Finding True Happiness: Satisfying Our Restless Hearts

By Robert Spitzer

One of the hottest topics in contemporary culture is happinessso much so that the United Nations declared an International Happiness Day in response to the immense popularity of Pharrell Williamsಙ song ಜHappyಝ. The explanation for this current fixation seems to lie in the contrary phenomenonunhappiness. Despite the fact that we have tremendous access to every imaginable form of entertainment, we experience a pervading sense of insecurity, emptiness, and malaise amid sporadic peak experiences.

The problem seems to lie less in the external environment than in the internal one. We seem, in the words of Viktor Frankl, to be suffering from an absence of meaning that pervades both individuals and societies, giving rise to a collective emptiness, loneliness, and alienation.

Finding True Happiness attempts to provide a way out of this personal and cultural vacuum by helping people to identify and then reach for happiness. As Aristotle noted 2,400 years ago, happiness is the one thing we can choose for its own sakeeverything else is chosen for the sake of happiness.

After an exhaustive investigation of philosophical, psychological, and theological systems of happiness, author Fr. Spitzer developed the ಜFour Levels of Happinessಝ, which he based on the classical thinkers Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas; the contemporary philosophers Marcel, Scheler, Buber, Ricoeur, and Jaspers; and the modern psychologists Maslow, Frankl, Erikson, Seligman, Kohlberg and Gilligan.

Finding True Happiness is both a philosophical itinerary and a practical guidebook for lifeಙs most important journeyfrom the mundane and the meaningless to transcendent fulfillment. No other book currently available combines such breadth of practical advice and such depth of philosophical, psychological, and spiritual wisdom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Mar 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781681496559

Robert Spitzer

Robert Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D. is the President of the Magis Center of Reason and Faith and the Spitzer Center. He was the President of Gonzaga University from 1998 to 2009. He is the author of many books, including Healing the Culture, Finding True Happiness, Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life, The Light Shines On in the Darkness, The Soul's Upward Yearning, and God So Loved the World.

Book preview

FINDING TRUE HAPPINESS

Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D.

FINDING TRUE

HAPPINESS

Satisfying Our Restless Hearts

Volume One of the Quartet:

Happiness, Suffering, and Transcendence

IGNATIUS PRESS    SAN FRANCISCO

Nihil Obstat:   David J. Leigh, S.J.

Censor Librorum

Imprimatur:   + The Most Reverend Kevin W. Vann, J.C.D., D.D.

Bishop, Diocese of Orange

March 12, 2015

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations (except those within citations) are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition, © 2006 by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover design by John Herreid

© 2015 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-58617-956-4 (PB)

ISBN 978-1-68149-655-9 (E)

Library of Congress Control Number 2014949938

Printed in the United States of America

In loving memory of my father and mother,

who provided a foundation for all Four Levels of Happiness in my life,

and for Pope Francis, who points continuously to the joy of the gospel

through his words and actions.

For Thou hast made us for Thyself,

and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.

—Saint Augustine

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One: Choosing Happiness

     Introduction

     I. A General Definition of Happiness

     II. The First Kind of Desire: External-Pleasure-Material

     III. The Second Kind of Desire: Ego-Comparative

     IV. The Third Kind of Desire: Contributive-Empathetic

     Conclusion

Chapter Two: Are We Really Transcendent?

     Introduction

     I. Is science Really Against the Transcendent?

     II. Evidence of the Transcendent Within Ourselves

     III. Transcendence and Happiness

Chapter Three: The Comparison Game

     Introduction

     I. The Four Levels of Happiness

     II. The Comparison Game

     III. Existential Emptiness

Chapter Four: Escaping Your Personal Hell

     Introduction

     I. A Three-step Process for Transforming Our Fundamental Attitudes

     II. First Fundamental Attitude: What Kind of Purpose in Life Am I Looking For?

     III. second Fundamental Attitude: What Am I Looking for in Others?

     IV. Third Fundamental Attitude: What Am I Looking for in Myself?

     V. What Kind of Freedom Am I seeking?

     VI. The Benefits of Moving from Dominant Level One-Two to Dominant Level Three-Four

     VII. The Level Three-Four Comparison Game

Chapter Five: Call of the Transcendent

     Introduction

     I. Is Level Three Enough?

     II. The Exterior Call of the Transcendent

     Conclusion

Chapter Six: A Dynamic Encounter with God

     Introduction

     I. A Little Leap of Faith

     II. The Self-revelation of God—Jesus Christ

     III. Church Community and Our Spiritual Nature

     IV. The Church as Dynamic Encounter with God

     Conclusion

Chapter Seven: Contemplation in Action

     Introduction

     I. Simple Contemplation

     II. Our Image of God

     III. Making Common Prayers Contemplative

     IV. Ignatian Contemplation

     V. Silence, Joy, and Action

Chapter Eight: Divine Inspiration and Guidance

     Introduction

     I. The Inspiration of the Holy Spirit

     II. Discernment of Spirits

     III. The guidance of the Holy Spirit

     Conclusion

Chapter Nine: Interior Transformation

     Introduction

     I. Step One: The Prayer of Gratitude

     II. Step Two: Imitating the Heart of Jesus by Seeking a Heart of the Beatitudes

     III. Praying the Examen Prayer

Chapter Ten: Transcendent Happiness

     Introduction

     I. Overcoming Cosmic emptiness, Alienation, Loneliness, and Guilt

     II. A Life of Unconditional and Eternal Significance

     III. The Joy of Church Community

     IV. Help of the Holy spirit

     V. The Joy of Contemplation

     VI. The Redemption of suffering

     VII. Noble Cause in the Cosmic struggle between Good and Evil

     VIII. The Assurance of Eternal Life with God

Conclusion

Bibliography

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am most grateful to Joan Jacoby, whose invaluable work transformed my thoughts into a full manuscript, for typing multiple copies of each chapter, making helpful editing suggestions, and helping with research.

I am also grateful to Karlo Broussard, Camille Pauley, and Justina Miller for their help in preparing the manuscript.

I would also like to express my appreciation to the Board and friends of the Magis Institute, who gave me the time and resources to complete this quartet.

INTRODUCTION

This introduction is concerned not so much with this volume on Finding True Happiness as with all four volumes in the quartet—Happiness, Suffering, and Transcendence. Though this volume can be understood and used by itself, its contents are brought more fully to light through the explanation of transcendence, revelation, suffering, and evil in the later three volumes.

The following section briefly explains the intended audiences of each of the volumes, and the interrelationship among them. A second section provides a discussion of the contents of each volume and the purpose of the quartet.

I. The Intended Audience for Each Volume of the Quartet

I have written this quartet not only for committed Catholics and Christians, but also for young adults who are beginning their faith journey, and especially for those who feel themselves to be at an impasse—not knowing whether to take their faith seriously or to let it slip away. Many in that latter group may have experienced being attacked for their beliefs—perhaps accused of wishful thinking or naiveté. some may have been confronted with misleading arguments about a contradiction between science and faith, between suffering and the loving God, or between Jesus in the Gospels and Jesus in history. Others may simply be confused by the mixed signals given in schools and the media. To help these individuals (particularly those slipping into skepticism or malaise), I have provided detailed resources in Chapter 2 of this volume, and all chapters of Volumes II and III of this quartet.

This quartet is not reserved only for those confronting skepticism and malaise, but also for those who are seeking to deepen their faith and to help others in their faith journey. The material on happiness in this volume has been tested in no less than eight hundred audiences, many comprised of people with strong faith. The response has been overwhelmingly good, because the view we have of happiness holds the key to just about every major decision and direction in our lives. To paraphrase Aristotle’s central tenet in his perennial work Nicomachean Ethics, happiness is the one thing you can choose for itself; everything else is chosen for the sake of happiness.

The contents of Volume II (The Soul’s Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason) should also prove helpful to both audiences—skeptics and convinced believers—because it explains eleven kinds of evidence (from five distinct methods) for our soul and the Supreme Deity who relates to it. We show in Volume I that we are made for transcendent happiness, and we will not be satisfied or fulfilled with anything less. Furthermore, when we ignore or reject this transcendent happiness (by ignoring our transcendent nature), we feel empty, and lonely, and experience a profound absence of our ultimate destiny and dignity that can cause not only a personal darkness, but also feelings of depression, and self-alienation.¹

This situates us within a grand irony, because contemporary culture strongly suggests that reality is exhausted by the physical domain. If the culture’s materialism is correct, then we are doomed to be perpetually unfulfilled, in a state of unsatisfied yearning, which is a perfect recipe for despair. Volume II shows that this skeptical and discouraging position is completely unwarranted by exposing the huge errors of omission in contemporary materialism, which has systematically ignored the increase in evidence for our transcendence throughout the last three decades.² skeptics, agnostics, and believers alike are being duped by an influential minority who are shouting to them, Don’t look at that soul behind the curtain. If we are to reverse this cultural scotoma—and its resultant malaise—we will have to shine a light on the whole truth, which Volume II endeavors to do.

Though Volume II gives evidence for our transcendent nature, it does not tell us about our transcendent destiny, because it is limited to the domain of experience and reason. If we are to know whether transcendent happiness is really possible, we will need to know whether the transphysical eternal domain is a truly happy state. This question is beyond the bounds of natural experience and reason, and so it compels us to move into the domain of revelation. Volume III (God So Loved the World: Clues to Our Transcendent Destiny from the Revelation of Jesus) endeavors to answer this question by examining the evidence for God’s self-revelation. After assembling clues from the "logic of love", we resolve that there is truth in virtually all the world’s religions, and that Jesus Christ’s definition of love (agapë) and His preaching of the unconditional love of God brings the revelation of these religions to its fulfillment.³

Recognizing the radical nature of Jesus’ claim to be the unconditionally loving God with us, we examine the abundance of historical evidence for clues to His divine status. This leads us to the evidence for the historicity of the Resurrection, the gift of the spirit, His miracles, and His proclamation about Himself—which we find to be quite probative. When this is combined with His definition of love, proclamation of God’s unconditional love, and demonstration of His unconditional love (in His act of complete self—sacrifice), we conclude that it is reasonable and responsible to believe that He knows the answer to our transphysical and eternal destiny—a destiny of unconditional love with God and others, which is the pinnacle of joy: These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full (Jn 15:11).

If Jesus really is the unconditionally loving God with us, then both skeptics and believers deserve to know—for He not only reveals but ushers in the reality of eternal joy through eternal love, not only through His historical entrance into the world but also through the Holy spirit and the Church He continues to give us to this very day.

Volume IV (The Light Shines On in the Darkness: Contending with Suffering and Evil through Faith) can prove very helpful to both mature Christians and those beginning their faith journey—for it responds to one of the most difficult questions we confront: Why would an all-loving God allow suffering in the world? In answering this question, we propose a method for Christians to transform their suffering from a self-destructive force into a constructive one for self, others, and the Kingdom of God. In order to do this, we presume the perspective of Jesus, that suffering

     ■ has meaning,

     ■ will all be redeemed,

     ■ can draw us out of superficiality and egocentricity into the fullness of love and joy,

     ■ is essential to defining ourselves (e.g., as caring versus uncaring, self-centered versus other-centered, worshipping self versus worshipping God),

     ■ is integral to building a community of compassion and self-gift, and

     ■ can be transformed into an act of self-sacrifice for the benefit of all.

These truths are profound and require not only explanation, but also practical advice on how to integrate them into our lives. The first part of Volume IV endeavors to do this through a spirituality of suffering grounded in the words of Jesus and the New Testament writers. If those professing to be Christian are unaware of this content, they leave themselves open to self-alienation, despondency, loss of faith, and despair, which will almost inevitably follow from the perceived meaninglessness of their suffering. However, awareness of this content can transform suffering into deep meaning, purified love, contributive spirit, surrender to God, strong faith, a positive self-definition, and a legacy of hope and self-transcendence. Immense suffering may persist throughout life, but the words and actions of Jesus can transform it into the most significant qualities in ourselves and our relationships with others.

Diverse audiences can also benefit from the second part of Volume IV, concerning how to contend with evil. The presence of evil is virtually intuitive to most of us—not just in the specific deeds of specific people, but also in the spirit of the world around us. We seem to be immersed in what J. R. R. Tolkien called a darkness which has descended upon the world—a cosmic spirit of darkness that can enchant our hearts, leading to extremes of abuse, domination, self-idolatry, cruelty, and destruction. The darkness can be manifest in the spirit of community and culture, giving rise to the ascendency of Hitler, Stalin, and every other form of brutal tyranny. Saint Paul says it well: For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12).

We need not be daunted by the darkness, because the light of Jesus shines on in the darkness—and the darkness cannot overcome it (see Jn 1:5). Yet, Christians will want to know how to live in the light of Christ—particularly when they are confronted by evil. Jesus has given us the way—through faith, prayer, virtue, and humble love. Armed with these as our sword and shield, we will not only help ourselves to avoid the darkness, but help others to overcome it.

In sum, the four volumes of the quartet are progressive, but they also narrow the intended audience. The first two volumes on happiness and transcendence are for all audiences, to help them move from unhappiness to ultimate, transcendent happiness. Since this move to transcendent happiness requires an investigation of the evidence for God and the soul, Volume II (on the evidence for transcendence) is indispensable for a complete understanding of this first volume (on finding true happiness). In Volume III, the audience becomes more restricted, because it presumes that readers have affirmed their transcendent nature, and the supreme Deity related to it. This allows readers to move to the question of their transcendent destiny, which requires revelation. Volume III probes the evidence not only for God’s self-revelation, but also His ultimate and personal self-revelation in Jesus. In Volume IV, the audience becomes even more restricted because it presumes that readers will have positively affirmed—through reason and faith—that Jesus is Lord and savior. This affirmation allows us to use the teachings, actions, spirit, and Church of Jesus to respond to the most perplexing of life’s questions regarding suffering and evil, which are the focus of Volume IV. That volume synthesizes Jesus’ teachings and actions and shows readers how to use them through the Holy spirit and the Church to transform suffering and evil into light, love, self-definition, a community of compassion, a legacy of hope, and an eternity of joy with the unconditionally loving God.

II. An Overview of the Quartet and Its Purpose

This volume is concerned with four levels of happiness. We begin with the centrality of the idea of happiness. Since this term carries so much weight in our lives—defining our view of success, quality of life, and self-worth; influencing who we choose as friends, colleagues, and spouses; and determining so much of our future—we give it exceedingly careful treatment, showing its origins, gradations, and highest expressions. We also look at its opposite—unhappiness—and consider how this can be avoided or reconfigured into something good. We examine the differences among the four kinds of happiness, and then show how these differences influence our views of freedom, love, virtue, and ethics. By probing the mystery of our existence, we propose a path to achieving the fullest possible happiness and purpose in this life and the next, amid light and darkness, through opportunity and impediment, contending with good and evil.

As noted above, Volume II is concerned with the evidence for our transcendental nature. This evidence is essential, because we contend that the highest form of happiness and purpose is centered not on this world, but on the transcendent, unconditional, and eternal domain. The ghost of Sigmund Freud has pointed an accusing finger at this contention throughout this and the last century, mocking our transcendent nature as mere illusion.⁴ Tragically, many within our culture have acceded to this view, which ignores the extensive evidence of our transcendental capacity from some of the greatest minds in philosophy, science, and mathematics, such as plato, Augustine, and Aquinas on the five transcendentals; Immanuel Kant and John Henry Newman on the awareness of transcendent goodness; Kurt Gödel, Sir Arthur Eddington, and Bernard Lonergan on the transcendental dimension of the human mind; and Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade, and Carl Jung on the irreducibility of religious experience—to mention just a few. Additionally, the Freudian view tends to ignore the large amount of veridical evidence for the survival of human consciousness after bodily death (from medical studies of near-death experiences), and the evidence for creation of the universe from contemporary physics and philosophy.

There is an expression in logic that sums up history’s worst intellectual blunders: There are far more errors of omission than commission. The Freudian view of the illusion of transcendence is so fraught with omissions that it is neither reasonable nor responsible from an academic or intellectual point of view. Yet its persistence requires us to write a volume responding to it, because its consequences are so devastating. If we put our faith in this view, we will reduce ourselves to an aggregate of atoms and molecules, leading to an undervaluing of our and others’ dignity, purpose in life, and destiny. By holding on to this minimalistic account of ourselves, we will unnecessarily underlive our lives, underestimate our dignity and destiny, and immerse ourselves in cosmic emptiness, loneliness, and alienation.⁵ Thus, we turn our attention, in the second volume, to our transcendent nature through the observations of psychologists, philosophers, physicists, physicians, and theologians.

We begin our investigation into our transcendent experience by examining Rudolf Otto’s study of the numinous, the expression of that experience through Mircea Eliade’s study of religion and "homo-religiosus", the experience of moral authority in Kant’s and Newman’s study of conscience, and our awareness of a cosmic struggle between good and evil in Jung’s and Tolkien’s study of archetypal myths. We then examine the transcendental nature of our thinking through Bernard Lonergan’s Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. This leads to his proof of God (the unique unrestricted act of thinking that is the Creator of everything else), which must be the source of our tacit awareness of the complete intelligibility of reality. We then proceed to an examination of the other three transcendental desires for perfect love, justice or goodness, and beauty—emphasizing the insights of Plato, as well as contemporary philosophers and theologians such as Bernard Lonergan, Karl Rahner, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

We then shift the focus from our interior experience and awareness of transcendence to recent medical studies of near-death experiences that explore three kinds of verifiable evidence for the existence of human self-consciousness after bodily death:

     ■ verified reports of empirical data after the cessation of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex (over thirty seconds after cardiac arrest),

     ■ reports from 80 percent of blind people who claim to see after bodily death, and

     ■ reports about deceased relatives and friends encountered in another world after bodily death.

This leads us to an examination of the evidence for a transphysical soul. In addition to the data of near-death experiences, we explore four other contemporarily acknowledged indications of transcendent consciousness:

     ■ our awareness of transcendental heuristic notions (Kant, Lonergan, and Eccles),

     ■ our tacit awareness of higher mathematical intelligibility (without making recourse to programs, rules, or algorithms) implied by Gödel’s proof,

     ■ our tacit awareness of the complete intelligibility of reality (implicit in Lonergan’s pure unrestricted desire to know), and

     ■ the transcendental character of human consciousness implied by our capacity to experience ourselves experiencing (seen in David Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness).

We conclude by giving a model of soul-body interaction based on the work of sir John Eccles, sir Karl Popper, Friedrich Beck, Henry Stapp, Michael Polanyi, and Bernard Lonergan.

At this juncture, we will have made a reasonable response to Freud’s and the culture’s materialistic account of the human psyche. Yet at the very moment we most clearly see the depth and beauty of our transcendent nature, we are left with a surfeit of questions that experience and reason cannot answer: Does God grant eternal life? If so, what is that life like? Does God redeem suffering? If so, how? Does God answer prayers? Does He heal us interiorly? Is He unconditionally good and loving? Does He inspire and guide us? Can we be eternally separated from God? What is our path to salvation? These questions incite us to investigate the domain of revelation, which is the major focus of Volume III.

We first examine God’s desire to reveal Himself to all individuals, peoples, and cultures by briefly exploring Freidrich Heiler’s seven common characteristics of world religions⁶ and Mircea Eliade’s irreducible dimension of the sacred in human consciousness and world religions.⁷ These remarkable similarities among such diverse cultures and peoples strongly imply a common source or origin of them that Eliade believes can be explained by Rudolf Otto’s numinous experience—rhe presence of the divine Numen to us.⁸ If Otto, Eliade, and Heiler are correct, then God reveals Himself to all individuals, peoples, and cultures interiorly, and this interior revelation becomes exteriorly manifest in religious communities, myths, rituals, and doctrines.

Though most world religions have the above core similarities, they also vary widely according to the history, customs, and cultures of different peoples. These differences provoke us to ask whether God would want to reveal Himself ultimately and personally to focus us on a supreme revelation. In Volume III we show that this conjecture is likely—especially if God is unconditionally loving. The fact that love appears in three contexts within Heiler’s list of seven common characteristics of world religions (see above, section I), and also in Rudolf Otto’s list of characteristics of the numinous experience, shows that a loving God is not an unreasonable expectation. When this is combined with the unrestricted nature of God (proven in Volume II), we find ourselves right in the midst of the unique revelation of Jesus Christ—namely, that God is not simply love, but unrestricted love.

In sum, if God is loving (which is common to the interior experience and exterior expression of all religion) and God is unrestricted being and thinking (proven in Volume II), then the unique revelation of Jesus Christ (that God is unrestricted love) is the best candidate we have for the ultimate and personal self-revelation of God.

This leads to an exploration of Jesus’ remarkable claim not only that God is unrestricted love but that He (Jesus) is the unrestricted love of God with us (Emmanuel). If this claim can be verified, then Jesus holds out the answers to all the above questions about our transcendent destiny—and so it is incumbent upon us to examine the evidence for this claim.

We first delve into a detailed exploration of Jesus’ unique meaning of love (agapē) and then show His revelation of the unconditional love of the Father (whom He called "Abba" and identified with the Father of the prodigal son). We then look into the unconditional love of Jesus Himself—exemplified not only in His love of the poor and the sick, but especially in His love of sinners (whom He makes a central part of His mission). This leads us to the climatic end of His ministry—an act of complete self-sacrifice, a freely offered gift of Himself in suffering and death that He interpreted in the Eucharistic words at His Last Supper. It seems that everything about Jesus points to His unconditional love, but the question still persists: Is He merely an unconditionally loving man or the unconditionally loving God with us?

Recent historical scholarship on the New Testament enables us to answer this question in deeper and more comprehensive ways than ever before. We first turn to the historical investigation of Jesus’ Resurrection—giving special attention to Gary Habermas’ comprehensive survey of New Testament exegesis on this subject and N. T. Wright’s two major arguments for the historicity of Jesus’ risen appearances: (1) the rise of Christian Messianism after the humiliation and execution of its Messiah, and (2) the Christian mutations of Second Temple Judaism’s doctrine of the Resurrection. When we combine this with recent scholarship on Paul’s testimony to the Resurrection (Reginald Fuller) and the empty tomb (N. T. Wright), we find a probative case for Jesus’ bodily Resurrection in glory (spiritually transformed corporeality).

We then ask whether the apostolic Church had reason to believe in Jesus’ divinity before He appeared in His risen glory. This leads to a historical investigation of Jesus’ extensive ministry of exorcisms, healings, and raising of the dead. Using Raymond Brown’s analysis of the uniqueness of Jesus’ miracles in both semitic and Hellenistic cultures and John P. Meier’s extensive study of the historicity of Jesus’ miracles from both New Testament and extratestamental sources, we conclude that this particular dimension of Jesus is as historical as His existence in Israel and His Crucifixion by the Roman soldiers (which are as well-attested as any other historical datum from that period or before). We then examine the central characteristic of Jesus’ miracle working: unlike any Old Testament prophet, Jesus performs miracles by His command and authority alone, implying that divine power is intrinsic to Him.

This opens upon an investigation of Jesus’ gift of the Holy spirit within the apostolic community (James D. G. Dunn) and the charismatic presence of the Holy spirit today (Craig Keener),⁹ which enables us to conclude that Jesus imparted a spirit of divine power to the apostolic Church, enabling His followers to perform healings, exorcisms, and miracles in His name—a spirit of divine power that had not been similarly manifest in the world prior to Jesus.

One major question remains to be answered: Did Jesus really claim to be the exclusive son of the Father (God)? He certainly did—not only by performing miracles by His own authority but also by asserting that He was the preexistent eschatological son of Man who came to bring the Kingdom of God in His own person, by completing the mission reserved by Israel to Yahweh alone, by claiming to know the Father as the Father knows Him, and by asserting His divine status to the high priest during His trial so forcefully that He was accused of blasphemy (the first person in both Jewish and Roman history to be so accused). Jesus was careful about how, when, and to whom He would reveal His divinity, but He unmistakably believed and claimed it for Himself.

When we put together the major pieces of the puzzle—His Resurrection in glory, the miracles by His own command and authority, His gift of the Holy spirit (the power of God), and His claim to be the exclusive son of the Father—we can see why the leaders of the apostolic Church proclaimed that Jesus is Lord, even when it was apologetically unappealing and meant certain loss of religious, financial, and social status, as well as persecution. They proclaimed it because they were certain of it, for the clues were unmistakable.

We conclude from this that Jesus really is the unconditionally loving God with us, and that He gives us answers to our questions about God, eternal life, the way to live, suffering, grace, divine inspiration and guidance, the answer to prayers, and above all about God’s unconditional love for every individual. We are now prepared to respond to the two most difficult questions confronting humanity.

In Volume IV, we turn our attention to the darker side of life: suffering and evil, because many within our culture are vexed by the question of why an all-loving God would allow suffering and evil in the world. The underlying assumption of this question is the incompatibility of suffering and love. Yet as we probe the mystery of suffering and evil, through the eyes of Jesus, we see that there is a third term mediating the relationship between them—namely, free will.

The reason God allows us to cause suffering to other individuals is to let us initiate our loving acts. If we did not have the possibility of choosing unloving and evil behaviors, we would have only one option—loving behaviors, which means that we would be programmed by God to act only in this way. We would be reduced to the status of robots, and our love would not be our own, but the property of the divine programmer. As we probe further, we see that the suffering we cause to ourselves is also related to freedom, and so also the suffering that comes from the blind forces of nature.

At first glance it is difficult to see why God would create us in an imperfect world (with indifferent and sometimes hostile natural forces), but as we follow the train of Jesus’ thought, we begin to see God’s rationale. The imperfect world incites us to choose either deep meaning or superficiality, either compassion or indifference, either love or egocentricity, either co-responsibility or domination, either gentleness or harshness, either surrender to God or self-idolatry, to build either a legacy of contribution and hope or one of deprivation and despair, to be either a source of light or a source of darkness, and to point either to our transcendent and eternal dignity or to our merely material and temporal one. In all cases, the imperfect world is the condition that incites us to choose our self-definition—not merely our principles and ideals, but also the attitudes and actions that etch our ideals, beliefs, principles, loves, and meaning into our very being. The imperfect world is the occasion through which we choose our fundamental identity in relationship to others and God—the occasion, as the existentialists might say, Either to be or not to be. The imperfect world (like all suffering) lasts for only a short time by comparison to the eternity to which God has called us, but it is critically important to who we are and who we will become. The more we are aware of Jesus’ view of suffering, the more we can benefit from it, and teach others to do so.

By building on Jesus’ teaching about suffering, love, and personal freedom, we look at how suffering can help us to achieve our highest purpose and happiness in this life and how to use it to shape our identity for an eternal life of unconditional love. We look at how to use spontaneous prayers when suffering strikes, how to follow the Holy Spirit during our suffering, how to interact with others and the Church community when we feel isolated, how to make the best choices when we feel deprived of freedom, how to form our identity through those choices, and how to help others do the same. This theological framework for suffering can make the difference between a life of frustration, darkness, resentment, and despair and a life of openness to others, deep meaning, surrender to God, and contribution to the world and God’s Kingdom.

We also examine the presence of evil in the world, noting how it frequently originates in the aberrant use of free will. We explore the spiritual struggle between good and evil in our lives and in world history, and diagnose the root causes of history’s darkest hours—collective pride, envy, greed, and anger. We notice that these deadly sins are not limited to the collective domain, but originate in individual people. We show how some of the greatest works of literature—the inspired Bible, the plays of Shakespeare, the novels of Tolstoy, Hugo, and Dostoyevsky—all point to the same deadly sins that have their foundation in egocentricity. We then propose a way not only to avoid these self-destructive vices, but also to engage the spiritual struggle between good and evil, aligning ourselves to the unconditionally loving God through prayer and doctrine, worship and virtue, humility, compassion, and love. We conclude with a concise road map on how to stay on our journey with the loving God to our eternal destiny of unconditional love.

Our hope in this quartet is to confront what might be called the Freudian illusion about the unreality of transcendence by showing the evidence of our spiritual and eternal nature, studying the revelation of Jesus Christ about God’s unconditional love, probing the power of God’s grace working in us through inspiration, protection, and guidance, revealing the importance of these graces in times of suffering and confrontation with evil, and shining a light on the eternal destiny that awaits us in the unconditional love of God. In brief, our objective is to lift the veil of superficiality and materialism that has not only been