No matter how carefully we try to promote and protect our interests, we will not always succeed. Even when misfortune does not befall us, its possibility makes us anxious, and this keeps us from being perfectly happy. This is why the Scriptures tell us that it is only when our hearts are fixed upon that which cannot be shaken that we can face the prospect of bad news without fear (cf. Ps. 112:7; Heb. 12:26–29). 

In our relativistic age, happiness is seen as a matter of personal taste. If you come across someone whose happiness aesthetic differs from yours, you are expected to shrug and politely say, “Whatever makes you happy.” This makes sense to those who see human beings as more authentic when they act in accordance with their feelings. On the other hand, those who see all people as sharing the same human nature will conclude that some things are universally conducive, and others universally detrimental, to personal fulfillment. These differing perspectives correspond to two different paths to happiness, only one of which can lead to a happy end.
The Path of Deified Desire
It is widely assumed in our time that happiness consists in having positive feelings (or at least not having negative ones). Closely related to this is the notion that subjective preferences should be the determining factor for how objective reality is ordered. As C.S. Lewis once put it, modern man has rejected the approach to life that focuses on how to conform the soul to the natural moral order, replacing it with an approach that seeks to subdue everything to his desires.[1] This outlook is now in full bloom, and it is being implemented politically on the basis of various supposed “existential threats.” In the words of professor Russell Berman, the formidable “nexus of government, media, major corporations, and the education establishment . . . aspires to a permanent state of emergency to impose a new mode of governance by intimidation, censorship, and unilateral action.”[2] The powerful in our society claim to have the knowledge and expertise needed to fashion a new world that corresponds to their imaginations, all the while ignoring the constraints of the actual world. Psychologist Mattias Desmet explains this rise in coercive control as “the logical consequence of mechanistic thinking and the delusional belief in the omnipotence of human rationality.”[3] Theologically, it is a manifestation of what Martin Luther was talking about when he said that “man cannot of his nature desire that God should be God; on the contrary, he desires that he himself might be God and that God might not be God.”[4]
The same dynamic is evident at a personal level in the embrace of expressive individualism, which Carl Trueman defines as “a prioritization of the individual’s inner psychology—we might even say ‘feelings’ or ‘intuitions’—for our sense of who we are and what the purpose of our lives is.”[5] Note how expressive individualism undergirds the response of William “Lia” Thomas (winner of the 500 meter freestyle at the 2022 NCAA Women’s Swimming Championships) when he was asked about his biological advantage when competing against women:
There’s a lot of factors that go into a race and how well you do, and the biggest change for me is that I’m happy, and sophomore year, when I had my best times competing with the men, I was miserable. . . . Trans people don’t transition for athletics. We transition to be happy and authentic and our true selves.[6]
As anyone who followed Thomas’s story knows, the thing that made him happy brought unhappiness to female swimmers who were forced to share a locker room with and compete against a biological male. When one person’s pursuit of happiness gets in the way of someone else’s pursuit of happiness, the conflict has to be adjudicated by something beyond individual feelings. But in a relativistic and therapeutic society that makes feelings ultimate, it simply boils down to which side has more power. This is exactly what happened in Thomas’s case, as the cultural ascendancy of transgender ideology resulted in his teammates and competitors being bullied into silence.
Such things are to be expected when a society unmoors itself from any sense of objective moral order. Trueman shows how the modern West has done this by employing Philip Rieff’s taxonomy of “worlds” to describe the various types of culture that societies embody. In this taxonomy, first worlds are pagan, second worlds are epitomized by the Christian West, and third worlds describe modernity. Trueman explains,
First and second worlds thus have a moral, and therefore cultural, stability because their foundations lie in something beyond themselves. To put it another way, they do not have to justify themselves on the basis of themselves. Third worlds, by way of stark contrast to the first and second worlds, do not root their cultures, their social orders, their moral imperatives in anything sacred. They do have to justify themselves, but they cannot do so on the basis of something sacred or transcendent. Instead, they have to do so on the basis of themselves. The inherent instability of this approach should be obvious. . . . Morality will thus tend toward a matter of simple consequentialist pragmatism, with the notion of what are and are not desirable outcomes being shaped by the distinct cultural pathologies of the day.[7]
Lewis foresaw this when he wrote, “When all that says ‘it is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains.”[8] And as Desmet notes, this produces a level of destabilization and anxiety that causes people to long “for an authoritarian institution that provides direction to take the burden of freedom and the associated insecurity off their shoulders.”[9] This is why today’s West is simultaneously marked by libertinism and legalism. The rise of authoritarianism (or what Rod Dreher describes as “soft totalitarianism”)[10] is yet another manifestation of how fallen man slavishly looks to law for his deliverance. This is what the apostle Paul is talking about in Galatians 4 when he speaks of being enslaved to the “elementary principles of the world,” a phrase that describes the legalistic religious principle that was active for Jews under the law of Moses and for Gentiles under the law of nature. In the words of John Fesko, the phrase “elementary principles of the world” in Galatians 4 refers to “the creation law that appears in both the Adamic and Mosaic covenants.”[11] Because of fallen man’s enslavement under the law, when a society makes feelings and desires preeminent, the inevitable result is not happiness, but tyranny. This further demonstrates that the good order for which human nature was designed cannot be restored by human effort but only by receiving salvation as a free gift through faith in Jesus Christ, in whom we are accepted as righteous in God’s sight and renewed in the whole man after the image of God.[12]
The Path of Rightly Ordered Desire
Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) expounds on the other path to happiness in his dialogue On the Happy Life, written soon after his conversion to Christianity.[13] In this dialogue, Augustine discusses the connection between desire and happiness by saying, “If [a man] wants good things and has them, he is happy; but if he wants bad things, he is unhappy, even if he has them.”[14] In other words, happiness cannot be separated from goodness, which is defined not by individual desires but by the objective moral order that God has inscribed in his world. What matters is not desire itself, but whether what we desire is good or bad.
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Sins must not be minimized or trivialized. Sin caused our world to fall into the depths of depravity and violence. Sin caused our precious and spotless savior to undergo the wrath of God. And sin, while promising pleasure, becomes the bane of intimacy between us and God. Knowing this, let us be vigilant in fighting, making war, and mortifying our flesh so that we can experience more joy, more intimacy, and more pleasure in knowing God.

There are no such things as little sins. Every minuscule action or inaction, every microscopic thought, feeling, or the lack thereof that is tainted with even the slightest trace of sin, is eternally damaging to our relationship with God. And yet, we live in a world constantly seeking to minimize what the Bible calls sin. I do it. You do it. We all do it. We all want to reduce the gravity of our sin to the point where it no longer stings the soul.
We take things that are offensive to God and then reframe them in language that is more palatable to our egos and consciences.
For instance, how many politicians or celebrities have you heard make the claim “I made a mistake” when it is discovered that they are cheating on their spouse? They do not call it sin or adultery; they reduce it to the level of accidental carelessness. The same word I would use to describe spilling a glass of milk or tripping on a street corner – a mistake – is the word used for intentionally planning a prolonged illicit relationship of sexual and emotional infidelity. These two actions are not the same!
This is why infidelity is cast as “my needs aren’t getting met” because the perpetrator wants to become the victim. Divorce has now been recategorized as “falling out of love,” “drifting apart,” or “we just weren’t a good fit” to avoid a sin that God hates. Digitally depicted sex acts, incest, rape, and grotesque forms of violence are all rebranded under the guise of entertainment and joyfully consumed without question. Homosexuality and pedophilia are called “love,” rebranded as normative expressions of affection and sexual behavior instead of the rank perversions they are. Abortion, which is the intentional slaughtering of innocent humans, is more politely called “rights” and “healthcare.”
Yet, we not only play these games with big sins but also do that slimy dance with the sins we consider to be smaller ones. For example, many treat lying as no longer “wrong” in an absolute sense but sometimes can be situationally advantageous. Gluttony can be called words like “comfort,” “foodie,” or “boredom.” Even sins of omission, where we do not do what God commanded, can be seen as “not my gifting” or “Not qualified,” which does not Biblically work. See Matthew 28:18-20 for an explicit command that is woefully ignored today.
I am convinced that this behavior is a universal human condition. Christian or not, believer or skeptic, we all long to maximize our ego and minimize our culpability before God.
How can I say this? Because I want to minimize my sins right along with you. I cannot speak for everyone, but I know intimately how the human condition works because I am very much human. I detest that I am a guilty sinner and would gladly scuttle past that point without a moment’s reflection if I could. To do that, I either have to deal with how sinful I am and be brutally honest about it, or I will do what we all do and minimize, trivialize, and placate our sins.
And maybe you will ask, why do we do this? I think it is evident in Scripture that when we chose rebellion against God, something intrinsic to our souls was broken so that all we now do and everything we crave has been tainted by the disease of sin. Instead of honesty, we weave clever ruses to picture ourselves as the good guy. We do not want to face the music that we have failed and are deeply flawed in ways we cannot fix. We do not want to admit that we would fail a million times if we were given a million chances with God. We avoid the obvious truth, so we can keep our sin outside of us instead of dealing with the reality that it is going on within that is affecting, effecting, and infecting us all.
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While not all Tamils share the same joy in the souls Ziegenbalg led to Christ, they are grateful for Ziegenbalg’s contribution to the development of their language and culture. In fact, even from a historical point of view, Ziegenbalg’s writings…are still one of the best sources for the study of South Indian history and traditions.

While William Carey’s role in the evangelization of India is undisputed, few remember a two-men team who preceded him by 88 years. In reality, the German Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau, who landed in the Indian region of Tranquebar in 1706, can be considered the first Protestant missionaries to India. Their endeavor is known as the Tranquebar Mission or the Danish-Halle Mission (since it was sponsored by the Danish king and the students and faculty of Halle University – especially theologian, A. H. Francke).
A Tamil Bible
Born in 1682 and 1676 respectively, Ziegenbalg and Plütschau were both Halle graduates– both known for their piety, devotion to the Scriptures, sacrificial love, and interest in education. Of the two, Ziegelbalg was the most linguistically talented. Within six months of his arrival at Tranquebar, he was able to read, write, and speak Tamil, a local language that was particularly difficult for Europeans to master.
In 1708, being fluent, he began translating the New Testament, finishing his first draft in two and a half years – an impressive record, if we consider he also fulfilled his pastoral and evangelical duties while troubled by ill health. He also translated Luther’s Catechism and several hymns and prayers, and started the Old Testament, going as far as the book of Ruth.
Far from being content with a wooden translation, Ziegelbalg spent time studying the nuances of the Tamil language as they appeared in their cultural context. He did so through conversations and through the study of Tamil classical literature, both on his own and in local schools.
He later described his cultural discoveries in two long ethnological treatises which became popular in Europe. These volumes, together with a Tamil grammar book for future missionaries, helped to launch the study and appreciation of Oriental languages and cultures in Germany and have been influential in dispelling the negative conceptions many Europeans had fostered about India.
Although he had brought his own printing press, he had to request the presence of two Dutch blacksmiths to create Tamil character molds. There was also a scarcity of paper. Most Tamil classics were written on palm leaves. He solved this problem by setting up a paper manufactory.
To Bring Many to Salvation
As most missionaries, he had times of discouragement. “If we consider the success of this Mission from its first beginning; it hath not yet indeed been answerable to our desires: the iniquity of the times, fewness of the laborers, the perverse lives of some Christians among us, the rudeness of the pagans, the dignity of the employment itself and our own insufficiency for it, the want still of more necessary helps, together with other impediments, have been the cause why this work has hitherto made no greater advances,”[1] he wrote, in Latin, in 1716 – at the end of a two-year visit to Europe, where he got married.
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