Our Relationship with God as the Pathway Toward Happiness

No Christian is perfect and will not be until final glorification is Christ. If the unbelieving world is constantly watching how Christ-like Christians are then they are also watching how unchrist-like they can be. Paul says to “conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” (Phil 1:27) but he also says “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Rom. 7:15). No matter how hard we try, we will occasionally shame the Gospel of Jesus with our sinful conduct in the sight of non-believers. Greg Laurie comically puts it “It’s been said that there are two reasons people do not go to church: They don’t know a Christian, or they do.” Even with this weakness, our weakness, life-style evangelism works. Not only does it work but we are called by Jesus to perform it so we should never be discouraged that it will bear no

Have you ever truly sat and considered what makes you truly happy? Often times, people answer directly with the response of money. We say this without deeply considering all that we have to be grateful for. Happiness is not achieved through wealth instead through experiences, the family we love, and the nature that surrounds us, literature has created a great impact upon the ideals we consider to create our happiness.

If you think of life and existence in general as a canvas, meaning all of time included simultaneously, the past, present and future. Within that canvas lie certain sets of options(choices) which are available to us at any given moment. The path that we found ourselves are predetermined by factors we had no control over. Your genetic make up, for instance, you had nothing to do with. You can’t take credit for not having the brain of a psychopath, the brain of the mentally disabled person, genetic predisposition to cancer and you name it. The actions of others impact the options (choices) available to you-the actions of those around affects your will because it can change the choices that are available to you at any given moment. If certain

The consequences of accepting that the goodness of actions consists simply in the fact that God favours them are obviously disagreeable. However, the consequences of accepting the alternative also appear unfortunate. If it is maintained that God favours certain actions because they are objectively good, it seems that their goodness is independent of His will. But such a view appears to be inconsistent with the conception of God as the omnipotent creator and sustainer of all that is. It means that there is a realm of moral values which exist quite apart from God's creative will and to which His will must conform. Such a view must inevitably appear blasphemous to all those who believe in God, for it makes God out to be less than He is.

The question of whether humans are responsible for their actions or if they are under the influence of divine or supernatural power is one that has been debated over for centuries. There are three views that exist: the first is that there is only free will, the second view is that there is only fate, and the third view is that there is room and justification for both possibilities. The themes of fate and free will are very prominent in the book of Genesis and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. In both, the fate of the characters is decided by a higher being, but the way in which they arrive at their destinies is determined by free will and the choices they make, which leads to the demise of the characters.

The American dream is based on one thing, happiness, but what is happiness? Happiness is usually characterized as, something that makes you feel, fulfillment, joy, and pleasure. However I think happiness is different for everyone, and ever changing depending on where you are in life, and my life is a perfect example of this. A years ago if you asked me what happiness was, I would have told you, I was experiencing pure happiness. I had a job that paid well, a nice car, my first street bike, and an amazing girlfriend of three years and was a pretty good Christian. One day she left, and my happiness fell apart, I went into depression, and stopped caring about life and God. I turned to drugs like weed to

There is a possibility that God gave humans free will so that in return, they may give him genuine love, rather than forced love. The problem of evil stems from free will, because humans can freely choose not to love God. But even if humans choose to love God, everyone commits small-scale acts of evil. It can be argued that since the world is evolving, the judgement of God has also evolved in order to fit with the times. Therefore, his judgement may not be quite as harsh as the bible states it to be. The criticism against this theory, is that since God is said to be an all-powerful and morally perfect being, there would be no point in changing himself for humankind. If he were to change himself in order to fit accordingly to today’s humans, it would mean that they do in fact have free will, which disproves the existence of an omniscient God. As humans, we do not know where God’s morality lies. Could he be evil, or could he be moral without enough knowledge or power over evil? God is so incomprehensible that we as humans cannot begin to understand how a PKM God and evil can coexist. What we do know is that there are tremendous evils present in this world, and from the logical perspective, if such evils are present, a PKM God cannot co-exist with them. There may still be a God, and it is arrogant to say that there is absolutely no God at all. However, if evil is present in this world, the God in which we refer to the most, cannot be all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect at the same

What is the meaning of life? What gives life meaning? Philosophers have asked these questions for decades, and there still is not a solid answer to the question. This paper will analyze one modern philosopher’s take on the question: What gives life meaning? Susan Wolf is a modern moral philosopher and philosopher of action and mind. She attended two Ivy League institutions for her undergraduate and graduate careers. Wolf received a Bachelor’s of Arts in Philosophy and Math from Yale University, and she received a PhD in Philosophy from Princeton University. Wolf taught at various prestigious institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, and University of Maryland. She is currently a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill where she teaches philosophy. Susan Wolf has written many works such as “Meaning in Life and Why It Matters,” “Freedom Within Reason.” This paper will focus on the article “Meaning in Life” from the journal “Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life.”

As mortal beings, our own fate is determined by the individual choices we make over the course of our lives, mainly because these selections ultimately define who we are and what we do in life. My reasons for this being, primarily, each decision we make during a lifetime has an impact upon our lives. The next being, we pay the consequences for all of the good and bad we commit in life. Finally, we decide whether to make a good life for ourselves or relinquish our opportunities to do so. While there is a God who oversees the universe and each of our individual lives, he allows for our free will and the choice to which road we choose to take in life.

Christians called to a higher standard and must live the Christian values as we should and know how; none of us is perfect but only trying to perfect the walk that the Lord has commanded us to do.

God is a God of justice and goodness punishing those who do not live an ethical life. It seems, from reading the "bible that His existence is intertwined with the lives of humans and (acts in history by destroying the sinners and causing the righteous to prosper. That God will ensure that the good accrue fortune and the bad suffer. In the words of Isaiah, “I will requite to the world its evil, and to the wicked their iniquity.” "but if this is what the "bible tells us of God, why does He not put a stop to the bad? For the faithful it is often difficult to reconcile this portrayal of God with the acts of evil we witness and read about in history. Why does fortune accrue to sinners and unwarranted suffering to the innocent? Why do God’s people - the Israelites - continue to suffer throughout all of time? How did a good and omnipotent God not interfere in the extermination of six million: or one third, of His people during the Holocaust? In the words of Richard Rubenstein, there is an apparent “conflict between faith and reason.”

Happiness is one of the highest regarded human sentiments in moral philosophy. Most ethical theories take happiness into consideration in some way. The Dalai Lama’s proposal of ethics is no exception, as his ideas are based off the principle of achieving happiness. The Dalai Lama asserts that everyone is the same, in that everyone is a human being who wishes to be happy and avoid suffering. As much as happiness is considered in moral philosophy, there are many different interpretations of what happiness is and how it can be achieved.

"The United Stated was founded on our right to persue happiness." Everyone has there own definition of happiness, one persons happiness could be someone else's nightmare. Although alot of people like to volunter and it brings them happiness or possibly have good health benifits with doing so, voluntering is not for everybody.

Furthermore, our vocation responds to the call to human happiness and freedom. The Catholic Church understands happiness to be a state in which one is most in-tune with God’s teachings and carries out His will. By becoming closer with God, we will be able to achieve happiness. God is the only path to true happiness. It is this ideology that largely influences my own moral and ethical stance. I believe that to attain true happiness, we must become compassionate beings. When we begin to emphasize and be kind to others, it will soon spread and a strong-knit community will emerge. In this community, the kingdom of God will be ever present. This is what will allow us to reach happiness. It all begins with unconditional acts of compassion and

"A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it." -- Plato