Sunday 4 September 2011

Salvation and happiness

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The first Christians wanted to be saved.

Later Christians wanted to be saved and to be happy.

Later still, Christians wanted to be happy, and saved.

Now we want to be happy.

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5 comments:

Simon said...

That analysis' meaning varies on how you define happiness. What is your definition?

Bruce Charlton said...

I meant the everyday, modern, media definition of happiness - a state of current pleasure.

(NOT, therefore, the Aristotelian idea; nor any idea of long-term, deep fulfillment and ultimate hope.)

Brett Stevens said...

The idea of God has changed.

The original idea, as you noted, was animistic. Being one with God was being unified into the highest level of the organization of the universe.

The current idea is mechanical: God is like a miracle pill or a ten-step industrial refinement; you apply it when you have a need, and then you are cured.

This was Evola's point about esoteric/exoteric confusion in modernity (especially modern Christianity).

The Crow said...

It's Religion-Creep.
It starts with awe and reverence, then, by degrees, becomes a protection-racket. Then a retirement-plan. Then a product. Then a joke. Finally: the refuge of fanatics...

The only ray of real hope is the indisputable fact, that God - whatever God really is - cares not one wit about any of it.

Like oxygen: it is there, to be used or not used, appreciated, or not. Like life: there to be gratefully lived, or to be grudgingly endured in unenlightened misery.

Anonymous said...

It stems from materialism. If there's no other world and we disappear with death, there's no salvation. So virtue makes no sense. Let's enjoy the few days we have to the fullest, that is, happiness in the modern sense.