Christianity is all about happiness, finding our true home, and has always acknowledge the righteous of enjoyment of the goods of the earth….but it’s pretty unique in how it frames things.
Take the beatitudes, what does it mean to be blessed?
David Bentley Hart translation of the NT its it this way:
“How blissful the destitute, abject in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of the heavens;"
In his foot note Hart says, “μακάριος (makarios): “blessed,” “happy,” “fortunate,” “prosperous,” but originally with a connotation of divine or heavenly bliss.
The great NT scholar R.T. France says,
“'Blessed’ is a misleading translation of makarios, which does not denote one whom God blesses (which would be eulogētos, reflecting Heb. bārûk), but represents the Hebrew ’ašrê, 'fortunate’, and is used, like ’ašrê, almost entirely in the formal setting of a beatitude.
It introduces someone who is to be congratulated, someone whose place in life is an enviable one. ‘Happy’ is better than ‘blessed’, but only if used not of a mental state but of a condition of life. ‘Fortunate’ or ‘well off’ is less ambiguous. It is not a psychological description, but a recommendation.”
So the point was a complete class reversal of fortunes .
This is a word that was often used in the Classical period to describe the life of the gods.
From the perspective of Greek paganism, one participated in this divine life through sexual and other indulgences, through prosperity and leisure, and through the acquisition and of power and victory.
In the Beatitudes, Christ reorients, indeed, inverts what it looks like to share in that life in this world and this age while maintaining in its fullness what that means in the age and world to come.
However, as Fr Stephen de Young comments,
"Christ teaches that those who experience the beginnings of this destiny in the present world are not the prosperous, the wealthy, the powerful, and the victorious. Rather, they are those who, despite being in the Spirit, are poor. They are those who mourn losses. They are those who are humble. They are those who hunger and thirst for justice which eludes them in this world.
These are not those who were seen by ancient cultures to be living the best human life, let alone the life of the gods. These are those whom the ancients saw as unworthy at best or at worst, under a curse.
St. Luke makes the contrast between ancient understanding and Christ’s teaching even more explicit by paralleling a shortened list of the Beatitudes with a series of woes.”
De young continues,
“The poor are happy but the rich are under a curse. The hungry are blissful but the full are accursed. Those who weep are blessed but those who laugh are doomed.
Those who are hated, excluded, mocked, and derided are experiencing the divine life, while those who are of good reputation and spoken of well by all are damned already.
For St. Luke, those who enjoy success, prosperity, wealth, and power in this life do so through wickedness and are on a trajectory that leads not to eternal life, but to death, curse, and condemnation in the age to come, an age which has no end.”
Of course, despite all of those troubles, the Spirit bears the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Eudaimonia as a concept is more related to success, prosperity, and goodness of a life lived in this world - the goal of an ethical or moral life.
It simply lacks the eschatological element exemplified by the Beatitudes. And eschatology makes all the difference.
Jonathan T. Pennington, assistant professor of New Testament interpretation, actually renders the nine occurrences of μακάριος in the Beatitudes in 5:3–12 as “flourishing,” instead of “blessed,”
In an interview about his new book, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, he says,
“Christ doesn’t say, “Flourishing is when you have lots of kids,” “Flourishing are those who have tons of money,” “Flourishing are the prestigious ones in society,” “Flourishing are the virtuous ones in society.”
Instead, it’s flourishing when you have a poverty of spirit, a hungering or thirsting — not positive things.
When you are humble, that means not getting your rights.
When you’re merciful, you are giving up your rights and forgiving someone who has wronged you. All these things he describes as flourishing are totally unexpected.”
After all the rewards for the six beatitudes in the middle of Lukes Gospel are all in the future tense!
So, the disciples of Jesus flourish because they know that they already are included as citizens of the coming kingdom of heaven.
As the Christian philosopher David Naugle cleverly observes, biblical happiness is “edenistic,” not “hedonistic”—it is based on God’s creation and re-creation of the world.”
One might ask if it is plausible for modern Christians to hold onto such hope in our modern world? Especially with the loud cacophony pop voices promoting and offering easier, less painful alternatives?
Of course, the question arrises if we even ought to want happiness?
If scientific means were found to assure happiness, Darrin McMahon concluded in his recent history of Western thought on happiness, we would "be leaving a piece of [our] humanity behind.”
Mark Litmore comments that “Half century's work on religion suggests it also is a term we should regard with suspicion. It is a modern concept that conflates rather than illuminates,”
We all know the dangers of the prosperity gospel, and famously Christian Smith has pointed out the emergent national religion one might call "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."
Happiness is at its center:
1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions."
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die
Where religion promises worldly happiness by unworldly means, it seems to betray
both religion and the legitimate pursuit of happiness in this world.
In Christianity, it’s almost as if a life of good fortune is a terrible danger:
“The most dangerous evil in life is not suffering but tranquility.
….holy men, when they see this world’s prosperity to be their lot, are disquieted with fearful misgivings.
For they fear lest they should receive here the fruit of their labours…
And hence it is that holy men are in greater dread of prosperity in this world than of adversity.”
- St Gregory the Great’s commentary on The Book of Job
This is also bound up with Christianity’s confusing relationship with its own stance of self-denial and psychology’s self-improvement.
Those who look to the mystical tradition, the Spirituality of the Desert, claim that self-denial is the path to spiritual enlightenment and discovery of the true self; the ego is a false self. By contrast, the world of psychology endorses the merits of a healthy ego.
However even a muddled mystic as Richard Rohr acknowledges that in the first half of life we need boundaries, a sense of identity and order for our lives:
“You have to first have an ego structure to then let go of it and move beyond it.”
Although it gives credence to one of Nietzsche’s critiques of Christianity, joy is usually thought in the NT as largely a future event, a promise.
The Epistle of James teaches that we should count our trials {πειρασμοί) as joy since they produce steadfastness of character (Jas 1.2).
The first Epistle of Peter states that we should rejoice in our sufferings as sharing in the sufferings of Christ (1 Pet 4.12-14).
Moreover, despite our present sufferings, we look forward to our joy in the eschaton when Christ's glory will be revealed. The Epistle to the Hebrews also posits joy in the hope of future deliverance against the persecutions and trials of the present life (Heb 10.32-39).
When the Fathers speak of things like joy, rarely do they locate it where a modern man might.
Evagrios, identifies joy as the sine qua non of its genuineness:
"If when praying no other joy can attract you, then truly you have found prayer."
The basic reason for the joy found in prayer is given by Saint John of Kronstadt as follows:
"a lively sense of God's presence is a source of peace and joy to the soul.”
In addition to the joy which we receive through prayer and the sacraments, the Fathers also refer to the joy which accompanies the active working of the good and struggling against evil.
A third source of joy is simply enduring suffering while maintaining faith in God.
Saint John Chrysostom in his commentary on 2 Corinthians 1.5 praises the endurance and fortitude of Abraham in his difficulties and then goes on to extol the blessed Paul,
“through seeing trials in very snow-showers assailing him daily, rejoiced and exulted as though in the mid-delights of Paradise. As then he who is gladdened with this joy cannot be a prey to despair; so he who maketh not this [joy] his own is easily overcome of all;... And truly stouter than any armor is joy in God; and whoso hath it, nothing can ever make his head droop or his countenance sad, but he beareth all things nobly.”
James Cook comments HERE:
"Whilst for the classical philosophers the ultimate goal of therapy was the achievement of happiness or wellbeing in the present, for Chrysostom it was to be found in avoiding God’s judgement for sin and receiving the blessings of eternal life.
For him, the sick are those who are facing the judgement of God, and a key part of his therapy of the soul is to awaken in them a fear of hell that they may live more obedient lives and “receive the good things that are to come.”
St Symeon says,
"Tell me, what is more beautiful than a soul undergoing tribulation, which knows that by enduring it will inherit joy in all things?"
What is real flourishing according to psychology?
“Humans connect to other humans at so basic a level that when we disconnect, our souls shatter into a thousand little pieces.”
- Peter Leithart
"If loneliness didn’t exist, we could reasonably assume that psychiatric illnesses would not occur either.”
- Psychiatrist J.H. van den Berg
Before WW II society was more naturally integrated, people needed other people. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary to point out marriage, community, and friendship as goods as these were simply staples of human existence.
Our man made world today is premised upon the opposite of the humane, connections make us human, and we’ve created a society of isolation.
One can't take it for granted one will have friends, or a partner. We’re not embedded in social systems that way anymore.
If one wants friends, one has to work at it! Books describe how to intentionally find people, join groups, and then, since we no longer simply bump into one another, how to intentionally maintain those relationships.
Johann Hari, in his best-selling book Lost Connections writes HERE,
“Everyone knows human beings have natural physical needs,” he adds, “Well, there’s equally good evidence that we have innate psychological needs. We need to feel we belong to a group; we need to feel we have a stable future; we need to feel that we are valued; we need to feel we have meaning and purpose in our lives.”
The best predictor of happiness in America? It's Marriage, read HERE .
Many psychologists and researchers go as far as saying marriage is THE key to happiness, after 50 years of hard data, read HERE, it's hard to argue.
When you break it down, marriage does yield much more fulfillment and happiness - although mainly for the more well off, In this article HERE it reports :
"....the subtler truth seems to be that finances, family, and social fitness are three prongs in a happiness trinity.
They rise together and fall together.”
For example, being married with no medicine you have a better chance of surviving cancer than being single and having chemo !
This study HERE shows for “prostate, breast, colorectal, esophageal, and head/neck cancers, the survival benefit associated with marriage was larger than the published survival benefit of chemotherapy.”
Loneliness is worse than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Lonely people need more painkillers, they heal much slower, they have more health problems etc etc
Paul Tournier, a brilliant Christian psychologist, argues that untold damage is done in Christian communities by curating “premature renunciation.”
He explains how nonbelievers and Christians alike (while they may not have language to express it) seem to “know” the Two Gospels of both worlds, which seem in opposition to each other. The gospel of psychology, as he calls it, is one of “self-fulfillment” and “self-assertion,” while the Biblical gospel is “self-denial” and “renunciation.”
"To how many generations of miserable exploited people has the Church preached resignation, acceptance of one’s lot, surrender, and submission?”
“We have all seen so many of those men and women who have never grown up because they have been repressed by a religious upbringing, and have been trained since infancy in systemic renunciation.”
“How many mediocre personalities are there in our churches – people who have not the courage to live full lives, to assert themselves and make the most of themselves, and who look upon this stifling of themselves as a Christian virtue, whereas faith ought to create powerful personalities?
He sees the necessity for self-actualization and self-fulfillment to come *before renunciation - first you need a healthy sense of self and self-assertion.
First you need a place. He says,
"It is readily understandable that to be denied a place is to suffer a serious moral trauma. It is a sort of denial of one’s humanity.”
Without this sense of place, the church’s language of renunciation, to “deny oneself,” becomes painful and confusing.
It is to this person that the church says, “Give yourself to the service of others, for in the service of others you will find yourself.”
Tournier responds in a resounding, “No!” for he understands that since the client “has not been loved, or not loved well, he can neither love nor believe in and accept love.”
Tournier notes, the type of person it was who God “called” in Scripture; ones with a well-formed sense of place.
Abraham was well-established in Ur of the Chaldees when God called him. Moses was asked to leave Midian, where he was tending his father-in-law’s flocks. Jesus called Simon and Andrew to leave their well-established fishing profession etc etc all well-situated in society.
So Tournier sees the necessity for self-actualization and self-fulfillment to come before renunciation, and the former movement can only occur when children experience attachment in their family of origin – when they have a sense of place within their family.
Of course, for a few decades Christianity in fundamentalist Churches become conflated with Americanism and middle class values, and these can be dangerous idols, however family, community, stable wealth, and decent work are universal goods, the only good Ecclesiastes even acknowledged.
Thus, despite heroic theological acrobatics, I cannot square traditional Christianity with any sense of human flourishing. An invisible problem , surely, until the industrial revolution and gone wild in our technological society, and still taken for granted by many of the older generation.
I think the Church needs to rethink it.
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