The surprising theology of happiness

Text: Revelation 3:14-22

            There is a famous 1978 study on the relativity of happiness in which a trio of psychologists set out to discover whether people become happier after they win the lottery. They tested their hypothesis by assessing the happiness of people who win the lottery over time and comparing it with a control group as well as a group of people who lost a limb as the result of an accident. That’s right, the main contrast in this study was between lottery winners and amputees. This research has been repeated a couple of times since with near identical results.

            On the surface this seems like an awfully strange experiment. Not all of us may buy into the idea that money brings happiness but I bet most of us would think: “It can’t hurt!” Either way, given the choice between winning the lottery or losing a limb I’m going to guess we would all make the same choice. And at first the study agreed with our gut instincts. Immediately after winning the lottery people are happier! Surprise, surprise.

The problem is that it doesn’t last.

In fact, the researchers found that after only a year lottery winners were indistinguishable from amputees when asked to describe how happy they were. In some cases it takes only a few months for lottery winners to lose their euphoria and settle into a life filled with new and worsening worries. To which you might say: "Great, the pastor just took the fun even out of winning the lottery. Splendid." Is that the moral to this story? Well, I suppose you can look at this a few different ways. A pessimist might say: “That’s sad. No matter the good things we get in this life, our happiness will be unaffected.” Meanwhile, an optimist might say, “That’s great. No matter the tragedies that befall us, our happiness will be unaffected.” Or we can look at this a third way—a way that I believe has a profound impact on our church—and say, “Well, that’s interesting. Maybe happiness is not what we thought it was.” I think that’s where we start.

This has all sorts of practical applications for us as Christians. In today’s readings, for example, John addresses two churches that have a problem with complacency. There’s Sardis, who have become lethargic, and Laodicea, who are lukewarm about their faith. And in both cases we see a little of that lottery winner syndrome. They’ve been given an insane promise in the form of the good news of Jesus Christ. I mean, come on, a man came down from heaven, born of a virgin (you don’t see that everyday), he died on a cross so that they could have eternal life and then he came back from the dead. The fact that people experienced Jesus and, in the same lifetime, decided that there are more important things is a hard blow against the idea that anything will make us permanently happy. Yeah, you died for my salvation, but what have you done for me lately?

            In Laodicea they take this arrogance a step further and say, “I am rich. I have prospered and need nothing.” It took maybe thirty, forty years after the resurrection for their happiness to be equated with wealth and comfort. Sure, they still have this promise of Jesus Christ, but you know what’s better than Jesus? Jesus and a pile of money! And you know what’s better than Jesus and a pile of money? Jesus and a bigger pile of money.

            You see the problem?

            John gives them a warning: you think you’re rich; you think you don’t need anything. Well, take a good, long look in the mirror, because what you see as rich and prosperous looks a lot more like wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. That’s the problem with human beings: we want exactly those things that make us less happy, healthy, and whole, and most of the time we don’t even realize it. In a 2004 TED talk, Dan Gilbert, an eminent Harvard psychologist, lectured on the surprising science of happiness, and he claimed that our ability to make ourselves happy (what he calls “synthetic happiness”) is often inverse to our freedom to choose. The more choices we have the more we will regret the choices we have made, but when we do not have a choice we will make our own happiness out of the situation in which we find ourselves. There’s a reason that Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor.” The kingdom of heaven is built on what we perceive to be limitations to our freedom. What we see as a blessing—winning the lottery—is often a curse; what we see as a curse—losing a limb in an accident, for example—may, in fact, teach us that we can be happier and more resilient than we could have imagined.

            We lost a tremendous amount of freedom when Jesus died on the cross. We lost the freedom to go around trying to save ourselves. You can’t do that anymore. After Jesus Christ we are stuck with one path to salvation, and even if you believe that Jesus’ death means the salvation of everyone, you have to admit that that is incredibly limiting. One way to salvation; one path.

            Our world scoffs at that idea. Why, a loving God would have given us many paths to salvation; a loving God would have allowed us the freedom to choose—to choose God or to choose against God. A loving God would have given us the value meal plan and we could decide whether we want a #1 or a #5 or a #9 and all of them would be equally good value meals of salvation; in fact, a loving God would allow us to supersize our salvation and make whatever substitutions we want.

Can you imagine what it would look like if the gateway to heaven were a McDonald’s foyer filled with people queuing up to decide their salvation? When I’m in one of those places I spend a good five minutes staring at the choices with drool dripping out of the sides of my mouth in spite of the fact that I’ve made the same stinking choice a hundred times. If my McDonald’s choice actually mattered I would be in that line forever. In fact, if the Catholics are right about that whole purgatory thing, I'm pretty sure purgatory will be a McDonald's foyer

We have this problem with choice. Whenever Kate and I are deciding where to go out to eat it’s always at least a ten minute process. It starts with one of us asking, 

“Where do you want to eat?” 

“I dunno.”

You know what this conversation is like.

"Let's have pizza."

Long, protracted sigh...

And the process continues until we settle on one of around fifty places that would have been just fine, except now one (or more likely both) of us will regret not having eaten somewhere else. Our problem is not that we are starved for choice but that, given our resources and time, we have the opportunity to choose between far too many options and we are terrible at limiting ourselves. We are the lottery winners; we are the people of Sardis and Laodicea; we have bought into the lie that happiness is achieved through comfort and comfort is the only goal in this life worth pursuing.

If you want to know why the book of Revelation made its way into the Bible it is because of this “comfort mindset” that we all have. You can’t read this book and come away thinking, “Well, that was pleasant.” It may be inspiring and hopeful and even beautiful, but nobody finds Revelation to be a relaxing, sleep-inducing read. John doesn’t care about giving you some night-time reading. He’s writing to people in places like Sardis and Laodicea, people who have become lukewarm, half into Jesus but more immediately concerned with the choices before them, choices they think will make them happy.

John has news for Sardis and Laodicea and news for us reading this today: your freedom will not make you happy; your riches will not make you whole. And the crazy thing is that we think that is bad news. We think that John is being harsh, because our American economy is built on the premise of filling up our lives with things to make us happy, and those things are products of our freedom to choose. We still think that everybody wins when they are given the opportunity to follow any path. Those are our shackles; we are captivated by our lust for freedom—for the next big thing—and through it all we have forgotten that Jesus did come to free us but not so that we could have everything that we want; rather, he freed us so that, in spite of the pitiable, wretched and poor creatures that we are, we might have life and salvation and, indeed, happiness.

The best thing we could ever be given is a Savior of the world who looks down on us and says, “Little, stupid, human beings. I choose you. You have no choice. Get over it.” And even though we, like those churches long ago, will never fail to undervalue that gift, it is ours nonetheless. The only thing in question about the gift Christ has given us is whether we are going to continue to fight for our freedom to choose or admit—or even, dare I say, submit—that we would only choose those things that are worse for us anyway. Then, we will find happiness, whether we win the lottery or have a terrible accident. Those particulars are only temporary; what matters is the freedom of having no choice.

Thanks be to God.