Why Sacrificing Your Comfort Could Lead to True Happiness

There once was a man who was told by his God to sacrifice his son, his only son whom he loved. The man knew that this command was not in line with what he understood of his God.

As he contemplated who his God was, he chose to obey. It was not until much later that he realized his God didn’t say, “Go and kill your son right now.” Instead, He said, “Go on a journey, three days away, and there, on a mountain I will show you, there you will sacrifice him.”

This man may not have wondered why he wasn’t told to kill his only son immediately instead of after a three-day postponement, but one thing he did understand completely: he had plenty of time to think as they went on this quest. And that’s the point — or one of the points — of this story.

It would have been easy, or as easy as it could be, to kill his most precious love in a spur-of-the-moment act. But having three days to think about it, to look at his reason for living and prepare to kill it — that was beyond hard. It was torture.

When the time came to sacrifice his son, the father bound his only son and placed him on the altar.

The son, while confused, obeyed his dad.

As the knife was about to plunge into his son’s heart, God spoke and said, “Don’t harm a hair on the boy. Now I know you love me.”

A ram, tangled in a bush a short way off, became the sacrifice instead.

What’s the lesson of this famous story found in the Hebrew Bible?

The lesson isn’t about the great faith that Abraham, the father in the story, showed to his God. The real lesson is that we all worship something, and we all have faith that what we worship will make us happy. The true lesson is that until we’re willing to sacrifice what we think is the key to our happiness or let go of what means the most to us in this life, it’s hard to get the life we truly want — a life worth living.

Why would I say that you need to let go of what matters most in your life if you really want to be happy and have a life worth living? The answer is simple: we’re designed to worship and have faith in something, but what we worship and have faith in is usually what keeps us from being truly happy and living a life where we can’t wait to get out of bed every morning.

What do we worship?

What we worship and have faith in is what we hang our proverbial hat on to make us feel like a somebody — to make us feel loved, safe, in control, and worthy of respect and significance.

We find meaning, then faith, and finally worship at the altar of our beauty, our intellect, our job, our family, or our charisma. But in doing so, we end up worshiping and having faith in a false god.

Here’s the problem with gods and saviors — all gods die hard, even pseudo-saviors and gods.

Until you can sacrifice at the altar whatever you have made your pseudo-savior, it’s impossible to be truly happy.

I don’t mean you won’t have moments of levity or times when you think, “I finally made it,” or moments when you say, “The world really likes me, and I really like myself.”

But those feelings are like a drug — they won’t last; they can’t last.

You’re happy, but you’re not joyful.

The sin of our age is living as if nothing in the universe is as consequential, significant, and just plain bigger than our own needs. We continually betray our true selves to pursue a false happiness — a happiness we’ve been taught to worship.

The word “sin” means missing the mark, and sin never satisfies. What I’m saying is that missing the mark never satisfies. Maybe it feels like it does for a few seconds or a few minutes or, if you’re lucky, a few years, but eventually, sadness creeps back in. It can’t help but creep back in because it never filled the void that was there.

So we continue to worship our pseudo-savior; it makes us feel good, it’s fun, and sometimes, other people end up worshiping us because of whatever skill or talent we worship ourselves for.

We learn that as long as we are devoted to this god, we will feel okay. This god becomes our identity.

The problem with worshiping a false god — whether it’s your addiction or your identity — is that it’s not the real you. Because it’s not the real you, this false god will eventually let you down and cause pain.

When that happens, we are forced to return to our original subconscious question: What do I need to feel okay?

The answer we come up with is to worship our false god even harder, hoping to wake it up so that it will serve us the way it did before. Or we find a new god to worship, one that will make us feel okay once again.

Then, we continually wonder why we’re not happy, why we’re addicted, or why we can’t find joy in a rainbow or laugh anymore.

So, if you’re unhappy, depressed, anxious, stuck in a rut, or just thinking there’s got to be more to life than this, instead of worshiping your false god, maybe start asking: What am I worshiping, and why am I worshiping something that I can lose and that will eventually let me down?