Do Godly Men Act Happier Than the Non-Religious?

by Rick Beckman on October 24, 02011

“Hap­pi­ness” by Guil­herme Oliveira

A good friend of mine, Stephanie, went to a pot­tery class ear­lier today with her son; her son, 8½-year-old Carter, sat between two pas­tors,* and remarked that he wished all men could be as happy as them. It occurred to Stephanie that “Godly men ACT hap­pier than non-religion men,” and she asked me why.

As a bit of back­ground, i first encoun­tered the idea that Chris­tians are hap­pier back in the early 00s when i was first start­ing out as a Chris­t­ian. I ran a moderately-successful mes­sage board called The Fel­low­ship Hall, and a user by the name of MikeR, whom i’m still in con­tact with via Face­book, men­tioned that i surely had a shine or a glow in my eyes. I for­get the exactly way he phrased it, but he spoke of it as an actual phys­i­cal dif­fer­ence between Chris­tians & non-Christians.

As time went on, i received a lot of com­ments from folks i worked with as well about how happy i always seemed, that i never seemed to have a bad day. Dur­ing the ear­li­est cou­ple of years, i often wore a wooden cross pin on my work uni­form as well, and it was obvi­ous from the com­ments i received that folks asso­ci­ated my pos­i­tive atti­tude with my religion.

When i was a Chris­t­ian, i believed that i shouldn’t com­plain. I took to heart what Philip­pi­ans 4:11 taught: to be con­tent in all things. What­ever trou­ble i may have been fac­ing, what­ever stress i may have had in my life, i did my best not to allow that to effect me. I believed there were big prob­lems in the world than my own per­sonal issues, and so i wore a smile, per­fectly con­tent. I won’t lie: the belief that my small­est cares fell into the prov­i­dence of a lov­ing God cer­tainly made me feel good and added to my happiness.

One thing i noticed, though, is that most other Chris­tians i knew didn’t seem any­where nearly as con­tent or happy as i was. I know that’s entirely sub­jec­tive and doesn’t mean any­thing to any­body else but me, yet it was an obser­va­tion of mine over sev­eral years.

To the point of Stephanie’s ques­tion, though, if it does seem as though Chris­t­ian men are hap­pier than non-Christian men, why would that be so?

I offer the fol­low­ing suggestions:

“Hope” by DieselDe­mon

Chris­tian­ity offers hope. A world with­out the super­nat­ural is depress­ing for many; hell, i’ll be the first to admit that nat­u­ral­is­tic death scares the shit out of me. I’ve been try­ing to wrap my mind around the con­cept of the ces­sa­tion of exis­tence since my grand­mother died nearly two decades ago, and any­time i think about it, i feel ter­ror. Crip­pling, par­a­lyz­ing, mind-chilling ter­ror at the thought that some day, i’m going to no longer be.

Chris­tian­ity, like most reli­gions, offers hope in that area. Chris­tians need not think about depress­ing things like that: For them, all of the worst aspects of life on the planet are han­dled hap­pily by a lov­ing God. That’s a load off of their shoul­ders and cer­tainly could make them seem happier.**

“Innocence/Guilt” by ~fyr­fli~

Chris­tian­ity offers abso­lu­tion of guilt. Human­ists, athe­ists, adher­ents of karmic reli­gions, and so forth have to live with the guilt of any wrong they may do; Chris­tians, how­ever, believe that the guilt for all of their wrong­do­ings was taken up by Jesus and that his blood pro­vides the pro­pi­ti­a­tion and abso­lu­tion for their sins. While they may feel guilt, it’s a guilt tem­pered by the knowl­edge that they are secured a place in Heaven, which is sure to make them feel tons bet­ter. That may cer­tainly account for any extra hap­pi­ness seen in Christians.

“Chris­t­ian Stu­dent Fel­low­ship” by Jeremy Wilburn

Chris­tian­ity offers fel­low­ship. Another big­gie here is that Chris­tian­ity is very com­mu­nal. Spend­ing time with like-minded indi­vid­u­als is a boon for hap­pi­ness, whether it be at church, a Super­bowl party, or a World of War­craft raid. Spend­ing time with oth­ers doing what you love is a great cure for bad atti­tudes. Chris­tians believe their fel­low­ship is global, and they may exhibit their enjoy­ment of that any­where where they may run into oth­ers with whom they share faith.

All of that said, i don’t believe that the hap­pi­ness level of Chris­tians is any sort of proof that Chris­tian­ity has any sort of merit. If hap­pi­ness was proof of merit, then why are a vari­ety of recre­ational drugs still ille­gal? What about adher­ents of other reli­gions who find joy? What about the hap­pi­ness, peace, and joy i’ve found since free­ing myself from the yoke of Christianity?

Today, i have friends who are happy. I have friends who are unhappy. I have friends who seek to uplift those around them. I have friends who spend their time focused on neg­a­tiv­ity, espe­cially in regards to politics.

And what i’ve noticed is that it doesn’t mat­ter whether these peo­ple are Chris­t­ian or athe­ist, guy or girl, gay or straight, which leads me to believe that there isn’t one right way to find ful­fill­ment or hap­pi­ness in life. Everyone’s path is going to be dif­fer­ent. Obvi­ously, i encour­age oth­ers to give up the false hope of reli­gion in favor of intel­lec­tual free­dom, but at the end of the day, so long as their super­sti­tions aren’t being turned into laws to gov­ern me, they are free to believe what they want.

I wish we could all be a lit­tle bet­ter about giv­ing the world a smile, though. We need more joy. Per­haps desperately.

* My opin­ions of reli­gion notwith­stand­ing, i think every pas­tor should take pot­tery classes, if only to fully appre­ci­ate the potter/clay sym­bol­ism used in the Bible on an expe­ri­en­tial level.

** It is my opin­ion that hon­est Chris­tians ought to be most mis­er­able: How can the live joy­fully at all with the thought that the major­ity of folks whom they know and love are going to die and burn for an eter­nity in Hell? In one book i read which dealt specif­i­cally with how folks would be able to find joy at all in Heaven in light of that, the author sug­gested that in Heaven, there will be no mem­ory of those in Hell! What a farce!

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The Tyranny of God

by Rick Beckman on October 20, 02011

Last modified on October 21, 02011

“Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.” – William Penn, 1966

“Those who will not be gov­erned by God will be ruled by tyrants.” – William Penn, 1966

This image has been float­ing around Face­book lately. A few of my friends have posted the image to their walls, and i’ve been a good boy… I’ve kept my opin­ions to myself, for the most part. The extent of my com­ments on Face­book are lim­ited to a few i made to a post made by a more trust­wor­thy friend, one whom i can usu­ally expect intel­li­gent dis­cus­sion with rather than heated arguments.

On Face­book, i sim­ply pointed out that democ­racy, god­less­ness, qual­ity of edu­ca­tion, and per­haps even IQ all seem to be some­what related — or at the very least, cer­tain highly god­less nations seem to be not only incred­i­bly demo­c­ra­tic & free of tyranny, but they are bet­ter edu­cated as well.

But beyond point­ing out that fea­si­ble, effec­tive gov­ern­ment can be achieved even by the god­less, i want to point out that the false dilemma of the quote (“Those who will not be gov­erned by God will be ruled by tyrants.”) works both ways:

Not only is the oppo­site of being ruled by God not being ruled by tyrants, but being ruled by tyrants is not all that dis­sim­i­lar to being ruled by God.

I’ll explain what i mean by tak­ing a look at the def­i­n­i­tions of tyrant, cour­tesy of Answers.com:

1) “An absolute ruler who gov­erns with­out restrictions.”

Many Chris­tians will agree that God is sov­er­eign. I con­sider Calvin­ism to be the best the­o­log­i­cal frame­work for under­stand­ing a vari­ety of aspects of the Bible & the god described therein, and so i find the Calvin­ist descrip­tion of God’s sov­er­eignty espe­cially use­ful here:

For­tu­nately, the scrip­tures are very clear on this mat­ter. The bible depicts God as the only and absolute King of the uni­verse, who rules over all, and does every­thing he pleases (Exo 15:18; 1Ch 29:11–12; 2Ch 20:6; Psa 22:28). And not only is he sov­er­eign in some abstract way, in that he retains the right to gov­ern all events actively accord­ing to his will, but chooses not to do so; but he actu­ally and actively ordains and brings to pass every­thing that takes place on the earth (Deu 32:39; 1Sa 2:6–8; Job 9:12; 12:6–10; Psa 33:11; 115:3; 135:6; Isa 14:24; Isa 45:7; Act 15:17–18; Eph 1:11). From the small­est mat­ters of “chance,” such as the cast­ing of a lot into the lap (Pro 16:33), to the great­est events of the earth’s mighty king­doms (e.g. Isa 45:1–4), God is bring­ing all things to pass accord­ing to his will. He gov­erns and super­in­tends “coin­ci­den­tal” hap­pen­ings (1Ki 22:20, 34, 37), the wicked actions of men (Gen 45:5; 50:20; Exo 4:21; Jdg 14:1–4; Psa 76:10; Pro 16:4; 21:1; Isa 44:28; Amo 3:6; Act 2:22–23; 4:27–28), the good deeds of men (Joh 15:16; Eph 2:10; Phi 2:12–13), the actions of both evil spir­its and good angels (1Sa 16:14–16; 1Ki 22:19–23; 1Ch 21:1/2Sa 24:1; Psa 103:20–21; 104:4), the habits of ani­mals (Num 22:28; 1Ki 17:4; Psa 29:9; Jer 8:7; Eze 32:4; Dan 6:22), and the oper­a­tions of all cre­ation (Gen 8:22; Psa 104:5–10, 13–14, 19–20; Mar 4:39).

Monergism.com

That’s a long quote, but it illus­trates the point well: God is an absolute ruler who rules with­out restriction.

Accord­ing to the first def­i­n­i­tion of tyrant, God is a tyrant.

2) “A ruler who exer­cises power in a harsh, cruel manner.”

The ques­tion here is whether God exer­cises his power in a harsh and cruel man­ner. If he does, he meets yet another def­i­n­i­tion of tyrant. Harsh is defined as “severe, cruel, or exact­ing.” I could go through the seven def­i­n­i­tions given for just “severe,” list­ing bib­li­cal exam­ples of each, but for brevity’s sake, here are just a few considerations:

When two priests wor­shipped God by offer­ing up fire to him which wasn’t com­manded of them, God struck them dead (Leviti­cus 10:1).

When Jesus sought some figs from an out-of-season tree, he didn’t humbly admit his mis­take in tim­ing but cursed the tree out of frus­tra­tion, result­ing in the tree shriv­el­ing up (Matthew 21:18–22).

Adul­tery? Death for both par­ties (Deuteron­omy 22:22)!

Rape a woman? Pay her dad 50 shekels then marry her! … Actu­ally, that one’s not very severe at all. Con­sen­sual adul­tery has a more severe pun­ish­ment than rape? And they say that athe­ists are the ones with moral difficulties…

And let’s not for­get the most strik­ing evi­dence of God’s harsh­ness: com­mit just one sin — just one! — and you will be pun­ished with eter­nal hell­fire, and it doesn’t mat­ter if that sin is wear­ing poly­ester. Burn, baby, burn!

3) “An oppres­sive, harsh, arbi­trary person.”

Is God oppres­sive? If a human ruler demanded your absolute obe­di­ence under penalty of eter­nal damna­tion, would you con­sider that ruler to be oppres­sive? What about one that does not shy away from refer­ring to his cit­i­zens as “slaves”? God does both… unashamedly.

Is God harsh? Yes (see above).

Is God arbi­trary? To be arbi­trary is to do things accord­ing to your own desires rather than accord­ing to rea­son, and it comes as no sur­prise that Chris­tians speak so often of “the will of God.” All of the crazy laws of God, all of the ran­dom pun­ish­ments (why some folks are instantly killed for minor offenses [Nadab & Abihu] while oth­ers are allowed to per­pet­u­ated thou­sands upon thou­sands of heinous sins [Hitler] can only be explained by believ­ers as being part of “the will of God”)… If any­one is arbi­trary, God is.

God is a tyrant, meet­ing every cri­te­rion of being a tyrant… What­ever facets of love, mercy, or grace that Jesus or the dis­ci­ples would go on to laud, it is impos­si­ble to escape the fact that for the major­ity of the Bible, God is por­trayed very sim­ply as a cruel, vin­dic­tive, arbi­trary tyrant…

…and those atti­tudes run through­out the New Tes­ta­ment as well, from Jesus’ “if you’re not with me, you’re against me” speech to the vio­lent inau­gu­ra­tion of the king­dom of Heaven in Revelation.

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What to Expect from Thesis 2.0

September 2, 2011

It’s been over three years since i first began using The­sis & par­tic­i­pat­ing in its awe­some com­mu­nity. Three years from its hum­ble begin­nings. Before the abstracted frame­work. Before it’s pow­er­ful design con­trol panel. Before my Open­Hook plu­gin. Before The­sis became the new hot­ness in Word­Press design and devel­op­ment. A lot has changed, and today we […]

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Update TimThumb to Keep Your Thesis Site Secure

August 30, 2011

In order to pro­vide you snazzy thumb­nails on posts with fea­tured images, The­sis makes use of the TimThumb image thumb­nail­ing script. Recently, TimThumb was found to be inse­cure, and so using the most up-to-date ver­sion of it is highly rec­om­mended. The­sis ships with ver­sion 1.09. The lat­est ver­sion is 2.8. Time to update! Thank­fully, this […]

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Walmart.com’s Wondrously Compactable Dr. Pepper

August 24, 2011

I’m try­ing to cut down on caf­feine (an endeavor i’ve tried & failed before). So far, I’m really lik­ing Sierra Mist Nat­ural, but I was curi­ous about which other sodas were caffeine-free as well. A search for Dr. Pep­per led me to Walmart.com, mostly out of sur­prise that food items were listed there. The Walmart.com […]

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Cleverbot on “Twilight” and “Star Trek”

August 23, 2011

I asked Cle­ver­bot, the pop­u­lar arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence chat bot, whether it liked “Twi­light.” It responded in the best way I could have imag­ined: “I don’t like robots.” As a long time science-fiction fan, how­ever, I have to stick up for robots: Most of them have far more per­son­al­ity than the char­ac­ter of Bella Swan. Inci­den­tally, I […]

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Walking with Jesus in America

August 21, 2011

Seen on Face­book moments ago, this kind of stuff really annoys me. I don’t care how devout a Chris­t­ian you are, nobody is ever raised to “walk with Jesus,” at least not in Amer­i­can Chris­tian­ity. What we know of the Jesus of the Bible is that he didn’t spend his Sun­days in a church with […]

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Bachmann’s Cheap Promise…

August 20, 2011

When you’re a bat­shit crazy pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, appeal­ing to the intel­li­gence of the masses isn’t quite an option. Appeal­ing to their greed, how­ever, is a dif­fer­ent story. Here’s hop­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers will ignore greed while lis­ten­ing to Michele Bach­mann, who promises $2 per gal­lon gaso­line under her lead­er­ship. (Sounds good, right? But did I mention […]

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Convenience is Killing Us

August 20, 2011

Con­ve­nience is going to be the death of our way of life. Tran­scrip­tion of image text: It’s pretty amaz­ing that our soci­ety has reached a point where the effort nec­es­sary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refin­ery, turn it into plas­tic, shape it appro­pri­ately, truck it to a store, buy it, and bring […]

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Where Are the Peacemakers?

August 19, 2011

I real­ize that by acknowl­edg­ing and espe­cially by writ­ing about this, i’m basi­cally say­ing i should get off my ass for this… But i would be remiss if i didn’t say what was on my mind. As I write this, the United States is involved in ten dis­tinct mil­i­tary con­flicts (although sev­eral of those are part […]

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