If we are made for happiness why aren’t we happy?

Natural Law, Freedom, & Conscience

Outline • We were made for happiness (beatitude) • Natural Law ― Freedom ― Conscience

• Conclusion

Happiness • We were created for a purpose, for a final end, and that end is happiness.

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If we are not created with a purpose than life is meaningless. Any meaning we give to it is ultimately arbitrary without having been created by Someone transcedent with a goal in mind.

• Happiness is beatitude, seeing God face to face. We are made for God. • Happiness is acquired by attaining the perfect good.

• The one goal of happiness is the Good which once attained ensures that no one can aspire to anything further

Chasing false goods •

Man is often in the dark about what true happiness is because he spends so much time chasing goods that are not, in and of themselves, perfect goods.

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Examples of diversions from the perfect good: ― Riches, honor, positions, fame, pleasures

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Happiness is not just the satisfaction of desire

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And yet, whatever mistakes and poor decisions man makes, he is still striving, however poorly, to attain happiness

Happiness • Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is seeking God. - G.K. Chesterton • The question then is how do we pursue happiness?

• We demand to have happiness on terms that make happiness impossible

NATURAL LAW

The law of our being.

- Daniel Sullivan; “An Introductory to Philosophy”

Natural Law • The natural law is based on the structure of reality itself. It is therefore the same for all men and all times, an unchanging rule or pattern which is there for us to discover, and by means of which we can rationally guide ourselves to our goal (our purpose).

• We are made with freedom and a set of built in rules we call natural law that help us to achieve this end. • Natural law corresponds to reality. It arises from how we are made.

Natural Law • The rule, then, which God has prescribed for our conduct, is found in our nature itself. ― Analogy of our bodies ― Those at variance with our nature are disordered and immoral.

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To act according to your impulses and instincts can be to act unnaturally for humans.

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Analogy of anger

We are not at war with our nature when we regulate our impulses according to reason

Examples of the Natural Law • When people make appeal to fair play, demand square treatment, apply the golden rule, they are spontaneously invoking the natural law.

• It is the “law written on our hearts.”

- St. Paul • “Do good; avoid evil.”

FREEDOM

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

- Gal 5:1

Man is Rational •

1730 God

created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. ...

• We are not determined. Materialist and secularist must believe that we do not have free will if we are simply the product of natural processes

License vs Liberty License • • • • • • • •

freedom to indulge compulsions to indulge freedom to sin do what feels good sees law as the tyrant law feels imposed breaks the law any choice is a good choice negates love

Liberty • • • •

freedom from compulsion freedom from sin do what is good sees sin as the tyrant

• law is written on the heart

• fulfills the law • choice between good and evil • affords love

...There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to "the slavery of sin."

1733

License vs Liberty •

In Latin, there is a clear distinction between ― libertas (liberty, freedom for excellence) ― licentia (license, freedom from constraint).

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The word "freedom" came to mean the right to do whatever one wants—so long as that desire did not harm the freedom of others.

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No one is completely free in this world. ― Men are unable to jump over the moon; they cannot breathe poisonous gasses and live; they are not allowed to repeal the laws of nature.

License vs Liberty •

The liberty which the Creator has given the creature is a liberty within laws. ― Men cannot break the natural or moral laws of God without in their turn being broken upon them.

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In fact, the freedom which secular individualism praises seems to collapse rather quickly into empty consumerism that promises individual happiness to those who buy whatever they want in the marketplace. ― "I buy things I don’t need, with money I don’t have, to impress people I don’t even like.“

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Analogy for authentic freedom ― ―

Train Car

CONSCIENCE

...When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.

- CCC 1777

The Formation of the Conscience Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened....

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1783

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1784

The education of the conscience is a lifelong task....The education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.

• GPS Analogy

Conscience • If abortion kills a baby then it ought to be banned to everyone; why allow it?

• But if it doesn’t kill a baby it is hard to see why we should be uneasy about it at all; why restrict it?

• We restrict what we allow because we know it is wrong but don’t want to give it up; we feed our hearts scraps in hopes of hushing them

Conclusion •

God has created us for a purpose, for a final end, to be with Him for eternity. This is the “Why” of why we were created.

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God has made us with a set of rules that correspond to us being human. This is the “Natural Law”. This is part of the “How” of the how we are to achieve our end.

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One of the primary components of this “Law” is his free will. Man is rational and can exercise freedom in making choices. We are not determined purely by natural processes.

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Conscience is another part of the “natural law” and helps us to live according to how we are made. It must be formed and guided properly. It is not independent on its own.

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When a person exercises his freedom and obeys his properly formed conscience in such a way that is “true” to his very nature he becomes free to be what he was made to be “a son of God” created in the “image of the Father”.