CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: What is the secret of real happiness?
What a lovely sunny Saturday we had a couple of weeks ago! Lorna and I took Ezra for a walk at Aldourie in the morning; later I was in the city centre. There is so much to enjoy in the Highlands, so much evident happiness.
Some reports suggest that according to a new study by hospitality giant Accor, Inverness is the happiest, most chilled place to live in the UK - but according to the study itself that honour goes to York, with no Scottish city in the top 10!
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Even so, in a separate Office for National Statistics survey, Highlanders asked to indicate their level of happiness on a scale of one to 10 responded with an encouraging average of eight.
That Saturday, the joy touched me. Yet we’re aware of much unhappiness in our community: this calls for close examination. For unhappiness may be an appropriate response to the situation someone is in, or it may be a symptom, a warning that something is wrong within them, or within society.
Unhappiness is a call to action: a call to reflect on our own lives; to seek help where necessary; to take positive steps to bear the burdens of others, and to change systems which perpetuate unhappiness.
The Accor survey was a response to the “soft living” craze sweeping through social media – the quest for life with minimum stress. This concept began among black women in Nigeria. For them it was a call to move on from the commerce-driven lifestyle they’d inherited from parents, the “ancestral curse” they call it.
What are our “ancestral curses”, unhelpful patterns of living? In the context of faith, might an “ancestral curse” be a dry, inherited, lifeless Christianity? Or the unspoken and unquestioned assumption that there is no spiritual dimension, no life beyond death, no God?
Jesus was not an advocate of soft living. His list of those who are “blessed” – truly happy – is typically counter-intuitive. Not “blessed are those who have it all”, but “blessed are the poor, the mourning, the broken, the persecuted people”. It’s as though Jesus is saying “I have come not for those who are content in their happiness, but for those for whom life is hard, those who are struggling.” He challenges us to see our struggles themselves as a gateway to a deeper joy.
“Come to me all you who are weary and burdened,” Jesus invites “and I will give you rest.”
The contemplative nun Sister Wendy once wrote: “Jesus is our happiness”. Whatever we are facing as Christians, whatever our pain, Jesus is present with us, whether or not we feel that presence. Jesus is our rock, our hope, our joy.
