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Each weekday in the month of August, we will pursue “prepositional truth” by zeroing in on a single Greek preposition in a single verse, noting the theological richness so often embedded in the humble words we so often overlook.
Last May, a car bomb – one of the largest that local law enforcement officials said they could remember – ripped through a quiet Palm Springs neighborhood.
The target was a medical clinic. Four people were injured; all survived. The bomber, identified as 25-year-old Guy Edward Bartkus, died at the scene.
What shook investigators was the audio clip Bartkus had posted on social media shortly before detonating his Ford Fusion. He was glad that he would now be considered “pro-mortalist” – that is, pro-death. “Let’s make the death thing happen sooner rather than later,” he added.
The bomber had not targeted an abortion clinic – that is, a place that assisted in the termination of human life. Instead, he had singled out a fertility clinic – a facility specifically designed to help bring babies into the world.
It quickly became clear that Guy Bartkus was one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who profess some degree of allegiance to the “anti-natalist” movement – an ideology that openly declares the immorality of procreation.
Why, they argue, should anyone bring another child into the world?
We live on a despoiled planet. Things are getting worse. Artificial intelligence may soon destroy us all. Newborns will experience some measure of suffering during their lifetimes, not to mention the certainty of death. There is no guarantee any child will grow up to experience happiness.
In 2006, a South African philosopher named David Benatar penned a treatise titled Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence. It became an international rallying cry for “efilists” – that’s E-F-I-L, or “life” spelled backwards – some of whom have recommended the end of all species and even the destruction of DNA. According to that scenario, life and its tragic consequences will never have to plague the Earth again.
Bartkus’ beliefs weren’t quite so extreme. Nevertheless, he was sympathetic to the idea that birth should be followed as quickly as possible by a consensual death – a pathway he chose to model last spring.
Not all anti-natalists applauded. The New York Times reported that the moderator of an anti-natalism Reddit forum (with nearly a quarter-million members) called the bombing “unjustifiable, incoherent, immoral, and disgusting.” Benatar likewise affirmed that his philosophy abhors violence.
Do the anti-natalists have a point? Is human happiness truly a lost cause in the 21st century?
Social historians are quick to point out that while the world can seem to some people like a failed experiment headed for a sad finale, there has never been a better time to be alive.
Israeli philosopher Yuval Noah Harari notes that the three deadliest scourges in the human story – war, famine, and disease – have largely been conquered. Yes, there are still disheartening border wars and hungry children, and a pandemic swept the planet just five years ago. But none of those have been on a history-altering scale.
Do you want to gaze at a world into which it might have seemed heartless or risky to bring children? Take a time machine back to Bible times.
Half of the little ones born into the ancient Mediterranean world didn’t see a fifth birthday. Women had marginal social rights. Hundreds of “crimes” – most of which we would nowadays call misdemeanors – were punishable by death. Average life expectancy at birth was 25 years.
The Roman Empire provided a degree of stability, albeit at the point of a sword. An individual’s existence was not far removed from Thomas Hobbes’ famous 1651 verdict concerning unregulated, ungoverned humanity. The average human life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Then there was the apostle Paul.
Paul’s most joyful correspondence, his letter to the Christians at Philippi, was written from a first century prison cell – not exactly a happy place. Yet you wouldn’t know that by reading the soaring pinnacle of his letter in chapter four, verse four: “Rejoice in (EN) the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
What in the world is he talking about?
We have a fairly good what he’s not talking about. Paul isn’t trying to solve the never-ending mystery of human happiness.
Happiness derives from the same root that gives us the word “happen.” Happiness depends on what is happening, or not happening, at a given moment. America’s advertising empires know this well. In 60 seconds or less, TV commercials must deliver two messages: (1) You are not happy. (2) Happiness is just one purchase away.
So get yourself a new truck. Get rid of those age spots. Address your acid reflex. Bet on your favorite sports team. Buy some insurance from a talking gecko.
The problem with happiness is that it doesn’t stick around. This summer McDonald’s reintroduced Adult Happy Meals – an entrée, fries, drink, and a collectible figure (I am not making this up). That might be enough to make me happy today. But what about tomorrow?
Paul urges us to seek something fundamentally different and profoundly better – God’s gift of being blessed.
Being blessed is the God-provided certainty that all is well – an assurance that is strangely and wonderfully independent of happiness.
Rejoice in (EN) the Lord, he says. Quite a lot is riding on that little preposition. “In” is the enduring condition of trusting God. No matter what happens to be happening, we can experience joy. That’s because if God is really God, and we have abandoned the course of our lives to his care, the world is a perfectly safe place to be.
Happiness, on the other hand, is maddeningly fragile. It’s one flight delay, one sore throat, or one marital argument away from fleeing the scene.
If, on the other hand, you know that you are blessed – if you know that God favors you with his presence, his grace, and his unchanging love – then nothing can negate your joy. And it just so happens that the joy of being blessed is what human hearts hunger for more than anything else.
Is it worth being born into this oh-so-imperfect world?
Contrary to the expectations of more than a few church attenders, Jesus did not come to make us happy.
He came to give us something that actually lasts:
It’s L-I-F-E – Life spelled forwards.