Hello Everyone, This is Chaplain Sung Kim. I am Deputy CMD CH in the 63d Readiness Division. I pray you are well.
How much money would it take to make you happy? Jack Whittaker won the largest undivided jackpot in US History in 2002 — $314.9 million — But his wife told the Charleston Gazette, “I wish all of this never would have happened.” Jack has been arrested twice for drunken driving and has been ordered into a rehabilitation program. There have been several thefts at his office and home, including a car. Apparently there are many other problems as well which are under investigation.
What would it take to make you happy? The people who go on Extreme Makeover say that if they just had a chin, a smaller nose, or if they just had those bags under their eyes taken care of they would be happy.
The Christian faith has a very different perspective on happiness. We believe that happiness is experienced in ways the world never seriously considers as real options.
There are many things in life that rob us of happiness, but I want to point out one thing: Living in Isolation. Life was never meant to be lived alone.
Stanley Hauerwas says, “I think Americans are very lonely as a people, and their loneliness desires a sense of belonging.” The answer to that is living in community. Essentially, that is what church community is: it is a community of believers who are committed to God and each other. We are committed to love, understand and stand by you.
Living without other people in your life is unhealthy and robs you of happiness. Prisons have learned that solitary confinement is an effective punishment.
God’s plan for his people is not the monastery, but the church and community. We are called out of the world to live together in Christian community, and empowered by that experience of community.
The radical individualism of our culture makes people believe that they can be a Christian with no connection with a church — other Christians. I have seen the unfortunate circumstance where an individual, or a single family, will become so narrow in their thinking that since no one believes quite like they believe, they draw the circle smaller and smaller until they are the only ones left in it.
Here is how community looked in the early church: “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people….” (Acts 2:46-47).
I pray that you have good Family, Friends and Community during COVID-19. Kurt Vonnegut says, “What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
To live alone is to live without happiness. Better to live with a group of people where you have to work at getting along with each other, than living alone so that you never struggle with relationships. This is the way we were made. We were designed to live in community with each other, not isolated aloneness. You cannot live in happiness when you are going against the grain of the way you were designed. And you were designed to live closely with other people, not far away from them. You need other people who can balance you, correct you, encourage you, discipline you and help you. We were not made to live alone, and we enormously benefit from being in community with each other.
Have a blessed day! Blood and Fire!
Here is the direct email and phone number for anyone requesting support from the 63d RD Chaplain office,
usarmy.usarc.63-rsc.list.chaplain-all-users@mail.mil
650-526-9668