to say about happiness.
There are some important differences between Mill’s philosophy and biblical thought:
1. The experience of happiness is often based on delusion and all such happiness is transient
So, for example, there was a time when Haman deluded himself into believing that he was regarded as the most important person in the land, apart from the king. Accordingly, we read that after Queen Esther invited him alone to come to a feast with just herself and her husband, the king, that “Haman went out that day happy and in high spirits” (Esther 5:9). Haman’s self-centered happiness was inevitably transient. Indeed, he ended up executed on the gallows! For a further example of transient self-centered happiness see too Jonah 4:6.
One of the glaring inadequacies of Mill’s philosophy is that a happiness dependent on individuality is necessarily self-centered.
Koheleth (The Preacher) is quite blunt (Ecclesiastes 11:9-10):
You who are young, be happy while you are young,
and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth.
Follow the ways of your heart
and whatever your eyes see,
but know that for all these things
God will bring you into judgment.
10 So then, banish anxiety from your heart
and cast off the troubles of your body,
for youth and vigor are meaningless.
The Bible is very clear on this. We must all appear the judgment seat of Christ. Therefore, while, depending on various factors, it may be possible for a person to pursue and, to a degree, experience happiness in this life, that person is tragically self-deluded if it is not recognised that his or her life will be judged by God. The reality is that there will be people who have experienced happiness in this life who will experience misery for the rest of the eternity after God has passed judgment and there will be absolutely nothing that such an “individual” can do to change this reality.
2. Properly understood the experience of happiness is not self-produced but a blessing from God
There are some occasions when the experience of happiness can directly be attributed to God. For example, in ancient Israel a recently married man avoided conscription for a year so that he could give happiness to his wife (Deuteronomy 24:5). In many other instances such happiness is indirectly occasioned by God. The time of happiness enjoyed by the Jewish people described at Esther 8:16 was due to a set of circumstances that had been providentially ordered by God (ironically, one of the brilliant literary devices used in Esther is precisely the deliberate absence of any explicit references to God so as to emphasise the hidden, veiled nature of his sovereignty). Women sang and danced with happiness after victory had been won over the Philistine enemies who had been oppressing them (1 Samuel 18:6). The coronation of David as king over all Israel was a time of widespread happiness (1 Chronicles 12:40). The mother who enjoys the happiness of having children owes this to God (Psalm 113:9).
In Ecclesiastes 5:18-20, Koheleth observes:
This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot. 19 Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God. 20 They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart.
3. Happiness presupposes living under a just, wise and peaceful government
During the best of Solomon’s reign we read:
The people of Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand on the seashore; they ate, they drank and they were happy (1 Kings 4:20).
The visiting Queen of Sheba remarked to Solomon:
How happy your people must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! (1 Kings 10:8)
Indeed, the experience of happiness, even for the righteous people of God, presupposes that God has acted to remove their persecutors and oppressors (e.g. Psalm 68:1-3).
The miracles performed by Jesus are called “signs.” They are accompaniments to the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus’ declaration that “the kingdom of heaven is near.” That is, they point ahead to the fact that when the time eventually comes for the dynamic rule of God to hold complete and absolute sway in its consummated expression then there will be no more sickness or disease, no more disorder in the created order – all preconditions for eternal happiness. As the New Testament makes abundantly clear – and in a manner that draws out what is already latent in the Old Testament – the dynamic rule of God is very much concerned with the inner life. So, for example, Paul states:
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking [that is, allowing one's thinking about whether consumables are clean or not to wreck relationships in the church], but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17).
In Jesus’ Parable of the Bags of Gold (Matthew 25:14-30) the great reward bestowed by the master on faithful stewards is that of ‘sharing the master’s happiness’ (verses 21, 23).
Consequently, biblical thought is diametrically opposed to that of Mill in one vital respect. Ultimately, happiness is not based on personal human autonomy and control but on God’s aseity (absolute independence) and control. The sovereign God himself is the ultimate source of happiness precisely because his own happiness is not dependent on anything outside himself.
4. The righteous accept God’s sovereignty whether it entails the experience of happiness or not
James exhorts, “Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise” (James 5:13). In other words, a person (though here James is addressing Christians) may be happy (and need to praise God for this) or not (“in trouble”, yet still looking to the sovereign God in prayer). Happiness is not an absolute. It is possible that in this life a righteous person might have a very limited experience of happiness. Job is the classic example of a man who remained faithful to God even when his life became one of abject misery. Such was his despair that he said: “Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath; my eyes will never see happiness again” (Job 7:7).
Koheleth comments (Ecclesiastes 7:13-14):
Consider what God has done:
Who can straighten
what he has made crooked?
When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider this:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, no one can discover
anything about their future.
The previous point, however, needs to be borne in mind. The secure, eternal experience of happiness depends on the consummation of dynamic divine rule – the completion of God’s work in the inner life of his people and the creation of the new heaven and earth which is the home of righteousness (2 Peter 3:13), that is, the eternal kingdom into which God’s people will be richly welcomed (2 Peter 1:11). Until the Lord returns, as promised, it will never be possible for God’s people to experience happiness in its fullness.
5. God grants his people, even in the midst of suffering, a sense of God-centered fulfilment (“joy”) that is far more profound than any happiness to which autonomous individuals may aspire or attain
It is precisely because God is such a good and great ruler that the most ultimate experience of fulfilment is possible. Joy is located or sourced in God’s dwelling place (1 Chronicles 16:27 = Psalm 96:6; see too Psalm 21:6; 43:4). Such joy is God-centered because it naturally expresses itself in songs of praise and thanksgiving to God (e.g. Psalm 28:7; 33:1, 7; 35:27, etc.). Even the heavens, earth, sea, fields and trees are called upon to sing for joy when God comes to judge on the understanding that God’s conclusive judgment will usher in a new creation which will be for the wellbeing of all aspects of God’s creation (1 Chronicles 16:31-33 = Psalm 96:11-12; cf. Psalm 65:12-13).
Mill was correct to link the experience of happiness to the individual’s concept of what is right. Of course, if a person’s concept of right is in fact wrong then their experience of happiness is tragic. In Psalm 19:8 we read: “The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes” (cf. Psalm 119:111). In context, this psalm is teaching that rightness is to be found by absorbing Torah, God’s revelation or counsel or guidance, the expression of his will, that is, what pleases him the Lord. It is only when one’s life aligns with Torah-revealed rightness that one experiences joy.
There is a great deal that is said about joy in the Bible and I will close with just one telling citation:
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly… But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:3-8).
Contrary to Mill’s happiness which presupposes self-determined “character”, biblical joy precedes God-produced character, with God using suffering as a key means of generating God-honouring character, that is, true “rightness” of character. This deep God-centered sense of fulfilment is grounded in the experience of Spirit-bestowed love which in turn is rooted in an historical event of which the Spirit ever reminds us, namely the substitionary atonement of Jesus for sinners. What joy there is in knowing that God loves me even though my character is far from being what it ought to be. He loves me as a sinner before I play any part in character-formation or the production of an appropriate self. This purposeful love which effectively rescues me from my sinful self and inspires such strong hope, motivates me to persevere and develop a godly, Christlike character and thus generates within me great joy. As Peter puts it, also describing the joy we experience in the midst of suffering:
Though you have not seen [Jesus], you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls (1 Peter 1:8-9).
For more on Mill’s philosophy of individuality and happiness see Helen McCabe, “On Liberty: An Introduction” in Philosophy Now (Nov/Dec 2009) 6-9
Posted April 30, 2011
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