When you eat of the labor of your hands,
You shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.
The Psalmist (Ps. 128:2)

Here is God’s idea of a happy meal and it’s a much healthier happiness than the usual box of carbs and sugar. Although it doesn’t include a plastic pink mermaid, it has much deeper and longer-lasting pleasures. So what makes such plain fare taste so good?

God has given work: The godly woman sits down at the meal table and thanks God for occupying her hands, for giving her work, and the ability to do it.

God has given work that pays: The working man rejoices that he is not a slave and that his daily labor results in daily pay.

God has given food to purchase: What use is money if the store shelves are empty? The believer knows there are places where shortages are common and therefore sees rows of varied breads as the gift of God.

God has given efficient means to cook it: He doesn’t need to hunt for wood, start a fire, and wait for hours. He turns on the electricity or pops something into the microwave and a few beeps later, a tasty meal is ready.

God has given the appetite for it: Anyone who’s spent even a few days without an appetite will tell you what a misery it is. You have to eat but you can’t eat. The godly woman therefore rejoices for every hunger-pang.

God has given a body that can process and use it: When you pop a potato in your mouth, multiple internal factories start whirring to receive and process the food for the good of our body.

God strengthens for the next day of labor: ”It shall be well with you.” Future tense because food not only refreshes from the toils of today but strengthens for tomorrow’s tasks too.

God gives good company: Have a read of the whole Psalm to appreciate the domestic harmony at this dinner table. No home alone for this man. His table is adorned with a loving wife and lively children.

God gives a taste of heaven: As heaven is often portrayed as banquet, every happy meal is a little foretaste of a happy heaven, with the whole person being satisfied and nourished. That’s a happy meal that will never end,

God gives all this to the undeserving: Knowing that all he deserves is eternal hunger and eternal thirst in eternal misery in eternal hell, the Christian tastes mercy in every morsel, grace in every glass, happiness in every hoagie. He tastes and sees that God is good, who trusts in Him is blessed.

When you eat of the labor of your hands,
You shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.
The Psalmist (Ps. 128:2)

What Victoria Osteen Got Right
Did I just write that? Yes, because although she got a lot wrong, she said some right and important things too. Here’s what she said:

I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God–I mean, that’s one way to look at it–we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we are happy. . . . That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. . . .

So, I want you to know this morning — Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. . . . When you come to church, when you worship him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?

So what’s wrong and what’s right about this?

She was wrong in saying that when we obey or worship God “we are not doing it for God.” That’s so obviously unbiblical and ridiculously false. If she had inserted one extra word and said “we are not doing it only for God,” I doubt any of us would be thinking and writing about her. (And in her defense, she did go on to slightly qualify “we’re not doing it for God” by saying “I mean, that’s one way to look at it.”)

She was also wrong in her prioritizing of human happiness. She believes that you come to church worship for your own happiness first of all, which subsequently makes God happy. No, no, no. We come to church to glorify God, to make Him happy, as it were, which subsequently makes us happy.

But she was right in two important points. First, she was right in that obedience and worship do benefit and bless us. They do make us happy and they were meant to. Just this morning I was reading Psalm 135v5 which says:

Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good;
Sing praises to His name, for it is pleasant.

Charles Spurgeon comments on the second line of this verse:

Sing praises unto his name, for it is pleasant. The adjective may apply to the singing and to the name—they are both pleasant. The vocal expression of praise by sacred song is one of our greatest delights. We were created for this purpose, and hence it is a joy to us. It is a charming duty to praise the lovely name of our God. All pleasure is to be found in the joyful worship of Jehovah; all joys are in his sacred name as perfumes lie slumbering in a garden of flowers. The mind expands, the soul is lifted up, the heart warms, the whole being is filled with delight when we are engaged in singing the high praises of our Father, Redeemer, Comforter. When in any occupation goodness and pleasure unite, we do well to follow it up without stint: yet it is to be feared that few of us sing to the Lord at all in proportion as we talk to men.

Second, she was right to say that God wants us to be happy and that God is happy when we are happy, “that’s the thing that gives him greatest joy.”

I’m going to come back to this second point shortly, because a lot of the Reformers and Puritans actually agree with Victoria Osteen here and were not as reluctant as we often are to use the word “happy” or “happiness” to describe God or the Christian’s experience.

What Al Mohler Got Wrong
Did I just write that?

Yes, because although 90% of his article hit the target, he overshot the mark in a couple of important areas.

First, the title: “Mere happiness cannot bear the weight of the Gospel.” I get the point he’s trying to make but happiness per se is no trifling triviality. The adjective “mere” does not belong in the same company as “happiness.” It’s like saying “mere Everest” or the “mere Atlantic.” There’s nothing “mere” about either of these and there’s nothing “mere” about happiness.

Together with four research assistants I’ve spent the summer researching what the Reformed tradition has said about happiness – beginning with Calvin and Luther, through the Puritans, up to the Princeton era of Charles Hodge and Archibald Alexander.

It’s amazing how much they spoke and wrote about happiness (I’ve got over a thousand references), how they prioritized happiness for God and us, and how they gave many theological and practical helps to happiness. If they’d seen Dr. Mohler’s headline, they would have choked on their oatmeal and exploded, “Mere happiness? Mere happiness? Happiness is not “mere.” It’s massive and it’s massive to God.”

Many of them, like Victoria Osteen, also believed that God is happy, made us to be happy, and is most happy when we are happy. Sure, they wouldn’t have recognized the Osteen version of happiness, but neither would they have recognized the Mohler diminishing of happiness.

Second, they also would take issue with Dr. Mohler’s attempt to distinguish between happiness and joy. He wrote:

The divine-human relationship is just turned upside down, and God’s greatest desire is said to be our happiness. But what is happiness? It is a word that cannot bear much weight. As writers from C. S. Lewis to the Apostle Paul have made clear, happiness is no substitute for joy. Happiness, in the smiling version assured in the Age of Osteen doesn’t last, cannot satisfy, and often is not even real.

In response, how about this quote from Archibald Alexander that says God is a happiness promoter:

God is good. His goodness is manifest in every work of his wisdom, for he has so continued and arranged all things in the best manner, to promote the happiness of his creatures, according to their nature and capacity.

Or this from Jeremiah Burroughs where he “channels” Victoria Osteen in the last line:

God is the only source of real happiness. He does not need anything or anyone to make him happy: even before he made the world, the three persons of the Trinity were completely happy with each other. What God does for Christians is to make them as happy as he is.

Or what about this brief selection from the ultra-dour John Calvin:

If it is the very summit of happiness to enjoy the presence of God, is it not miserable to lack it?

It is, indeed…our only true happiness, to be received into God’s favor, so that we may be really united to him in Christ.

But the Spirit of God promises a happy life to none except to the meek, and those who endure evils; and we cannot be happy except God prospers our ways; and it is the good and the benevolent, and not the cruel and inhuman, that he will favor.

The beginning of our happiness is when God receives us into favor; so the more he confirms his love in our hearts, the richer blessing he confers on us, so that we become happy and prosperous in all things.

God is said to bless us, when he crowns our undertakings with success, and, in the exercise of his goodness, bestows upon us happiness and prosperity; and the reason is, that our enjoyments depend entirely upon his pleasure.

I could go on and on (and one day I will), but for further proof of the Reformed Traditions’ positive focus on happiness let me direct you to the stunningly beautiful first chapter of Dane Ortlund’s new book Jonathan Edwards on the Christian Life.

Edwards speaks of divine beauty not only in terms of holiness but also in terms of happiness. I call this striking because our instinct even as believers is to set holiness and happiness over against one another. For Edwards, it is both or neither. The two rise and fall together.

There’s one sermon in which Edwards said: “It is a thing truly happifying to the soul of men to see God.” And later on he refers to the “beatific, happifying sight of God.”

Ortlund concludes:

So God communicates to his people of his own happiness. They are partakers of that infinite fountain of joy and blessedness by which he himself is happy. God is infinitely happy in himself, and he gives his people to be happy in Him.

Reactionary or Reformed Theology
Whenever serious error arises, like the Osteens’ Prosperity Gospel message, we’re always at risk of framing our theology in opposition to the error rather than by taking it straight from the Bible. Reformed Theology re-forms the biblical message from the Bible; Reactionary Theology forms theology in opposition to an error. In doing so – whether it’s in reaction to secular psychology, moralistic preaching, legalism, antinomianism, or the prosperity gospel – we run the real risk of going too far the other way and losing biblical vocabulary and concepts.

I don’t want the Osteens’ happiness. But neither do I want to lose true biblical happiness. I steadfastly refuse to let the Osteens’ steal this beautiful biblical word from me or the Church. Instead, let’s reclaim it and fill it with biblical ballast. By doing so we can surely out-happify the Osteens. And yes, that kind of happiness will pass the Mosul test.

UPDATE: In response to a commenter looking for my definition of happiness, here are a few previous posts I’ve written on the subject.

40 Joys Through Jesus

The Happiest People in the World

What is Christian Happiness?

Why is happiness such hard work?

A Very Different and Unexpected Happiness

When asked if “life for our children’s generation will be better than it has been for us,” fully 76 percent said they do not have such confidence. Only 21 percent did. That was the worst ever recorded in the poll; in 2001, 49 percent were confident and 43 percent not.

And it’s not confined to one group either. The rich are as down as the poor, women are as down as men, blacks are as down as whites. Young people are only slightly less depressed than the old. Democrats are marginally happier than grumpy Republicans. Dana Milbank concludes:

The gloom goes beyond wealth, gender, race, region, age and ideology. This fractious nation is united by one thing: lost faith in the United States.

Even with the economy recovering, albeit slowly, the pessimism endures. Numerous pundits have weighed in with their analysis. Dana Milbank puts it down partly to income inequality (which I think is a euphemism for envy), but mainly to a complete breakdown of people’s faith in the political system to do anything constructive about the problems facing society.

The New York Mag blames the torrent of bad news the media is feeding us 24/7 producing a widespread sense that the world is falling apart.

The Wall Street Journal points to five factors:

1. We are in lousy health with an epidemic of obesity.
2. Stress due to health problems or overwhelming responsibilities.
3. The lifestyles of the rich and famous are making us jealous.
4. Our wages are stagnant
5. We work too much, far more than most other nations.

So, any hope of smiley faces in the midst of so much doom and gloom?

Redefined Happiness
There are three things that have to change if we are to regain our smiles. First, we need to re-define happiness. As I’ve written elsewhere, the founding fathers of America had a very different view of happiness to most people today.

In his 2005 lecture at the National Conference on Citizenship, US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said that for the framers of the Declaration of Independence, “Happiness meant that feeling of self-worth and dignity you acquire by contributing to your community and to its civic life.”

That’s so different to the kind of temporary and shallow pleasure-based view of happiness that’s so widespread today.

Active Happiness
Second, it’s going to take hard work. Happiness rarely lands on our plates, dropped there by the government, our boss, or God. No, happiness is a “pursuit,” meaning it requires hard work - hard mental work, hard physical work, hard spiritual work.

If you look at the majority of the causes highlighted by the analysts, you’ll see that they blame external factors for our unhappiness. But if my happiness is dependent on events outside my control, then there’s nothing I can do about my emotional state. I just become a passive fatalist. What will be will be.

But if I’m told that I’m responsible for pursuing happiness even in the midst of so many storm clouds out there, that gets me motivated and active.

Spiritual Happiness
Christians have a big opportunity here to shine in the midst of the darkness. And we can do that not just with the light of biblical knowledge but with the light of biblical joy – which will get us a better hearing for biblical truth. We need to show that happiness, true spiritual happiness, can be enjoyed independently of uncontrollable events, trends, and changes in the world and in our personal lives.

Remember, Philippians, the Epistle of joy, was written from a prison. And so much of that joy was rooted in contentment (Phil. 4:11), which is in incredibly short supply judging by these media reports.

Happy Theology
But how, how, how do we do it? The same way as Paul did it; with happy theology. Consider this small sample of happy truths, truths that are true regardless of whats going on in our lives and our world:

• We love and are loved by the one true and living God.
• We know Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
• Our sins are forgiven.
• We are justified and adopted into God’s world-wide and heaven-wide family.
• Everything is working together for our good.
• The Holy Spirit is sanctifying and empowering us.
• We have all the promises of God.
• Jesus has prepared a place for us in heaven and will welcome us there.

What truths have you found keep your spirits up in this depressing world?

These qualifications out of the way, what is “the greatest failing of the American church today?” Greg Forster says it’s “the failure of the American church to affirm the goodness of civilizational life” (p. 89). Quite a surprising claim isn’t it?

The context for this remarkable assertion is Greg’s passion for sound cultural engagement which, he says, integrates two things:

First, we must begin with affirmation of the God-given goodness of civilizational activity. Second, the special transformation of our hearts by the Spirit must flow into our civilizational activity, so that we stand against all that is sinful and wrong in the world and pursue a more excellent way. We must integrate these two commissions into a single, unified civilizational life that expresses the joy of God. (88)

Affirmation of our civilization is first and fundamental “for the simple reason that creation comes before fall…Christians say good is primary and evil is parasitic.” Thus Greg concludes, “when we approach civilization, we must always be careful to keep the affirmation of the good in the primary position and let transformation of the bad follow.”

Do you see why I said yesterday that this might make some VanTillians’ hair fall out? Van Til and his followers, (including some of them in the nouthetic/biblical counseling field) start out with antithesis rather than affirmation. They begin by highlighting the evil in the world, the fallenness in the world, the enmity in the world. The world is bad, bad, bad, etc. Slash and burn, fight and critique, expose and ridicule, and so on.

Then, when they’ve wasted the field and strangled every last breath out of any “worldly” thing or idea, they quietly creep back onto the battlefield and start breathing some life back into the massacred corpses via the doctrine of common grace. ANTITHESIS is upfront in big, bold, capital letters. Affirmation is whispered in small (and often contradictory) print (that hopefully no one notices).

It’s always struck me as an extremely strange way to try and win an argument or win people over to your side.

Affirmation First
Greg Forster insists that, without affirming everything or toning down our opposition to things that are sinful, we should should put AFFIRMATION up front in big, bold capital letters, and that prioritizing it rather than antithesis “will actually help us bear witness more powerfully against sin, strengthening and empowering our transformative impact.” He present five reasons for this (p. 89):

1. Within a framework of affirmation for the good our opposition to the bad will be more accurate. I agree with Greg that when we pretend that evil is primary when it’s not, we will end up saying things that are not true, the world will notice, and we’ll lose credibility.

2. Affirmation of the good will also make our opposition to the bad more meaningful. You have to start with the good to help people feel the badness of evil.

3. It will make our opposition more graceful. This is what’s baffled me most about Van Tillian apologetics and the way it’s been applied in some nouthetic/biblical counseling. I would have thought that counselors of all people would grasp the basic human psychology of keeping opposition within a framework of affirmation, indicating a desire to build up our neighbours rather than look down and tear down.

4. It will allow us to criticize aspects of our civilization as members of it, rather than as outsiders. “If we don’t place ourselves within American civilization before we criticize it, we’re just busybodies. sticking our noses into other people’s societies.”

5. It will make our opposition more effective. #1-4 will make our opposition more accurate, meaningful, graceful, integral, and therefore more effective in pushing back evil.

A Great Failure (But Not The Greatest Failure)
I don’t agree with Greg that “the failure of the American church to affirm the goodness of civilizational life is our greatest failing today.” That’s overstating a good case. I do agree with him that it’s a great failure, even a very great failure. And I also agree with him on the need to prioritize affirmation for all five reasons that he gives.

That’s going to give many of us painful whiplash, because we’ve been barreling down the antithesis road for so long. But where’s it got us? And where’s it taking us? Isn’t it worth at least considering if we’ve got this wrong and if it’s worth trying another road or direction?

Joy For The World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It by Greg Forster.

But no longer, according to a special survey commissioned for The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute and headlined in an article Americans Are No Longer Optimists:

• Nearly two-thirds of Americans—65 percent—question whether America will be on the right track in 10 years.
• Most doubt whether American will be a “land of opportunity” in 10 years (33 percent say yes, 42 percent say no, and 24 percent say they don’t know).
• The American Dream seems to be fading with seven in ten Americans cynical about whether working hard and playing by the rules will bring success in the future.
• While 56 percent of parents believe college will be increasingly important in the coming years, less than one third—29 percent—believe they will be able to afford to pay for their children to go.
• Only three in 10 Americans now believe our global standing will be rising in 10 years; 43 percent think it will be declining.
• 64 percent of parents believe it will be difficult for their children to find good jobs in 10 years.
• Only African Americans and Hispanics believe America is on the right track and will remain a land of opportunity.
• Women are even more pessimistic than men.

Those who commissioned the poll conclude: “All we can say, then, is that Americans are full of uncertainty and pessimism about the next 10 years.”

Gospel Potential
How do you react when you read such statistics? Do you think “We’re doomed, we’re doomed, we’re all doomed!”

Or do you think, “What an opportunity for the church of Christ and the Gospel of grace!”

I hope the latter. There’s such an opening here for the good news, so wide that it’s just about an open goal without a goalkeeper. It’s like a 21st century version of Ecclesiastes.

If there’s any group of people that can offer a wonderful counter-cultural message surely it’s Christians who can passionately and compassionately communicate the Gospel of grace in all its fullness. Let’s stop moaning and groaning with the rest of the culture, and tell our despairing world about all that Jesus offers:

• Truth in a world full of lies
• Peace in a world full of war
• Love in a world full of hate
• Life in a world full of death
• Forgiveness in a world full of vengeance
• Power in a world full of weakness
• Certainty in a world full of confusion
• Purpose in a world full of pointlessness
• Beauty in a world full of ugliness
• Hope in a world full of despair
• Family in a world full of loneliness
• Guidance in a world full of mazes
• Goodness in a world full of badness
• Relationship in a world full of alientation
• God in a world full of the Devil
• Salvation in a world full of sin
• An unshakeable Kingdom in a world of crumbling empires
• A perfect leader in a world full of failed leadership
• And, yes, optimism in a world full of pessimism.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I asked my mother if she had been happy as a parent. This godly woman who had raised six children and fostered more than 40 over a nearly 50-year span shrugged, saying “What does happiness have to do with it?”

Through interviews with myself, and Andrew Hess of Focus on the Family, Sarah has gathered together “some ways parents can put happiness into its proper prospective in relation to child rearing and the family.” Her main points are:

• Communicate joy
• Consistently discipline
• Guard innocence
• Embrace sadness
• Eschew materialism
• Curtail media
• Focus on group happiness
• Ride the highs, and lows, of parenting
• Seek gratitude

She concludes:

Our calling as parents doesn’t mean we have to feel happy all the time. Emotions like happiness ebb and flow throughout our lives. We would do well to remember that ourselves and to teach our children that happiness isn’t only a joyful feeling—it’s also a deliberate choice. We can choose to view our circumstances in a positive, rather than negative, light. This doesn’t make us Pollyannas, but gives us a better foundation on which to handle life’s ups and downs.

Choose this day to be happy in your parenting, despite the not-so-great times and the downright dreadful ones. You’ll find much joy amid the sorrow, much pleasure amid the pain, and much happiness amid the contentment.

Read the whole article here.

If not, the United Nations Happiness Police are on your case. Don’t you know that today is the UN International Day of Happiness.

In July 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a groundbreaking resolution which recognized happiness as a “fundamental human goal” and called for “a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes… happiness and well-being of all peoples.”

In April 2012 the first ever UN conference on Happiness took place in New York and in July 2012 the UN General Assembly adopted a further resolution which decreed that the International Day of Happiness was to be observed every year on 20 March.

Well, now you know. So be happy. Now!

How?

It’s easy. Only 50 action steps!

Seriously though, many of these steps reflect Christian ethics which we would expect to make a positive difference to people’s lives.

However, disconnected from the Christ of the ethics, they are unsustainable and can only have a limited and temporary impact. In fact, apart from Christ’s power, I cannot imagine even attempting to live up to this manifesto. 50 steps! That more frightening than Sinai.

But if we have experienced Christ’s free and full pardon for all our missed steps, missteps, and no-steps, we have a real basis for lasting and even everlasting joy. Christian happiness is not based on doing the law but upon believing the Gospel; not upon any of our daily steps but upon 33 years of Christ’s steps.

So, should Christians support the International Day of Happiness?

I’d still say , “Yes.”

Even when separated from the Gospel?

Yes again.

Surely every Christian wants their friends and family to be happy. Indeed, we wish the whole world was a happier place. We’re happy when people take steps to make their own lives happier and the lives of others, even if it is separated from the Gospel.

The alternative position is that we want everyone to get really sad and miserable because then they’ll turn to the Gospel! Rarely happens.

Better for Christians to welcome any legitimate attempt to promote human happiness. But not to stop there. Instead to say to happiness-hunters, “Hey, why eat crumbs when you can have a feast? Why pursue happiness mandated by the UN and refuse the happiness offered by God? Why settle for a day of happiness when you can have eternal happiness?”

One pastor I know when asked on a plane, “What do you do?” says, “I make people eternally happy!” Usually gets the conversation going.

Why not start some “real happiness” conversations today?

His “pen-pals” don’t just disagree with him. They hate him. He says he wouldn’t mind people saying he’s wrong, or even ridiculing him, but it’s the rage he was unprepared for. He tries to explain this inexplicable hostility:

1. The online world of comments and commentary does skew negative.

2. People who agree and support his view are less likely to express that compared with those who oppose it; agreement is more passive whereas anger is more active.

3. It contradicts what many people believe and experience. “Positive views on the present are seen as a slap in the face by people who have negative experiences, which, according to some polls, is the majority of Americans.” As an aside Karrabel notes:

4. Americans of the past few years are less positive about the future than they have been at any point since the 1970s.

5. The losers in any changing economy are going to be more vocal that those who have made gains.

If it bleeds, it leads
I’d add a couple more reasons. First is that bad news sells better than good news. “If it bleeds, it leads” is the mantra of so much of our media. As Dr. Bradley Wright explains in Upside: Surprising Good News about the State of our World:

The media sells negative worldviews. It’s not that reporters, writers, and editors are pessimistic people; rather, they have a strong incentive to tell us about the fearful, scary, and dangerous happenings in our world. The media is a business, and it succeeds by attracting viewers and readers. With hundreds of television channels and even more online news sources, how can they do this? One way is to offer something that is truly frightening. If watching a story can save us from some imminent danger, then maybe we’ll stop channel surfing long enough to watch it. If reading a report can protect us from a health scare, maybe we’ll pick the magazine off the rack. Sensationalism and fear sells—this is a fact of life that won’t change anytime soon. (Upside, 36)

We then get so used to the daily diet of disaster, decline, destruction, and death, that when someone tries to feed us something good and healthy, we often choke on it.

Second, there’s our fallen human nature which is warped towards the darkness (John 3:19). Gretchen Rubin calls this our “negativity bias”:

Our reactions to bad events are faster, stronger, and stickier than our reactions to good events. In fact, in practically every language, there are more concepts to describe negative emotions than positive emotions… It takes at least five positive marital actions to offset one critical or destructive action (The Happiness Project, 48).

Swallowed and Succumbed
With a few happy exceptions, Christians in general have also swallowed our culture’s negative narrative and have succumbed to our innate negativity bias. We seem to be addicted to bad and sad news, and have become so used to feeding on it that we don’t even realize it. In fact, in some circles, happiness has almost become synonymous with heresy. “He’s happy? To the stake!”

How then to recover a more balanced view? First, as Karrabel suggests, without closing our eyes to faults and failings, we must stop focusing relentlessly on what isn’t working:

Every society must find some balance between addressing real shortcomings and building on real strengths. The United States in particular oscillates between excessive self-congratulation (“the indispensable nation,” “the freest nation on Earth”) and extreme self-criticism.

Christians have to work harder at feeding upon (and feeding to each other) the good news that God is filling the world with.

Second, we have to read our Bibles and change the narrative from one of pessimism to one of optimism. No, we don’t believe in the inevitability of evolutionary progress. But we do believe in a sovereign and good God though, who makes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on the good and the evil, and whose tender mercies are over all His works. We do believe in God’s common grace witnessing to Him and making hearts glad (Acts 14:17). Above all, we believe in the power of the Gospel, way more than in the power of the American Presidency, to change our lives and to change our world.

If we’re going to be hated, let’s be hated for being Christian optimists.

But the vast majority of that 99% are looking for happiness in the wrong places.

Ask them what they think would make them happy and most will reply: more money, more friends, more success, more health, more fame, more beauty, more muscles, etc.

Scientists of happiness, (yes, there are such beings) have discovered that improvements in life circumstances or situations only accounts for about 10% of our happiness.  In other words, for all the effort people are putting into becoming more wealthy, healthy, popular, muscular, etc., the emotional return on the investment is miniscule.   These positive events do create happiness, but it’s minimal and brief.

Baseline Happiness
These scientists (often called positive psychologists) have also found that each of us has a baseline happiness that is difficult to change. Just like we all have a baseline weight that we tend to return to regardless of our efforts at dieting or muscle-building, so our parents have bequeathed us a happiness set point in our genes that we tend to return to no matter how many setbacks or triumphs we experience. Research has indicated that our genes explain about 50% of our happiness or lack of it.

Now if you can count, you’re beginning to get worried. If happiness is 10% life circumstances plus 50% genes, that leaves only 40% to work with.

The good news is that that is still a relatively large number. No, it’s not 90%, but neither is it 5%. There’s still quite a lot of potential, a lot that’s in our power to change, in this 40%. And what makes up that 40%?

Scientists tell us that’s our daily actions and attitudes – what we do and how we think. In The How of Happiness Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky argues:

Thus the key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e., seeking wealth or attractiveness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but in our daily intentional activities [22].

All helpful analysis up to this point, nothing that Christians need disagree with. Where we may begin to differ is in the actual thoughts and actions that scientists say make people happy. But even there, as we’ll see tomorrow, there are some quite surprising overlaps.

Over at the Harvard Business Review, Simon Wong argues for more toilet cleaners than internships, and pleads with parents not to make every decision with a view to their childrens’ future careers.

Like many parents, I am troubled by the growing fixation with careers. We seem to be putting young people on the career treadmill at an earlier and earlier age. Choosing extracurricular activities, summer jobs, and even preschool is increasingly undertaken with a calculating eye towards securing career success.

Wong did have one professional internship but says that he learned so much more working in a restaurant, cleaning windows, and being a busboy. These jobs may not have helped his career, but they laid the broad foundation for a successful life. He learned how to interact with a diverse range of people, how to relate to difficult superiors, and the importance of treating the lowest employee with respect. He concludes:

Perhaps the most important life lesson from that period — though not always remembered — was that it didn’t take much for me to be happy.

Potato Peeling and Pot Scrubbing
I’m in complete agreement with Wong. It jives with my own experience of being a milk delivery boy at age 14, bread delivery (using a shopping cart!) from age 15-16, and potato peeler/pot washer for two summers in a hotel.

I left High School one year early to work for an insurance company, where I earned the princely sum of $75 a week for 35 hours work.

After 5-6 years of climbing the slippery ladder in the life assurance, pension, and investment industry, I was converted to Christ and called to the ministry. That meant leaving a now well-paid and enjoyable job, and, at age 22, returning to summer and part-time jobs while I went to university and seminary for six years. These jobs included being a delivery driver, a mailman, and then a goods-lift operator (I still bear the scars).

Irrelevant but invaluable
None of these jobs seem to have any relevance to my present calling, and yet I learned more valuable life lessons in them than in any university or seminary. I now look back with much joy at all God taught me in them.

So, whether you are scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets, carrying suitcases, changing oil, or in a difficult ministry position, be encouraged that our sovereign God has you in the right class in His University, and use the opportunity to scoop up all the credits you can in these unpopular yet priceless courses.