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Experiments in Personal Religion: Study VI

Religious Experience through Happiness

H. N. Wieman

The personal problem for experimentation which we have in this study is twofold: (1) How can we increase our capacity for enjoyment? (2) How can we preserve our critical moral judgment and our spiritual aspiration in the midst of these joys? The second part of this dual problem is much more complicated and difficult than the first. It arises out of the fact that joy in things as they are is likely to assume the form of complacency; and complacency is death to aspiration. How can we enjoy what is, without impairing our aspiration toward that better world which God wills to make out of this one. But we shall not treat this second part of our problem until we have first made answer to the question, how to increase our capacity for enjoyment.

1. How to Enjoy the World

Everyone has something he should be able to enjoy. What you have I do not have, and what I have you do not, but everyone has something if he will be appreciative of it. Very simple things we have in mind as well as great things, such as good food when hungry, rest when weary, trees, sky, friends, happy faces, and the like. The list of things to enjoy is endless. One may be sick and not able to enjoy food, but he has something else. Another may not have the kind ministration of affectionate hands when he is ill, but there is another source of joy for him. Our problem is to enter into full appreciation and enjoyment of these good things Our happiness might be many times greater than it is if we had the mental attitudes which enable one to appreciate to the full all the good things round about. Let us mention some of the wrong mental attitudes which must be corrected if we are to enter into the fulness of that JOY which should be ours.

First is the feeling some people have that they are failing to meet some moral or religious requirement when they freely and fully enjoy such simple things as food and clothes and play. This feeling is correct only when the lesser good blinds us to the greater. How to avoid such blindness will engage our attention later. But when such blindness is not incurred there is nothing wrong in the greatest possible enjoyment of simple things. Some people have this mental habit of condemning simple joys so fixed that even when they know it is wrong to condemn them they cannot enter into them with freedom, and so their happiness is marred. This old habit must be rooted out like any other bad habit. There are many methods for overcoming a bad habit, one of which is worshipful auto-suggestion.

A much more common hindrance to enjoyment of that which is good and pleasant is worry and anxiety. We are so anxious about the future that we cannot enjoy the present. We are so fearful lest we lose our health or comfort or friends or security or other good thing that we cannot enjoy these good things while we have them. Or we are like Martha, so cumbered about many things that the one thing needful we miss. The one thing needful is to enjoy the visitor when he is present with us, whether he come in the form of a sunset, or tall tree, or a singing bird, or a child tugging at our hand, or a pleasant fire on a winter evening, or what not.

The most common hindrance of our enjoyment of good things, however, especially in America, is our restless striving after something not yet attained. There are times when we must be preoccupied with striving. A surgeon engaged in a delicate operation cannot at the same time enjoy the sunset. A man struggling to save another from drowning cannot listen to the sweet music of birds. Life must have its seasons of stern struggle when the eyes are turned away from all the sweet and lovely things around us to the end of achieving something which is not yet attained.

But our absorption in that which is not yet attained must not make us permanently unappreciative of what is already given to us. We must not be so absorbed in making the child into a good man that we cannot appreciate and rejoice in the child for what he already is. We must not be so intent on getting to the end of the picture gallery that we cannot enjoy the pictures that we pass. We must not be so preoccupied in making money for a better home that we cannot enjoy the home we already have. We must not be so strenuous in our efforts to bring the tour to a successful end that we cannot enjoy it as we go along. We must not try so hard to achieve some ultimate and unattained success that we destroy the value of every success that we ever do attain.

The only way to solve this problem is by the method of alternation. Seasons of striving and aspiration after the unattained must alternate with seasons of enjoying the good things already here. After the surgeon has completed the operation he must take some time when he can enjoy the sunset. After the terrible struggle over the drowning man there must be some time when one can listen to the birds.

This relaxation and enjoyment of the present moment, this quieting of the rush and striving after something which is still beyond us, this joy in the life which is already ours must be cultivated. Perhaps most Americans need this side of life cultivated more than any other. A good method for cultivating it is to go out for a walk in park or open country some pleasant evening, either alone or with some very dear and intimate friend with whom you do not need to talk except as mood may require. Loitering thus together or alone in the quiet dusk of evening is the best time for cultivating the attitude of relaxation. One can give himself regular doses of this kind of treatment. For many of this age it is just as needful as medical treatment in time of physical illness.

A fourth great hindrance to joy is envy. We cannot enjoy our own clothes because they are not as good as another's. We cannot enjoy our work because it does not seem so honorable as another's. Our success seems not as great as another's, hence it is bitterness in the mouth rather than sweetness. We want what another has, and so cannot enjoy our own. Naboth's vineyard, because it belongs to him and not to us, destroys all the joy we might have in our own acres. So we turn away our face and will eat no bread, like King Ahab.

Men have found joy in every kind of condition. If we cannot rejoice in the things which every man has to enjoy, then we are suffering from some perversion of mental attitude. Why do we not get more joy out of life? Why do we not enter into that fulness of joy which Jesus said he wished us to have? The fault is our own. We destroy our own happiness. How? By a mistaken Puritanic habit which will not let us surrender to the joy of the passing hour. Or by some goading anxiety and worry that has got us in its clutches and will not let us go. Or by a habit of strenuous striving which has become so fixed as a mental attitude that we cannot throw it off in periods of relaxation that should alternate with periods of striving. Or by envy of what other people have.

2. How to Cure the Joy-Killing Attitude

We have already suggested some measures for curing mistaken Puritanism and that strenuosity which has become a disease. But we can now lay down the principle for the cure of all four of these ills. The method of cure is to ascertain what is the right attitude which is the exact opposite of your wrong attitude, and pray for it persistently and regularly day by day until it grows up within you. If the wrong attitude is a mistaken Puritanism, the right and opposing attitude would be one of joyous acceptance and appreciation of every good thing. If the wrong attitude is worry, the right would be peaceful adaptation to every changing condition as it arises, with flexible readiness to use and enjoy to the utmost whatever may befall. If the wrong attitude is habitual strenuosity which cannot relax, the right would be restfulness and self-abandon to the hour of relaxation. If the wrong attitude is envy, the right is identifying yourself with the joy and success of the other so that his good becomes yours also.

3. How to Preserve Critical Moral Judgment and Spiritual Aspiration in the Midst Of Our Joys

A life overflowing with joy in the good things of this world, such as we have suggested, will dull the keenness of our moral judgment and drag down the highest aspiration unless in the midst of our enjoyment we meet four requirements.

The first of these four is to keep ourselves intensely conscious of the unfathomable possibilities for good which are inherent in this present world despite all its evil. The second is to be deeply sensitive to the fact that this present actual world is immeasurably degraded and evil as compared to these possibilities for good which are inherent in it. The third requirement is that we use this present world as material out of which to construct that other better world. This means that we must enter into the fullest and richest experience of this world, entering into all its joys as well as its sorrows; for only as we learn to experience it, know it, master it, and use it can we make it better. If we do not enter into full appreciation of the joys of this present world, as well as of its pains and evils, we cut ourselves off from the materials, the standing-ground, the leverage, and the nourishment by which alone that other better world can ever be brought into existence.

The fourth and last and greatest requirement of all which must be met if we are to enjoy the world in a spiritual way is to hold ourselves constantly in readiness to make any sacrifice whatsoever when such sacrifice seems to be the best thing we can do to bring forth that other better world. But we must understand what sacrifice means. It does not consist in being miserable. It consists in just the opposite. It consists in taking pain, sorrow, loss, and death and transmuting these into joy and goodness by making them contributory to the attainment of the best world which is the Kingdom of God. Such is the way Jesus met pain, sorrow, and death, and so could look upon the travail of his soul and be satisfied.

Any sacrifice which is not made as a contribution to the high end of attaining a better world, any sacrifice.which is made merely to demonstrate our own righteousness or to express our condemnation of evil is not only mistaken, useless, and foolish; it is positively evil. The sacrifice which Jesus recommended was, not that we lose our lives, but that we lose them in order to save them. The sacrifice he recommended was never morbid. Never refuse a joy unless the refusing of it will yield a greater joy. That is what is meant by losing one's life to save it.

With this understanding of sacrifice we can say that readiness for such sacrifice on all occasions is needed if we are to enjoy the world in a spiritual way. Without readiness for such sacrifice the joys of the world will distort our moral judgment, pervert our spiritual aspiration, and blind us to those vast possibilities which constitute the Kingdom of God. With this sacrifice, and with this only, can we enter into that full measure of joy which Jesus knew and which he desired us to have.

We have suggested two kinds of personal experiments in religion. One kind had to do with cultivating our capacity for enjoying the good things of life. The other had to do with preserving our moral judgment and our aspiration in the midst of these joys.