Christ Equals Happiness: The downward spiral of belief.

I recently stumbled on a short treatise by a Christian blogger on the subject of happiness. (READ IT HERE.) Nancy Ann begins by telling us about her time in college:

When I was in college, I became aware of just how unhappy I was. I saw no real reason to be unhappy: I was healthy, I had friends, I had parents who loved me, I had food enough and clothing and shelter. But I found that none of these things satisfied me. Life seemed futile and meaningless, and so it was.

I began asking others if they were happy, deep-down happy, but I always got the same negative response. Pretty much universal unhappiness out there in the world.

Certainly there's some merit to the observation that pretty much everyone is unhappy on some level. Some people take it better than others, of course. Some people accept the fact that unhappiness happens in life, and try to make the best of it, knowing there will be ups and downs.

Some people are not content with this state of affairs, however. So it was with Nancy Ann.

Now I can look back on that time knowing that happiness for creatures is impossible apart from a restored relationship with the Creator. Those apart from Christ will always try to find happiness in all the worst places. It is only found in Christ, and what a relief unspeakable it was for me to find that in Him!

Nancy's belief is very common in evangelical Christian culture. It's one of the best selling points for salvation, in the ancient tradition of palm reading, astrology and Tarot. Because unhappiness -- some degree of unhappiness -- is absolutely ubiquitous in humans, it's impossible for a preacher to stand in front of a congregation and NOT score a hit when he speaks directly to audience members who are feeling unhappy.

Nancy goes on to describe the most powerful tool for trapping new converts in a downward spiral of unhappiness and subservience to the Church.

But even Christians can sometimes find themselves unhappy, which is antithetical to our calling in Christ. Christians can sin and get bogged down and distracted. But we know the way back and the door is always open.

This is far more powerful than it seems at first glance. This is the unequivocal belief that IF I am unhappy, it is my fault for not being a good enough Christian. I am indulging in sin. I am distracted from God's Holy Mission. I haven't been going to church. I haven't been knocking on doors handing out tracts. Whatever it is that I'm not doing, that's why I'm unhappy. (And the list of Biblical demands on believers is so daunting that nobody could ever hope to accomplish a tenth of them with any consistency.)

Thus begins a downward spiral: The True Believer feels unhappiness, which leads to feelings of guilt for not being a good enough Christian. She promises Jesus that she will try harder in the future. The future comes, and she still feels twinges of unhappiness. Rinse, wash, repeat, until the fanatic obsession with eliminating unhappiness has taken over, and created a foundation of unhappiness upon which all else rests.

In the real world of evidence, science, and psychology, we recognize that both happiness and unhappiness are intrinsic to every human. Into each life, some rain must indeed fall. Some of us have more rain than sunshine, and that too is expected. Some of us handle disappointment better than others. The whole point of psychotherapy for unhappy people is not to eliminate unhappiness, but to learn how to incorporate it into a healthy, mature understanding of life's realities.

Of course, not all believers spiral into unhappiness. Many polls indicate that religious adherence does contribute in at least some ways to increased happiness. (Whether this is a result of the religion itself or social rewards from group membership is the subject of intense debate.) Even so, if we can find believers who are in fact happier than when they were non-believers, we're still discussing the way that both believers and non-believers deal with their unhappiness.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. -- George Bernard Shaw

Our conception of reality shapes the way we feel about negative circumstances. If something bad happens to me, but I feel like it's a transient inconvenience, I'm likely to shrug it off -- which means I am more happy than I would have been if I'd focused on it, obsessed, and believed there was no hope of happiness in the future. Belief in a better future can actually change unhappiness into happiness. It seems certain that some Christians use their belief in God's plan for their lives as a panacea anytime they feel unhappy, and it's equally certain that they are happier for it.

But in the end, we are still talking about Christians who are living with the delusion that unhappiness is something they could avoid completely. This is at best immature and unrealistic. The scientific perspective is far more complex. There are strong indications, in fact, that pursuit of happiness as a goal unto itself is one of the fastest paths to unhappiness. Being unhappy is actually one of the most powerful motivators for positive change in the human condition. It is the prime mover behind human innovation, invention, and the quest for improvement.

Like so many Christian doctrines, the belief in eliminating unhappiness is a red herring. It is at odds with observed reality. It is potentially harmful, and even in the cases when it promotes increased feelings of well-being, it can be seen as a belief system which stifles the main drive for human betterment.