True Happiness in a World of Evil

Why Happiness Matters for the Problem of Evil

At the heart of the problem of evil lies not just pain or loss, but the sense that our deepest desire for happiness is being frustrated. If God is good, shouldn’t He want us to be happy? If He is powerful, shouldn’t He be able to make us happy? When life is filled with suffering, it feels like God has failed us.

But much of this frustration comes from confusing two very different meanings of happiness. The shallow meaning creates the problem of evil; the deeper meaning helps to resolve it.

Shallow Happiness: Feelings and Fortune

In our culture, happiness usually means a feeling of contentment. It is subjective, temporary, and often tied to luck. The very word “happiness” is related to the Old English word hap, which means chance or fortune. We think we are happy when external circumstances line up the way we want: money, pleasure, health, success, power.

But this shallow sense of happiness is fragile. Feelings change. Fortunes shift. A person may feel happy one moment and crushed the next. A man who spends his life drinking beer on the couch may feel content, but no one would say he is truly flourishing.

If this is all we mean by happiness, then the existence of suffering looks like proof that God has failed.

Deep Happiness: Beatitude

The Christian tradition, drawing on Scripture and classical philosophy, speaks of a deeper kind of happiness: beatitude. This is not a passing feeling but an objective state of flourishing in the soul. It is to the spirit what health is to the body.

• You can feel healthy without actually being healthy.

• In the same way, you can feel happy without being truly happy.

True happiness, blessedness, is a state of the soul aligned with truth, virtue, and God Himself. It is rooted not in external circumstances but in the interior life of wisdom, love, and holiness.

This is why Jesus could say in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are those who mourn” (Mt 5:4). Even in sorrow, those who love God can be truly happy, because their souls are oriented to Him.

How Suffering Leads to True Happiness

If shallow happiness is rooted in pleasure, suffering destroys it. But if true happiness is rooted in virtue and union with God, suffering can actually strengthen it.

• Suffering teaches us that earthly goods are fragile and cannot satisfy us.

• Suffering detaches us from false loves and reorients us to the greatest Good.

• Suffering, endured with faith, purifies our hearts so that we can love more deeply.

This is why Scripture says God disciplines those He loves (Heb 12:6). Not because He delights in pain, but because He desires our eternal joy. Job did not suffer because he lacked God’s love, but because his love was being deepened.

Even Christ Himself shows this: “For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross” (Heb 12:2). The Cross was not the denial of happiness but the path to it, the road to resurrection, to the joy that cannot be taken away.

God’s Goodness and Our Joy

This helps us see God’s goodness in a new light. His goodness is not about sparing us every hardship, but about leading us to the only joy that lasts. Sometimes this means depriving us of lesser goods, so that we will not settle for them in place of the ultimate good.

God’s goal is not to keep us comfortable: it is to make us holy. And holiness, far from being grim or joyless, is the only path to true happiness.

Looking Ahead

In our final post, we will bring this all together in a practical conclusion. Evil is not only explained in theory or redeemed in Christ. It is something we must live through with faith. How, then, should Christians face suffering day by day? What does it mean to trust the gospel in the midst of pain? That is where we now turn.