by Rowland Croucher

Text: Psalm 32

My guess is that everybody wants to be happy. We dream of happiness, we plan for it, and perhaps pay almost any price to achieve it. Ask the average person what he or she wants out of life and they’ll say without hesitation: ‘I just want to be happy.’

I was phoned early one morning from a hospital. A troubled young woman in our church had tried to overdose on drugs and threw herself into the river. As I arrived at her bedside she said, ‘Rowland, I just want to be happy.’

Now occasionally we meet someone who enjoys being miserable – and who gets a perverse delight in making others unhappy. Woody Allen apparently wasn’t joking when said of one of his productions: ‘If my movie makes one more person miserable, I’ll be happy!’

Being rich or famous doesn’t make you happy. Aristotle Onassis said just before he died: ‘I’ve just been a machine for making money. I seem to have spent my life in a golden tunnel looking for the outlet which would lead to happiness. But the tunnel kept going on. After my death there will be nothing left.’

Some Swedish psychologists studied 1000 happy people. Some of them were old, two were blind, one had an incurable disease, but the great majority of them were free from tension and fear – they enjoyed friendships with other people, and had a goal in life.

So here we state a very important principle: Happiness is not attained by trying hard to be happy. It’s a by-product of doing other worthwhile things. Happiness is serendipitous: the experience of making happy discoveries while looking for something else. Happiness is where we find it: rarely where we seek it!

Happiness is many things but primarily three:

[1] Happiness is enjoying living with yourself. It’s the art of ‘being yourself’ and not wanting to be – or be like – anyone else. Robert Louis Stevenson once said, ‘To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.’ No person is on earth by accident. You are unique – an unrepeatable miracle of God’s creation. And God does not love anyone more than God loves you! And moreover nothing you can do – or be, or become – can cause God to love you any more or less than God loves you now. I like the profound wisdom of Hugh of St Victor: ‘God does not share out God’s love between all creatures: all of God’s love is available to all of God’s creatures.’

[2] Happiness is loving service to others. Confucius said: ‘Those who wish the good of others have already secured their own.’ Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Prize for her work among the ‘poorest of the poor’ in India and elsewhere.

[3] The third relationship is, I believe, with God. And that’s the theme of our psalm, Psalm 32. This psalm or song or hymn was probably written by David, and tradition says he wrote it a year after he had committed adultery and murder and was faced up to his sin by Nathan the prophet. It’s one of the so-called ‘penitential psalms (the others: 6, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143).

Psalm 32 celebrates five keys to happiness:

{1} CONFESS – AND YOU’LL BE FORGIVEN (32:1-5).

This psalm is actually a case-history, says one commentator. There are three stages in the psalmist’s experience. The first stage is one of abject misery (verses 3,4). Ancient Jews – and others (and others not so ancient!) – tended to connect all sickness with sin. Job’s so-called ‘comforters’ pressed that point almost brutally: ‘Name a single case where a righteous person met with disaster!’ (Job 4:7). Job was more enlightened, and insisted his sickness might have nothing to do with sin, a view Jesus confirmed (see John 9:3).

However Jesus cured a paralyzed man and said ‘My son, your sins are forgiven’ (Mark 2:5). Certainly there is sometimes a connection between ‘sin’ and ‘sickness’. An interesting book I read in the 1960’s, S.I. McMillan’s ‘None of These Diseases’ makes the point that a number of common diseases, like high blood pressure, migraine headaches, heart trouble, peptic ulcers etc. may result from our failure to live right and/or obey God’s laws. His slogan: ‘It’s not what you eat but what eats you that makes you sick, often!’

In my counseling practice I regularly come across people whose physical health is poor because of unresolved guilt or anger or fear or shame. Sometimes, in Shakespeare’s words, we need ‘more… the divine than the physician.’ A popular writer on these matters, Swiss psychiatrist Dr. Paul Tournier, tells many stories of patients who must choose between two roads – the clinic or Christ.

The second stage in the psalmist’s experience is ‘repentance’ (32:5) – which is turning from our sin to God. It’s a simple, decisive act, and you can sense incredible relief in the psalmist’s words as he does this. Recently I listed the 100 books I believe every thoughtful person should read – you can find the list on my website. High among them is Augustine’s ‘Confessions’. In that moving book he tells of his conversion to Christ as he read Paul’s words in Romans 13:13-14: ‘All at once, as I came to the end of the sentence, my heart was filled with a sunshine of confidence, before which all my dark doubts fled away.’ Psalm 32 was his favorite psalm: he had it put on the wall at the end of his bed.

Here we pause however to make two theological observations. Our view of our sinning can range across a spectrum, from finding sins where they don’t exist at one end, to permissiveness at the other: both extremes are spiritually and psychologically unhealthy.

The second thing I want to say is that Augustine’s preoccupation with humans’ sinning has cast a long theological shadow across the centuries, so that in our creeds and theological statements of faith the Church has always mentioned sin but never love. In other words, the ‘Pharisee’ in us may think sin is the essence of what a human being is. It’s not: rather humans are created in the image of God, who loves them (in spite of their sinning). Read Matthew Fox’s brilliant book ‘Original Blessing’ on this point.

The psalmist’s third stage was blissful happiness (32:1,2). I read somewhere that no language has so many words for ‘sin’ as the Hebrew, so sensitive was this people’s relationship with their God. There are three words here which mean ‘wilful disobedience,’ ‘missing the mark’ and ‘wrong-doing’. But there are also three words for forgiveness here – it’s a burden , lifted away, God has canceled a debt, the Divine Judge has put the sin out of sight.

Forgiveness, in the Bible, is an event, not just an idea. In the forgiving transaction, something tangible happens. Our sins are ‘blotted out’, cast into the sea, though they are scarlet they become white as snow, removed as far as the east is from the west (an infinite distance, unlike northness and southness which are finite!).

When God forgives, something happens. We are released from a crushing burden, and rather than re-enacting the atonement by punishing ourselves, we simply receive it. We are invited to ‘own’ our sins, then ‘disown’ them. To confess our sins to God is not to make God aware of something not already known. Rather, until we confess them our relationship with God is spoilt: there is an abyss between us. When we confess them, if you like, bridge-building commences. God’s forgiving grace meets our confession, and we are ‘reconciled’.

The second key to happiness in this psalm –

{2} PRAY – AND YOU’LL BE RESCUED (32:6-7)

This psalm is a ‘maschil’ or psalm of instruction, and it tells us that if we’ve got a problem we ought to share it – with God in secret, and in joyful praise in the congregation.

Trouble is inevitable says M Scott Peck in another of my ‘top 100’ books ‘The Road Less Traveled’. Life is all about the way we cope with problems. To some extent life’s best lessons are ‘learned in the school of adversity’. For those who get on top of their troubles life may ‘get better and better even though it gets harder and harder’. Different people react to trouble in different ways.

Norman Vincent Peale had a famous prayer: ‘Lord give me ten big problems today, please. Ten adult-sized problems, so that I can use your grace and strength to transform them into triumphs.’ Now that’s O.K. for Norman Vincent Peale: he was surrounded by loving people. But others aren’t. Some, facing trouble, ‘die’, become immobilized, collapse when someone thwarts their plans or hurts them.

I can understand that a little: their coping mechanisms haven’t been allowed to develop for one reason or another. Life is just too hard. Others explode in frustration or rage, externalizing their feelings towards or against other people – or even physical objects. (I have a client who buys secondhand spectacles from thrift shops so that she can stomp on them in her kitchen when she’s in a rage!). Others internalize their anger and may become sick or depressed.

The most creative response is of course to adapt to inevitable trouble, to use it constructively, to ‘tack into the wind’. It’s all about the sometimes impossible vision of God’s being ‘at work in all things for good.’ Where is God when it hurts? I don’t know, frankly; it’s a mystery to sensitive, thoughtful people. Perhaps God was in the same ‘place’ when Jesus asked the same question as he died in agony on a cross. Is God responsible for all trouble? In the ultimate sense, ‘yes’, I believe, unorthodox as that sounds, simply because God has the power to prevent it.

Why then does God allow trouble and pain? I once wrote an article on that (look up Suffering on our website) and my best conclusion was that even when we get to know a little of God’s love it might still be a struggle to understand God’s ways. Half the psalms wrestle with this question (the psalms that don’t get into our modern church songs!). But I am orthodox in this: if, as I believe, this God became one of us, suffered with us and died for us, than perhaps the best answer to this cosmic question is not a logical one after all, but an ‘incarnational’ one.

{3} SUBMIT – AND YOU’LL BE GUIDED (32:8-9)

The Scriptures assure us that we are not like rats in a maze. Generally God wants us to know what God wants us to do and where God wants us to go. Paul wrote to the Ephesian Christians and told them not to be fools, but to know the will of the Lord (Ephesians 5:17). He prays for the same wisdom for the Colossians (1:9,10, cf. 4:12). You find out what God wants you to do by submitting to what you know already is God’s will for you. It works the same way in any relationship. As I and my wife ‘submit’ to one another, we learn more about each other’s ‘will’ and how to please each other.

One experienced follower of Jesus put it this way: ‘When I have to make a decision, and I’m not sure which way to go I pray hard and think hard. When the time is up and I must act, if I have done all the thinking and praying I can do, I say “Lord, show me the next thing to do.” I believe that the first idea that comes into my mind is the answer.’

{4} TRUST – AND YOU’LL BE PROTECTED (32:10)

Here the psalmist contrasts the wicked and the righteous. The wicked trust in themselves; they live independently of God. The righteous trust in the Lord; they are dependent on the Lord. A good New Testament text on this point is Romans 15:13 which talks about being filed with joy and peace through our faith in God, who is the source of hope. Happy people are trustful people.

You’ve seen this old verse haven’t you: ‘In the morning when I wake, I say “I place my hand in God’s today,” with faith and trust that by my side He’ll walk with me, my steps to guide. He leads me with the tenderest care, when paths are dark, and I despair. No need for me to understand, if I but hold fast to His hand, my hand in His; no surer way to walk in safety through each day. By His great bounty I am fed, warmed by His love and comforted. When at day’s end I seek my rest, and realize how much I’m blessed, my thanks pour out to Him, and then I place my hand in God’s again.’

{5} OBEY – AND YOU’LL BE JOYFUL (32:11)

Obedience is not fashionable in a do-it-yourself world. There are many verbs in the Bible in the imperative mood. Jesus is our Lord: he has the right to command. But he is also our Lover, and we should want to obey him (John 14:21). David, who was tempted to think he was accountable only to himself, fell badly. (He should have learned from his predecessor Saul’s experience: see 1 Samuel 15:22).

The key question for us is not ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ but ‘What does my Lord want me to do?’ Not ‘Why is this happening to me?’ understandable as that is, but ‘What is God’s will for me in this situation?’ If we ask the right questions, we needn’t worry too much if we don’t understand all the reasons for God’s actions.

The old hymn actually puts it well: ‘Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey!’

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher <
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