The Christian Integration

of Morality,
Freedom, and Happiness
Do you perceive the rules of the
Catholic Church as burdensome
or as a limit to your freedom?
 Christian morality is harmful
“because [the church] has
chosen to label as morality a
certain narrow set of rules of
conduct which have nothing to
do with human happiness; and
when you say that this or that
ought to be done because it
would make for human
happiness, they think that has
nothing to do with the matter
at all.”
Bertrand Russell, Why I
am Not a Christian?
This is a common indictment of
Christianity: that it puts people in a
moral straightjacket, enslaving them to
an outdated moral system, and thereby
greatly diminishes their happiness and
even inhibits the progress of the human
race.
But, what does the Bible
tell us about this?
 “It is for freedom
that Christ has set
us free.”

St. Paul, Epistle to the

Galatians
 “I came that they
may have life, and
have it to the full.”

Jesus
from the Gospel of John
Echoing this biblical message,
Christians throughout the ages,
have expressed a great joy that
derives from their faith.
 “Joy… is the
gigantic secret of
the Christian.”

G.K. Chesterton
 What, then , explains the
enormous gap between the
Christian idea of liberation
and the popular perception
of Christianity? How can
these two views of
Christianity be reconciled?
The prejudice against Christianity’s
moral claims is due in part to a general
human tendency to resent all rules and
restrictions—religious, political, or
otherwise—as unfair and destructive of
liberty.
 “In many cases confinement
and constraint is actually a
means to liberation…freedom
is not so much the absence of
restrictions as finding the
right ones, the liberating
restrictions. Those that fit
with the reality of our nature
and the world produce greater
power and scope for our
abilities, and a deeper joy and
fulfillment.”
Tim Keller, The Reason for God
“Liberating Restrictions”
Example:
A pet fish taken out of its fishbowl

The fish has thus been freed from the limits of

the fish bowl, from restrictions of place and
movement—but removed from its proper
environment, the fish will die. Because the fish is
free to live and move only when it is limited to a
bowl full of water, the restrictions placed on it
“Liberating Restrictions”

This example illustrates why it is that

restrictions can simultaneously bind
and free; it is only in being bound by
some rules that we can live at all or
enjoy any kind of meaningful freedom.
“Liberating Restrictions”
Example:
In politics

the vast majority of humans recognize the need

for limits and rules. We recognize that anarchy—
the complete absence of governmental authority
—is not a desirable political arrangement, and
that the restrictions on our freedom enforced by
laws and taxes actually allow for human
“Liberating Restrictions”

By allowing everything, you effectively

destroy everything; but by forbidding
some things, you allow everything else.
True freedom is only possible where
freedom is limited.
For any happiness, even in this world, quite
a lot of restraint is going to be necessary…
every sane and civilized man must have
some sort of principles by which he chooses
to reject some of his desires and to permit
others. One man does this on Christian
principles, another on hygienic principles,
another on sociological principles. The real
conflict is not between Christianity and
nature. For ‘nature’ (in the sense of natural
desire) will have to be controlled anyway,
Lewis,whole
unless you are going to ruin your Mere Christianity
life.
Christianity does not seek rules for the sake of rules,
but for the sake of true happiness and freedom. It
seeks rules for the same reason that everybody seeks
rules: in order to allow us to survive and flourish.

Its value is purely instrumental, meant to aid one in

attaining goodness and happiness and to succeed in
becoming a good and happy person.
 How could Christian
morality ever be
connected to happiness?
The Difference of Pleasure and Joy
Pleasure
• agreeable sensation, a
passion caused by contact
with some exterior good
• decreases when the good
that causes it is divided up
and shared more widely
Joy
• is something interior, like
that act that causes it
• direct effect of an
excellent action, like the
savor of a long task finally
accomplished
• effect in us of truth
understood and goodness
loved; associated with
virtue
The Difference of Pleasure and Joy

Pleasure Joy
• brief, variable, and • lasting, like the
superficial, like the excellence, the virtues,
contact that causes it that engender it
• individual, like sensation • communicable; it grows
itself by being shared and
repays sacrifices freely
embraced
When happiness is understood in terms of
lasting joy, instead of temporary pleasure, the
way in which Christian morality can be said
to be compatible with happiness becomes
clear. Though a Christian must, from time to
time, forgo certain temporary pleasures, the
Christian moral life instills a deep and
irrevocable joy.
The attainment of a virtuous character, one
that can give rise to morally excellent
actions at all times, is a joy-giving
accomplishment, in part because we
naturally desire goodness (though we often
forget what goodness actually is).
 “Discipline and
constraints, then,
liberate us only when
they fit with the
reality of our nature
and capacities.”

Tim Keller
Christianity teaches that the one thing that fits
with our true nature above everything else is
love. It is the proper environment for mankind.

Love, Keller argues, is simultaneously the most

liberating thing and the most restrictive thing a
human being can experience; it demands the
most, but it also gives the most.
By its very nature, love means giving things
up, sacrificing for the other, the object of
your love. Removed from the context of
love, those sacrifices might seem painful
and absurd, but within the context of a love
that gives joy, freedom, and meaning, they
begin to make perfect sense.
We all seek to live in relationships of love
and to live in a world characterized by love.
Christianity offers exactly this, but it also
specifies what is necessary for such a world
to come about.
Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let
Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves
totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take
something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid
to give up something significant, something unique,
something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not
then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our
freedom? … No! If we let Christ into our lives, we
lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what
makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this
friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in
this friendship is the great potential of human
existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do
we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today,
with great strength and great conviction, on the
basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you,
dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He
Pope Benedict XVI
If one doubts this idea . . .

Christianity has not been tried and

found wanting; it has been found
difficult and not tried.
The most important “liberating
restriction” of all is the love of
God, come to set us free.
REFERENCE
The Christian Integration of Morality, Freedom, and
Happiness, Peter Blair,
http://augustinecollective.org/the-christian-integration-of
-
morality-freedom-and-happiness/