Singer and diva, Madonna, is one of the wealthiest people in show business and has openly flaunted her self-indulgent lifestyle. A couple of years ago she was asked in an interview if she was happy. Her response was: “I don’t even know anybody who is happy!” Not only was she not happy, but she couldn’t think of anyone who was. If you can’t be happy when you have it all, how can you be happy?
In looking up statistics about unhappiness in the United States, I found these disturbing facts: “Depressive disorders affect approximately 18.8 million American adults or about 9.5% of the U.S. population age 18 and older. Preschoolers are the fastest growing market for antidepressants. At least four percent of preschoolers — over a million — are clinically depressed. The rate of increase of depression among children is an astounding 23%.”
How can this be, in a land of plenty and prosperity? Could it be that our understanding of what it takes to be happy is distorted? Could it be that our values are warped and have been placed on things that do not bring true joy in life? Is it possible we are walking the wrong path and taking the wrong road? Can it be that we are looking in all the wrong places to make ourselves happy? We still think if we just had enough money we would be happy. Someone facetiously said, “Those who say that money can’t buy happiness don’t know where to shop.”
Many people are willing to look anywhere but God’s direction. But psychologist Dr. David G. Meyers, author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Who Is Happy — and Why, has written: “Take care of the soul. Actively religious people tend to report more happiness and to cope better with crises. Faith provides a support community, a sense of life’s meaning, a reason to focus beyond self, and a timeless perspective on life’s temporary ups and downs.” More and more studies are citing personal faith as one of the important ingredients to personal happiness. People of faith have a sense of security about life and the future. They believe that their lives are important to their Creator, and that he is watching over them and helping them through life. They feel that they are a part of the created order and are in contact with the Creator. They have a relationship with God and feel they understand some fundamental truths about life. They have the Scriptures to lead them and inspire them during difficult times. They have a community of other believers who love and accept them, and with whom they share important matters of faith. They have values, meaning and purpose in their lives. Why wouldn’t they be happier?
But what if you have faith, a relationship with God and a supportive community and you are still depressed? What then? There are many reasons and possibilities for a continued struggle with depression and discouragement. Some of these may be out of your control such as a divorce that was not what you wanted or anticipated. It could be a loss of employment which has put you in a bind financially, and you realize you will probably not find a job that pays as well. It could be a serious or even terminal illness that has struck you or one you love. Many things are outside the realm of our control. But do we need to be in control to be happy? Are there attitudes that we can develop that will help us to live victoriously in spite of the prevailing circumstances? Even though we are Christians, is it possible that we are missing some important truths that God wants us to understand?
Let’s look at some of the factors that can block our happiness and keep us from living in joy. One happiness blocker that I would like to point out is: A demanding spirit that insists life should be good and easy. It is possible to be a Christian and believe that God owes you something. If he is on your side, many believe that nothing bad should happen and you will get everything you want. I saw a religious program recently where a woman was singing a wonderful song about faith. But in between the verses she encouraged people to believe God for, “That new car. Your new house. Your healing. Your financial prosperity.” In popular religion today, God has become the celestial errand boy who is supposed to give us everything we want. I remember seeing a televangelist who told the audience to put pictures of the things they wanted on their refrigerators and claim them in the name of Jesus: a Cadillac, a house, a diamond necklace, a husband. And, of course, the implication was that if you sent them some money it wouldn’t hurt your chances of getting those things. We have come to see God’s blessings only as material things. But God has said, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:1-2). We are looking in the wrong places for happiness. We are spending money on what is not bread and laboring for the things that do not satisfy.
As a young pastor, I had a person in one of my churches stand up and shake their fist in the air and demand that God do a certain thing. As far as they were concerned, they had met the conditions of what they needed to do, and they proceeded to inform God that he was under obligation to do what they wanted him to do. I tried to move as far away as possible with great haste.
That is an extreme example of what many people express less openly perhaps, but feel just as strongly. God owes them something. They have a real need, and God should meet that need in just the way they want it met. They become angry at God and at life because things are not easy and good. Life overwhelms us, and when life becomes difficult it is possible to become embittered. When there is an unmet need or unfulfilled desire in your life, you may become upset and angry at God. Especially in a culture where we are told that we deserve to have everything we want, it is possible to have a demanding spirit. Your house is falling down and you see someone on TV getting a brand new home with all the furnishings, and you think, “Why couldn’t that be me?” Someone wins a lot of money on a game show and you are hurting financially so you lash out. You don’t have someone in your life, or your marriage is disintegrating, and all the couples you see in church look so happy together. You ask yourself why God hasn’t given you someone? You have serious physical issues and you wonder why other people don’t seem to have the problems you do. You may even be surprised that you feel angry at people who have it better than you at times. You may be mad at God because life hasn’t treated you better.
What we fail to see is that God is with us in our suffering. Sometimes we may slip into the error of thinking that when we are happy and blessed, God is with us in a special way, but when we are facing difficulties we wonder if somehow God has abandoned us. Actually, God may be with us in our suffering more than he is with us in our prosperity and times of ease. This is the God who not only heard the suffering of his people in Egypt, he came to be among them and enter their suffering. He was their Deliverer in Egypt and camped with them in the wilderness. In the person of Jesus he came into the world and entered our suffering. He experienced the pain of rejection and betrayal. He felt the brutality of physical suffering. He surrendered to the death experience. He came near to sinful men and women rather than pushing them away. When there was suffering and death, he did not avoid it, he entered into those people’s very human experience. So just because you are experiencing difficulties does not mean that God has forgotten you, quite the opposite, he is closer than at any other time of your life. Find him in the midst of your need or your suffering. See him there with you, for he has said, “‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’ So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?’” (Hebrews 13:5-6).
What if you are not facing major problems, but you still live with a sense of restless anxiety and angst? You just feel down. Your life isn’t bad, you just don’t feel happy. A second happiness blocker is: A lack of play. Many people are so busy rushing from one thing to another they never have time to play. Their schedule and choices have loaded them with stress. There is no time for a walk, a swim or a bike ride. These are the people who must always be doing something. But if you are always doing, you are never being. There is no time to read or think. There is not even time for fun. Thomas Aquinas was a monk — not one you would expect to be light hearted and playful. But this great theologian of the middle ages said, “God plays. God created playing. And man should play if he is to live as humanly as possible and to know reality, since it is created by God’s playfulness.” What a great insight into the heart of God. We serve a playful God and he invites us into his life of playfulness. Many of us are way too serious about life. Just this week I had a Christian friend say to me that he did not believe Christians should joke around and be frivolous. He thought God intended for Christians to be serious and “sober.” This is a good man, but I could not disagree with him more on this point. I believe that God laughs out loud, and I provide him with lots of material. I can almost see him now doing a standup routine on Comedy Central talking about all the crazy things I have done.
Schedule some time to play. Americans find their value in how busy they are. If you told someone you were not busy at all they would think you were a lazy lout. There are those people who never get out of their LazyBoy, but most of us have very little fun built into our lives. You can’t be happy if you never take off the saddle. If a bow is going to remain strong and shoot arrows well, you have to take the string off and release the tension when it is not in use — otherwise it loses it’s spring and flexibility. Do something creative and fun. Surprise your family with a small adventure. Go somewhere you have never been before. Have a personal time of silence where you just sit and think and pray. Don’t be so serious about everything. See God playing in nature and play with him.
When Ezra the priest read the law to the Hebrew exiles, they realized how badly they had failed God. Weeping began to break out among the people and it grew into a chorus of great sobs. But then Ezra and Nehemiah began to say something surprising to the people. Nehemiah said to them, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). Rather than feel worthless and wallow in their failure, God wanted them to rejoice in his forgiveness and enter his joy. Jesus spoke to his disciples saying, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). Jesus has joy, rather he IS joy, and he wants his joy to live in us. He wants us to play in the good world he has made.
A third happiness blocker is: Basing our happiness on circumstances rather than trust. There are always things that we can look at in our lives that we wish were different. At some level there is always something wrong. It is a matter of perspective. It is what we choose to focus on. We can focus on the problem, or we can focus on the God who is with us in the problem, and gives us the grace to overcome the problem — the same God who has been faithful and delivered us so many times in the past. Sometimes we believe in our circumstances more than we believe in God; we see them as more powerful. And this is always contrary to our experience of how God has been with us and helped us in the past. How easily we forget the faithfulness of God.
I was reading again this year the story of how God delivered Israel from Egypt with “a mighty hand and outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 7:19). But in spite of the great miracles they had seen, as the people went into the wilderness, they could not believe God could provide them with food and water. They would not believe that God would deliver them from smaller and less powerful nations than Egypt. How quickly they forgot all that God had done for them! They were faithless, yet God remained faithful. Not only did he provide for them, but during their wandering in the wilderness, the Bible says, “For forty years you sustained them in the desert; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen” (Nehemiah 9:21). All that worry and inner turmoil over something that never happened!
Most of the things you are worrying about will never happen either. Are you letting circumstances rob you of the joy God wants you to have? It is not that these circumstances are not big, but God is bigger still. Do we have a God who is with us in these circumstances or not? Do we have a God we can trust or not? If we do, then let’s live like it. Let’s live large. Let’s trust God and enter into the joy that he lives in.
Time magazine (1-17-05) reported: “Studies show that the more a believer incorporates religion into daily living — attending services, reading Scripture, praying — the better off he or she appears to be on two measures of happiness: frequency of positive emotions and overall sense of satisfaction with life.” That is to say, it was not just people calling themselves Christian who were happier, it was those who actually practiced the Christian disciplines. It is one thing to believe in God, it is quite another thing to place your whole trust in God — to believe him for the present and the future, and to live with him daily.
Many years and many pounds ago, I used to run several mornings a week. Sometimes I didn’t feel like running, but once my blood began to circulate my feet stopped feeling like lead. Those are the mornings I took a long time for my stretching routine. Things would go alright for awhile when I began to run, but sometimes I would get a pain. Maybe it was in my hip or my calf. There were times I would get a sharp pain when I breathed. I had two choices: I could stop running and walk home, or I could continue running, hoping the pain would stop. Runners do something they call “running through the pain.” They know that there are pains that come, but if you keep moving you will push past the pain and it will actually leave. When I would get a pain I would keep going, because I knew from experience that the pain would eventually leave. I knew this because I had done it several times before. I didn’t let the circumstance deter me because I trusted in something that defied the circumstance — something I had proven through experience.
As a Christian there are many times I have to push through the pain. I know that the pain of what I am experiencing will not last, but God will. I keep running the race because I have proven God’s faithfulness to me over and over, and I know that he is with me in the pain. Circumstances can only threaten, but God can give me the victory. Even in the pain he will give me the joy that comes from him. The pain will leave, but he will stay.
Rodney J. Buchanan
March 26, 2006
Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
