Perhaps the greatest deception we face each day is that our personal happiness is the purpose of life. It’s a false assumption to think God’s foremost goal is your happiness in this life. We’re not God’s pampered little pets. Instead, Christianity believes the knowledge of God is our goal; to glorify him is our chief end. These commandments are for our benefit, not his. He doesn’t need our worship, our money, or our time. God wants us to be a blessing to others. Only these things can bring true and eternal fulfillment.
Meanwhile, suffering can give us a deeper understanding of God. It can deepen our relationship with him. Suffering can get our attention away from the temptations of this world as we turn to God for strength. Paul compares the suffering in this world to the glory that will be bestowed on us in heaven and says they can’t be compared. This is how Job can say God is good even in the midst of terrible suffering.
As C.S. Lewis once said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[1] God wants us to wake up, to put down our trivial distractions, and realize that we get our sense of worth from him. In a world where no one experiences pain, there would be no one to help, no opportunity for humility, or giving, or to meaningfully show love to one another. Spoiled people don’t tend to appreciate things. “We appreciate things only by contrast,” explains philosopher Peter Kreeft. “If we never died, we wouldn’t appreciate life.”[2]
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 83.
[2] Metaxas quoting Peter Kreeft, Socrates in the City, 58.