Years ago, I asked my pastor what he felt was the most challenging aspect of ministry. His response: “Persuading unhappy people that what they think will fix them actually won’t.” Finding a more fulfilling career, richer friendships, or even a spouse doesn’t magically turn a miserable person into a cheerful one. We generally don’t understand happiness well, relying instead on therapeutic and often worldly definitions of the term.
And yet Scripture repeatedly speaks in the language of delight, joy, satisfaction, feasting, and pleasures forevermore. In Happiness: What It Is, Where to Find It, and How to Make It Last Forever, Andrew Wilson, teaching pastor at King’s Church London, picks up this important but often misunderstood topic, noting that “God wants you to be happy” (1). That’s an important statement, but we have to be clear about what it means in biblical terms.
An unavoidable tension exists between what the Bible has to say about happiness and the picture painted by our wider culture—a portrait marked by expressive individualism, upward mobility, and material abundance. The cultural vision of happiness is remarkably fickle, resting on circumstances we can’t control for long. Wilson argues that God invites us into a deeper, more durable happiness than changing circumstances can ever provide.
Flavors of Happiness
Ask 10 Christians what happiness is, and you’ll likely get 10 different answers. Wilson helps untangle the confusion by distinguishing several biblical “flavors” of happiness, reminding readers that “not all happiness is equal” (30). The thrill of new romance, the satisfaction of meaningful work, and delight in communion with God are all forms of happiness, but they aren’t interchangeable.
God invites us into a deeper, more durable happiness than changing circumstances can ever provide.
Neuroscience links happiness to dopamine, but brain chemistry alone can’t explain lasting joy. The exhilaration of teenage infatuation is often more intense than the settled affection of a 40-year marriage, yet few would call it a deeper happiness.
The more we seek after intense yet shallow flavors of happiness, the more disappointed we’ll be when the dopamine fades. Wilson argues that Christians should pursue the forms of happiness Scripture commends: those that produce flourishing and contentment rather than passing excitement.
Beneath the Waves
Wilson compares our emotional lives to the ocean’s layers. Surface waves shift constantly with our circumstances, daily choices, and personalities. The tides of happiness ebb and flow in relatively predictable fashion based on significant events. But the most important layer, which is the least visible, is the current that runs steadily beneath the surface. This helps explain how Paul could be “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10).
It’s possible “to experience surface waves of transient laughter, and tides of melancholy, and depression dragging us away from the shore, and deep ocean currents of warming and everlasting joy in Christ, all at once” (35).
So while our emotional surface may appear choppy due to a tough day at work, marital conflict, or misbehaving children, the deep, everlasting joy offered to those who hope in Christ remains perfectly calm and as constant as ever (1 Pet. 1:8). Regularly calling to mind that hope will help us calm the storms we feel on our surface (Mark 4:35–41).
The multilayeredness of our emotional lives can be both disorienting and frustrating at times, but the Christian holds out hope: “The day is approaching when the waves, the tides, and the ocean currents will all pull in the same direction; and we will laugh on the surface as we rejoice in the deep, and all manner of things will be well. But not yet” (35).
Find True Happiness
Many practical, common-grace recommendations from positive psychology can sound a lot like Jesus’s instructions in the Sermon on the Mount. Wilson identifies a few: “Grow in gratitude. . . . Be compassionate and kind. . . . Humble yourself. . . . Do not overestimate the value of money and possessions” (113).
Following this counsel isn’t merely morally commendable; research contends it actually contributes to our overall mental and emotional well-being. Living with the grain of the moral fabric of God’s creation tends to bring greater happiness than going against it. But Christians arrive at our vision of “the good life” through an open Bible and willing ears rather than by analyzing surveys and advice columns.
Living with the grain of the moral fabric of God’s creation tends to bring greater happiness than going against it.
This Scripture-first approach is important, because following the best advice from best-selling positive psychologists won’t produce true happiness. These authors encourage gratitude, humility, and generosity, but they cannot offer what the gospel alone provides: reconciliation with the God in whom lasting joy is found.
Most self-help books about happiness commend spirituality as one important “lifestyle choice” among many others. This makes God out to be merely a means rather than the end of our joy. It reduces God to an instrument to be used in the greater pursuit of personal happiness and well-being. This approach is entirely backward.
Writing with his characteristic blend of biblical depth and accessibility, Wilson argues,
In Scripture, God is the goal and happiness is one of the results. We do not love God because he improves our states of mind . . . but because we find him supremely excellent and delightful in himself—and a marvelous result is that we experience deep and everlasting joy, glorifying God by enjoying him forever. (131)
That’s an approach to happiness every Christian should strive to adopt.
My pastor was right: A promotion, marriage, and achievement can’t bear the weight we expect them to in our pursuit of happiness. Wilson reminds us that our happiness was never meant to be found in created things apart from their Creator.
While our culture searches for joy in shifting circumstances, Jesus extends a better invitation: “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21). Happiness points readers toward lasting joy by showing that delight in God isn’t the enemy of holiness but one of its richest fruits.
The Gospel Coalition