The Physics of Happiness: DeSales
A Bishop of the 17th century in Geneva, Francis DeSales almost single handedly revolutionized how the world viewed the spiritual life. He was one of the first leaders of the Church to proclaim the universal accessibility of God and the duty of every person to consecrate the efforts and responsibilities of daily life to God. In other words, he is often considered a pioneer in making the universal call to holiness real and accessible to all of God’s people.
His most famous work is a book entitled “Introduction to the Devout Life.” If a book has impacted your spiritual life that’s been written after the early 17th century, it’s likely DeSales' greatest work was significantly influenced the author. It’s that important of a spiritual work.
I could spend hours talking through the thousands of transformational concepts and ideas produced in this book but, for the sake of the series, I’ll just focus on one.
For DeSales, happiness emerges from devotion toward God. The more one truly and authentically loves God, the happier he will become. Nothing about his circumstances needs to change. He doesn’t need a new wife, a new job, a new house, a new school, a new parent, a new country, a new hobby, a new body, or anything of the sort. True devotion is like sweetening unripe fruit with sugar. It teaches you to be happy in abundance or in want. It shows you how to profit by both honor and contempt. And it accepts gladness and sadness with an even mind.
On the road to devotion, in reading DeSales, most of us spiritual seekers take the wrong first step. We adopt an extreme instead of learning to embrace the truth of God’s mysterious but generous ways.
When entering into a relationship with God, it is inevitable for us to first contend with the difference between how God asks to live and how we are living. In other words, we have to develop a philosophy on sin. Is it real? If it is, what is a sin and what are its consequences? And so on.
In response to sin, most of us take to one of two extremes. The first is to downplay its relevance. God loves me and that’s all I need to know. I remember a friend of mine, when talking about premarital sex, saying, “God made me with this desire to act on it not to deny it!” Say what you want about this approach, the point is, its popularity is unquestionable.
To this group, DeSales this perspective as a state of “extreme danger.” Where a soul “imagines themselves purified from all imperfection at the very outset” of their journey. These individuals “count themselves as full-grown before they are born, and seek to fly before they have wings.”
The second extreme response is the one of self-degradation and shame. It’s the idea that the very existence of an inclination to do something against the ways of God is a sign that I am a piece of trash completely unworthy of anything good in the world. Again, say what you want about this approach but its popularity is unquestionable too. In my line of work, the number of people who struggle to treat themselves with any level of respect or dignity is enormous.
For DeSales, conversion is like the dawn “which does not vanquish darkness suddenly, but by degrees.” To the second group he writes, “It is a woeful thing to see souls beginning to chafe and grow disheartened because they find themselves still subject to imperfection after having made some attempt at leading a devout life, and well-nigh yielding to the temptation to give up in despair and fall back.”
The proper disposition toward sin, the one that leads to a heavenly sort of happiness in this life and an eternal one in the next, is to view temptation and imperfection as something that will be with us until the day we die. Our happiness “lies in diligently contending against them…” In other words, happiness comes, not from “being insensible” to sin and temptation, as if they are incongruent with a devout life but in “meeting them face to face” with hope and courage. Our job, according to DeSales, is to follow the path of King David and ask the Lord to strengthen our hearts against cowardice and discouragement because “it is our privilege in this war (for our souls) that we are certain to vanquish so long as we are willing to fight.”
So, to DeSales, if you want to be happy then live a devout life. And if you want a devout life then we must first place sin and temptation in their proper place. They are to be resisted. They are to be fought against. But they are never to be eliminated this side of heaven. Rather they are means by which we find the humility, courage, freedom and hope we require to be truly happy.
