"Every man, whatsoever his condition, desires to be happy." ~ St. Augustine
A few years ago one of my dear friends, Sheila Walsh, and I were invited to walk the red carpet for the premiere of another friend’s movie. Don’t picture a typical red carpet premiere. Imagine a burgundy indoor/outdoor polypropylene floor covering at a multiplex in the suburbs next to several fast-food restaurants. Suffice it to say, we were tickled before we even got there.
Sheila’s husband, Barry, chauffeured us to the event since we weren’t sure we could walk—much less drive—in our snug, fancy dresses. We parked at the edge of the lot so we’d have privacy to make any necessary hair and makeup adjustments before facing the swelling crowd of eight or nine people who’d gathered to meet us. While the place he parked was private, it was—unbeknownst to us—also next to a grassy median that was soggy from recent rain. When Sheila lifted her gold silk skirt and stepped gracefully out of the car onto the adjacent turf, her four-inch heels were immediately sucked into the mud, rendering her stuck like a stork in quicksand.
I sprang into action, heroically yelling for her to hang on. I attempted to squeeze myself out of the back seat of Barry’s claustrophobic, two-door sports car. Two broken fingernails and one snagged sleeve later, I finally emerged to render her aid, but as soon as I grabbed Sheila’s arm to pull her to dry land, the heels of my shoes pierced through the muck, effectively pinning me in place too.
We grabbed each other frantically like two sailors who realize their ship is going down fast and they’ve missed the opportunity to jump overboard. As we toppled over in an ungainly heap, I had no option but to fall squarely on top of my more petite pal. After much futile slipping and sliding, we began laughing hysterically and momentarily lost the ability to stand—even had we been able to find some leverage. From somewhere underneath me, Sheila squeaked, “Help me. I’m peeing and I can’t stop.”
Sheila and I were together at a conference recently and got to regale some new friends with the silly story of our “peetastrophe”—which lit the fuse for others to tell their most embarrassing stories. After much communal hilarity, the woman sitting next to me leaned back into her chair and said with a sigh, “Wow, those were happy times, weren’t they?”
As everyone around the table smiled and nostalgically agreed, I found myself thinking, Why do we tend to speak of happy in the past or future tense—like, “Those were happy times,” or “Won’t we be happy when . . .”—as if happy were some fleeting, ephemeral state that we can only reminisce about or pine for? I then found myself pondering the concept of happiness further: “Since the Bible says every good gift is from God and happy is good, I wonder if happy is actually a gift from God? And if that’s the case, we could actually be happy now and stay happy then. Hmmm.”
It’s a wonderful concept, isn’t it? But can we prove its validity?
Dr. Emma Seppälä, the science director of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, defines happiness as: a state of heightened positive emotion and trumpets its potential: “Happiness has a profound positive effect on our professional and personal lives. It increases our emotional and social intelligence, boosts our productivity, and heightens our influence over peers and colleagues. These are the very ingredients that allow us to be successful without having to sacrifice our health and psychological well-being.”
A pretty good start to understanding happiness, don’t you think?
As secular as it may sound at first, “seeking happiness” does not have to be a hedonistic, self-indulgent pursuit. In fact, ancient church father and puritan Thomas Manton asserted that our desire for happiness is completely natural: “It is natural for the reasonable creature to desire to be happy, as it is for the fire to burn.”
Modern-day minister and author Randy Alcorn went a step further in his recent book, Happiness, by not only proving God wired us to seek happiness but said that censoring that divine urge is dangerous: “The modern evangelical antipathy to happiness backfires when it portrays Christianity as being against what people long for most.”
I used to think happiness and holiness were divergent paths. It took a panic attack to shock me into the pursuit of genuine, God-authored happiness. Interestingly enough, it was while I was teaching a Bible study.
WILL THE REAL HAPPY PEOPLE PLEASE STAND UP
There are actually thirty-seven references to “happy” in the Old Testament and forty-eight in the New Testament. Randy Alcorn’s book, Happiness, notes more than 2,700 passages where terms related to happy—gladness, merriment, pleasure, celebration, cheer, laughter, delight, jubilation, and feasting—are used! In fact, Psalms—the book smack-dab in the middle of the Bible and comprised of 150 Old Testament songs—literally begins with the word happy:
How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers! Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night. He is like a tree planted by flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. (Ps. 1:1–3, CSB, emphasis mine)
The Sermon on the Mount—arguably Jesus’ most beloved message—could accurately be titled, “How to Be Happy” since it technically begins with the word happy as well:
- Happy the poor in spirit—because theirs is the reign of the heavens.
- Happy the mourning—because they shall be comforted.
- Happy the meek—because they shall inherit the land.
- Happy those hungering and thirsting for righteousness—because they shall be filled.
- Happy the kind—because they shall find kindness.
- Happy the clean in heart—because they shall see God.
- Happy the peacemakers—because they shall be called Sons of God.
- Happy those persecuted for righteousness’ sake— because theirs is the reign of the heavens.
Happy are ye whenever they may reproach you, and may persecute, and may say any evil thing against you falsely for my sake— rejoice ye and be glad, because your reward [is] great in the heavens, for thus did they persecute the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:3–12, NLT).
While most translations begin with the term blessed—which admittedly has a more old-school, shiny wooden pew ring to it—beginning Psalm 1 with the term happy is every bit as theologically sound. The English transliteration of the Hebrew word in the original text of Psalm 1 is asre or Asher which can be translated either “happy” or “blessed.” In the same vein, the Beatitudes typically begin with the English word blessed, but the original Greek word blessed is makarios, which can also be translated “happy” or “fortunate.”
Contrary to what many of us have been taught or perceived, Christ-followers aren’t called to jettison our happiness like spiritual floaties as we learn to swim in the deep waters of intimacy with God. Instead, we’re quite literally called to be happy.
Excerpted from The Sacrament of Happy: What a Smiling God Brings To A Wounded World by Lisa Harper. Used with permission.
