The teachings of Jesus in Matthew Chapter 5 (the “Beatitudes”) turn a typical worldview on its head. According to Jesus, your purpose in life is to serve God and to serve others, not to serve yourself. It’s quite counter-intuitive, but you can only find true happiness and fulfilment if you are bold enough to put the interests of others before your own. Here’s a rough reinterpretation of Jesus’s nine new rules for experiencing happiness:
- If you want to be part of the kingdom of heaven, you need to recognise that God is bigger than you are, and you need to admit your dependence on him.
- If you want to experience happiness, you have to learn to suffer loss.
- If you want to rule the whole earth, you have to be humble and put others first.
- If you want to see justice come, you have to be really hungry and thirsty for it.
- If you want people to be treated kindly, you have to be kind to others first.
- If you want to see God, you have to purify your heart.
- If you want to be a child of God, you have to work for peace.
- If you follow Jesus seriously, you will probably be mocked and persecuted and lied about.
- When you do cop flak for following Jesus, you can learn to stay happy, and a big reward waits for you in heaven.
If what Jesus says is right, a lot of people – nearly everybody in fact – have their priorities wrong. Television shows and advertisements in all forms of media tell us that the way to happiness and fulfilment is by looking after ourselves, and yet we live with a constant gnawing feeling that we are not all that we could be. It would take a huge leap of faith to believe that we can only find true fulfilment in serving others…