Chris Howlett

The Answer to Hopelessness

The Courier-Journal headline reads: “Kentucky bourbon giant Jim Beam reaches milestone despite COVID-19.” The story tells of record production during the pandemic as they respond to accelerating demand. That’s the real story. The headline should read that their production milestone was reached because of the pandemic, not despite it.

The increasing demand for liquor coincides with another accelerating trend during the pandemic in the United States: deaths of despair. These are lives lost due to depression, substance abuse, and a growing sense of hopelessness, especially among working-age males. This anxiety-induced pattern has been with us for a while, but the pandemic brought the crisis to a head. Something's going terribly wrong in American culture.

Social scientists try to comprehend what’s driving the downward spiral in mental and emotional health. The economic challenges and isolation of the pandemic certainly contribute. A major cause, or perhaps co-morbidity, seems to be a sense of hopelessness and loss of meaning many are feeling. The decline of influence of the Christian faith contributes to these ever-increasing challenges people face in coping with modern life.

The Good News is that the Church has the answer. We can offer the therapeutic. There is a Balm in Gilead who can heal the sin-sick soul. Churches need to reach beyond the four walls and meet people where they are, in their neighborhoods and social networks, get to know them, love them, and invite them into a life-changing relationship with Jesus. 

A life without Christ is a life devoid of hope and meaning. God didn’t create us so we would eek out a miserable survival, but that our lives would flourish and thrive, that our relationships would be positive and life-affirming, that our work would be fulfilling, and that we would join him in his mission of redeeming all creation. God is good. Let’s share this good news with those who desperately need a new lease on life.

More Religious = More Happy??

Does religious participation make you happier? How does religion affect happiness? 

First of all, I must confess: I used the “Religion vs. Relationship” trope years ago in a series of sermons at Christ Church United Methodist in Lexington, KY. I was wrong to use these words in that way. I would have been better off using “Legalism or Legalistic” versus the faith that Jesus came to nature in his followers, rather than “Religion vs. Relationship.”

The way the religion vs. relationship duality usually goes is: the Pharisees were religious but Jesus offers a relationship. Both are true, but they’re also misleading. The Pharisees believed in a relationship with God and Jesus believed religion was a good thing. He was, after all, a religious Jew who faithfully, dare I say, religiously, participated in the religious life of the synagogue and on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to join in religious rituals at the Temple. The big conflict between the Pharisees and Jesus was not religion vs. relationship, but who gets to be included in the “In-Group.” Who’s worth saving? And, what is the role and purpose of the people of God in the world. There were huge differences between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day, but it really had nothing to do with the juxtaposition of religion and relationship.

Another false dichotomy is the supposed difference between spiritual and religious. You’ve probably heard someone say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” This means they see themselves as a spiritual being with a spirituality but they’re averse to organized religion. From what I’ve seen, read, and heard, spirituality without religion is a whole lot like a baseball player without a team. You might have a ball, a bat, and a glove, but your baseball’s not going to be real useful without other people. There really is no such thing as a meaningful spirituality outside of religion. I’m developing a series of sermons titled, “Spiritual and Religious.”

Religion is good. It refers to something productive and beneficial in society and in a person’s life. Religion offers a theoretical framework, or beliefs, to comprehend ultimate reality, a practical expression through religious gatherings and actions, and sociological structures through which the religious group relates to the broader social construct. 

Does religious participation make you happier?

Yes, according to Dr. William Sander of DePaul University, who carried out a meta-study of studies. He states: “Participation in religious activities is positively associated with higher levels of happiness.” 

What these studies reveal again and again is that religious participation, not just mere affiliation, is positively associated with happiness.

You can break down the population into three broad categories: Non-Religious; Religious Affiliation; Religious Participation. The non-religious are least happy. Those with some religious affiliation are happier. Those who regularly participate in religious activities are the happiest.

Why does religious participation contribute to happiness? There are four big reasons:

1. Meaning/Purpose of Life

If you think your life has meaning, if you believe your life serves a higher purpose, then you are much more likely to be happy. If on the other hand life has no meaning outside of the propagation of DNA, then happiness will prove illusive. If all life is only a random conglomeration of molecules, then there is no higher purpose of meaning to your life or anyone else’s life, for that matter. Religion offers a framework for understanding the meaning and purpose of your life, which leads to a deeper sense of happiness.

2. Relational Connection

One of the primary causes of happiness is investing in a network of healthy, positive, life-giving relationships. People who participate in religious activities have a built-in network for meaningful relationships. So, they automatically have a leg-up on the non-religious or the merely religious affiliated.

3. A Moral Framework for Virtues

Participation in religious activities encourages morally upright behavior. Morality is the substrate from which virtues rise. Virtues form the basis of character strengths. So, character strengths are grounded in a moral framework. Without a moral framework, it’s much more difficult to believe in and thus be motivated to pursue character strengths. Regularly engaging in activity that engages your strengths is another primary contributor to personal happiness. Religion offers a moral matrix in which to understand and evaluate your life. Without religion, there’s really no basis for morality. Secular humanists have attempted to promote a morality without religion, but none of their efforts has produced a coherent, convincing, and persistent system of morality. For humanists, it’s pretty much every person for themselves and that never ends well, morally.

4. Ultimate Happiness

Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth-century Dominican friar, philosopher, and theologian referred to what I’m labeling Ultimate Happiness as Perfect Happiness. This Perfect Happiness consists of wholeness, healing, reconciliation with God, and a home in God’s Kingdom for eternity. Aquinas taught that imperfect happiness could be obtained now, through knowing Christ and practicing a virtuous, godly life, but perfect happiness was only possible in the resurrection, when Jesus returns to establish the fullness of the Kingdom and the renewal of all things to fulfill the ultimate plan of God for his creation.

This perfect happiness, or ultimate happiness, has been initiated by the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, so that we who hope in Christ know that ultimate happiness lies in the future. We have hope, even in the midst of the fallen world, which most of the time doesn’t share our values and often actively opposes God’s will. We can experience a foretaste of this ultimate happiness now, in the present, as we find meaning and purpose in life, love of and for God, and the love of and for our fellow humans. because religious people, Christians specifically, believe in ultimate happiness, hope exists, and hope is necessary for psychological well-being.

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Check out the video here on the Cultivate Happiness YouTube Channel.

Less Screen - More Happy

Every time a new technology comes along, people freak out. They imagine all the potential ways this new technology can hurt them. We’ve been doing this for a long time.

When the printing press was invented and books became widely available for the first time, people feared this invention because they thought it might lead to information overload and the public would suffer with the confusing and harmful abundance of books.

The New York Times attacked Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone in 1877 for its invasion of privacy. Mark Twain was an early adopter of the telephone but he had declined to invest in the new technology, thinking there was no widespread market for it.

When electricity made it into homes, President Benjamin Harrison had White House staff turn the lights on and off because he was scared of being electrocuted.

When radio was invented, oh my goodness! There are electric waves flowing through the air!

This isn’t a fear of, but a massive underestimation of a new technology: “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” – Darryl Zanuck, CEO, 20^th Century Fox, 1946

Not too long ago people warned that cell phones would cause a massive outbreak of brain cancer because of the energy emanating from cell phones in the form of RF, or radio frequency waves. Lots of studies have been conducted, and, as a statement from the American Cancer Society demonstrates, there’s really no link between cell phones and cancer: “In summary, studies of [the effects of cell phone energy on people] published so far have not established a clear link between cell phone use and the development of tumors.” 

Here’s something, however, this is harmful about cell phone use, at least smart phones:

While having tremendous benefits almost too numerous to list, there is a major drawback to smart phones: the more time you spend looking at a screen, the less happy you will be. To state that positively, less screen = more happy.

These little devices can be so addictive! I own an iPhone 12 Pro. I really like it. It’s wonderful. I enjoy the screen, it has great reception, it’s super fast, the camera is amazing. I’m into technology. I also own a 2020 iPad and a new M1 MacBook Pro that’s the boss. I’m no Luddite.

What’s a Luddite? Glad you asked: “Luddite: (derogatory) a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.”

The term goes back to nineteenth century England. A radical group of textile workers took their name from a man named Ned Ludd, who was a weaver. They opposed the introduction of machines that they feared would replace their jobs. A major conflict arose that led to a rebellion that was ultimately suppressed by police and  the military. The term Luddite came to be used as a derogatory designation for a person who opposes the use of technology for whatever reason.

So, I’m not a Luddite. I quite enjoy new technology, even at times, just for new technology’s sake. I’m a true child of modernity.

Having said all of that, however, it’s obvious and measurable that less time on your smartphone, or iPad, or even computer, can contribute to your happiness, or psychological well-being.

Let’s jump into some statistics: A study published by the American Psychological Association in 2018 links increased screen time with lower levels of psychological well-being among adolescents. Those who spend less time in electronic communication were happier. As a teenager spends more time on screens, they decrease their happiness. Another study linked time spent online with less happiness.

Dr. Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University wrote a book titled, iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids are Growing up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood. She labels this new generation of young people iGen, obviously taken from the iPhone, iPad, etc. This is the Internet Generation.

She and her colleagues discovered that high school seniors spend, on average: 2 1/4 hours per day texting, 2 hours per day on the internet, 1 1/2 hours per day electronic gaming, and about a half hour on video chat. That’s a total of six hours a day, or 42 hours per week, or a full-time job tethered to a screen. Eighth graders, on average, spend 5 hours per day or 35 hours per week on screens. That’s a lot of time.

As young people spend all this time on smartphones, they’re spending less time reading books, less time reading magazines and newspapers, they’re also watching less television, which is probably a good thing, but the problem is they also spend far less time in face-to-face conversation with actual human beings.

Twenge demonstrates that from the 1990s, teens had been tracking upward in the percentage of those who considered themselves “very happy.” However, since 2011, that percentage has sharply declined. Along with this decline, the number of twelfth graders who are satisfied with their lives as a whole and with themselves has  declined even more sharply. During the same period, since 2011, the percentage of teens who feel lonely “a lot of the time” has sharply increased.

Guess what happened in 2011? That’s when we looked up from our own phones are realized just about everyone around us has a phone in his or her hands.

It’s a really destructive formula: More screen time + less in-person social interaction + less physical activity = more loneliness + less happiness + more anxiety + more depression.

Adults aren’t out of the woods. They, too, are spending a disproportionate amount of time on their phones. The typical adult spends around 4 hours per day on screen time. That’s 28 hours per week.

I find it amazing that as technology companies like FaceBook, Twitter, Google, and Apple dream up new ways to keep us glued to our screens, the executives in this industry admit they limit screen time for their own children. They’re busy selling you on how great it is to spend time on your phone or tablet while at they guard their own children from the deleterious effects of screen time.

Here are some tips for limiting screen time so you can spend more time maximizing happiness. We all need to develop structures and habits in your life to limit screen time.

Make a phone garage, a place to put your phone when you want to separate yourself from it so you can focus on other, more productive things, like relationships or reading.

When out with your friends, put your phone on airplane mode. It’s a great way to make sure you’re not getting buzzed with notifications when with your friends. You can still use your phone for taking pictures, etc. but it won’t be a distraction during conversations.

Get a hobby that doesn’t include your phone. The options are limitless. What do you enjoy? What are you good at? How can you tap into your creativity? Doing so might expose you to a greater circle of acquaintances and potential friendships.

Block out time on your schedule for phone-free study or focus or whatever keeps your attention. Take time for activities and adventures that prove more life-giving than simply staring at the latest fashion on Instagram or the silly video on Tik Tok.

There’s a great big world outside your phone. Phones are terrific tools for communication but they’re lousy masters.

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Check out the Video Version Here: Cultivate Happiness YouTube Channel

How to Make Happiness Work for You

In my last post I wrote that happiness is hard work. It is. So, today I’m going to share with you how to work hard to make happiness work for you and in you and even, dare I say, through you!

First, I want to start out with this amazing quote from Dr. Martin Seligman. He carried out tons of groundbreaking work on a newish field of Psychology that studies human flourishing, called Positive Psychology. Seligman wrote

“The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who in the middle of great wealth are starving spiritually.” 

That’s powerful. Many people believe happiness is just something that’s owed to them, it’s in the Declaration of Indepence after all??!? Isn’t it one of those unalienable rights God gives us? No, but according to Jefferson and others, the “pursuit of happiness” is. You’re free to pursue happiness. You’re not guaranteed happiness. To make happiness work for you, you’re going to have to work for it. It’s not automatic. There are no shortcuts.

Here are three ways to pursue happiness:

1. Simply Your Life

Madison Avenue is paid billons each year to convince you that your life is lacking, your life is missing something, your life can never be complete unless and until you purchase their clients’ products or services. They used to be limited to newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and billboards. Those were the primary conduits of the consumer culture. But now we carry these marketing machines around in our pockets.  We have tablets, we use computers every day for hours on end, and Madison Avenue, and now Silicon Valley ingeniously tracks you in order to sell you. So many distractions, so many messages about what you must have in order to be happy. It’s mind bogglingly complex. When life gets cluttered with things and messages about more things it grows increasingly challenging to just be. Just be happy. Just be content. Just be human, not the consumer robot the world wants to convert you into being.

The first strategy to make happiness work for you is to simplify your life and focus more on what’s going on on the inside. Turn off the phone. Put away the tablet. Close the computer. Shut down the streaming service. Relax. Pray. Get in touch with God. Invest in relationships. Chill. Actually, these can all be strategies in and of themselves, but as long as your brain is inundated with messages telling you you can’t be happy without that next widget, then it’s going to be difficult to work on happiness. So, simplify.

 2. Pursue Your Strengths

Self-awareness is generally a good thing. Learning about your talents and “potential strengths” is a good way to understand what makes you tick and what strengths to pursue. Strengths are associated with virtues. To develop strengths, you develop virtue. I posted video and blog post not too long ago on the subject of virtues, check it out. A happy life is a virtuous life, a life in pursuit of the good. A good life is a GOOD life, a life that makes the world a better place, a life that grows in goodness and godliness. Learning about how God wired you is one of the ways you can work with happiness to produce more happiness in and through your life. 

There are two main places to go to discover your strengths. One is the popular Clifton StrengthsFinder which you can purchase through the Gallup organization. This assessment is great for thinking about how your talents and strengths manifest in the workplace. The other, is the VIA Character Strengths Test through the Authentic Happiness website of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center. This test is free. There are a ton of other questionnaires on the UPenn site that can help you understand where you are and even track your progress toward subjective well-being, as the psychologists like to call it.  By the way, I’m not selling anything. These are resources I’ve personally used in my life and in coaching others to grow their sense of happiness and well-being.

3. Invest in Others

Invest in others. That’s the third way to pursue happiness. When you invest in the lives and happiness of others, it helps you cultivate your personal happiness. You anticipate your own happiness by putting it to work in the lives of others. One of the major detractors from happiness is an unhealthy focus on your self. Sometimes we call it naval-gazing or self-absorption, or even narcissism. In our consumer culture, we’re taught this way of being. “Have it your way. It’s all about you. You deserve the best. You, you, you.” A me-focussed life is counter-productive. It’s a way to pursue happiness that never works. Actually, the me-focussed life is always guaranteed to produce the opposite of happiness. It’s one of the great challenges of modern life. When you’re taught from childhood the world revolves around you, and then you experience real life, reality teaches some hard lessons. The sooner you learn the lesson, the better off you’ll be, that you’re not the center of the universe. One of the key tenets of the Christian faith is that of self-sacrifice. The path to happiness and wholeness, the way to the blessed life is to be a blessing to others. 

So, do it. Volunteer. Get involved. Serve through your church. Find an organization that’s making a difference for the least, the last, and the lost, and join them in that work.

President John F. Kennedy got it so right! “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Yes! Get the focus off you and start making other people’s lives better. You’ll be amazed as to how that transformation of perspective helps form and maintain happiness.

Okay, that’s three. When I started working on this post, I was going to share five ways, so I think I need another to fill out the rest. Check back soon for more ways to put happiness to work in your life.

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Check out the Video Version of this post.

Does God Care If You're Happy?

Does God care if you’re happy? Looking around the interwebs I find tons of secular resources on happiness. We need more Christian voices out here. The problem is that when the topic of happiness comes up, lots of Christians believe happiness and godliness don’t go together. Why the disconnect between happiness and the Christian life? Perhaps it’s a reaction against the individualistic and self-centered nature of contemporary culture. Whatever the reason, much anti-happiness rhetoric comes forth from Christian sources.

I recently read in a devotional the statement,  “God’s gift isn’t superficial or temporal happiness.” I agree, true happiness isn’t superficial, it runs deeper. However, I strongly disagree with the idea that God’s not concerned about our temporal happiness. That means happiness right now, in the state we’re in prior to the return of Christ and the fullness of the Kingdom. No doubt God wants you to be happy and joyful in eternity, but that doesn’t mean he does not care about your happiness right now. He cares.

God cares because he loves you and wants you to live a deeply fulfilling, meaningful, flourishing life. Also, I believe sour puss Christians just aren’t good witnesses for Christ. So Christians ought to be happy and actively pursuing happiness.

I’ve seen multiple sermons titled: “God Doesn’t Care about Your Happiness.” or something close to this. On a Christian Blog I read a post titled: “Why God Doesn’t Care if You’re Happy.” That’s really a weird thing to say, when you think about it. Jesus says our earthly fathers want to give us good things. If our earthly fathers, who are far from perfect, want to give us good things, then how much more does our heavenly Father give good to those who ask? God wants to fill your life with goodness.

Healthy earthly fathers who love their children want them to be happy, even if they don’t fully understand happiness. How much more does the Heavenly Father who knows you better than you know yourself, desire your happiness?

When I look for resources pertaining to the flourishing life and how to live it, I find all kinds of material in secular sources like University of Pennsylvania, Yale, and many private organizations sharing help from Positive Psychology and philosophy about happiness and human flourishing. There are very few, however, talking about the spiritual aspects of emotional well-being or the religious background of Positive Psychology. There is a religious background, by the way. It’s a rich history.

All truth is God’s truth. The discoveries of Positive Psychology are what the Bible has taught for millennia. The flourishing life, the abundant life, what we often refer to as happiness, is an important subject in the Scriptures. That’s why it puzzles me when Christians say things like “God doesn’t care about your happiness.” I believe this is a false statement, one that leads people to a less-than life, a life with less joy, less meaning, less fulfillment than God intends for his children.

One of the main reasons Christians say, “God doesn’t care about your happiness, but he does care about your holiness” is that many fail to understand the proper definition of the words happiness and holiness. Christians are apt to make this error because much of what passes for “happiness” in popular culture is vacuous. So many pursue happiness poorly, ending in less-than happy, less than meaningful and fulfilling lives.  Often what our Western, radically individualistic, self-centered culture holds up as happiness has no hope of empowering people to actually live happy lives.

Pastors, preachers, and Bible teachers are often reacting against a misinterpretation of happiness and avoid the topic altogether, or they hold up a straw man argument only to knock it down, not realizing they’re missing God’s good intention for happiness, wholeness, peace, joy, and love that God desires for people of faith.

So, let me get back to my original question: Does God Care If You’re Happy? Yes. God cares if you’re happy. As a matter of fact, God wants you to be happy. The whole of the Scriptures point to this truth, that happiness is the desirable state of humanity. Because of the Fall, human rebellion, and brokenness, happiness became illusive as human affections and desires have been twisted and misaimed. This doesn’t change God’s original intention. You can discover and live happiness through grace. You were created to know and experience a flourishing life, the absolute best life you can live, and God, indeed, wants that life for you.

There are an abundance of places in Scripture where we see this played out in the narrative, but I want to just point out one for you here, and it comes from the words of Jesus, himself. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:10-11 ESV). Jesus presents himself as the Good Shepherd, picking up on Old Testament imagery of God as the Shepherd and God’s people as the sheep, think Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd…”

The word translated as “abundantly” could also be translated as “over and above,” “extraordinary,” or “greater.” Jesus says he came that you might have greater life, an extraordinary life, an abundant life. God desires your life to be full, meaningful, blessed, and flourishing. God offers more than mere survival. He created you to thrive.

Does God care if you’re happy? Yes. He cares and he’s intervened in on your behalf to offer this life through Christ. 

In later posts I’ll tackle just exactly what is true happiness according to Scripture. I’ll deal with the question, “Knowing God wants you to be happy is it sinful to be unhappy?” There are more questions and angles from which to understand this happy, blessed, fulfilling life God desires for you and how you can live it now and into eternity.

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A video version of this post is here.

Upping Your Optimism Game

It’s amazing to reflect on some of the latest findings about how our brains function. You’re brain is sort of like the wiring in a house. Habitual thought-patterns make physical changes in your neural pathways and you become set in your way of thinking and perceiving the world. That’s kind of the bad news if you’re a persistently negative, the cup’s half-empty, pessimistic person. But there’s really good news: those pathways are pliable. You can rewire your brain by intentionally altering the way you think about yourself and the world in which you live.

There are physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational benefits to becoming a more optimistic, more positive person. These all contribute to your sense of well-being and happiness. There are five practices to boost your optimism I want to share with you.

1. Practice Gratitude

Optimism is future-oriented, so why am I talking about gratitude? Isn’t gratitude more about reflecting on the past? Well, developing an attitude of gratitude about the past helps grow your optimism for the future. How you perceive the past influences how you perceive the future.

Your brain lays down circuitry, complex neural pathways based on the habitual ways you perceive your experiences. When you adopt a complaining, victimhood, grievance mindset and choose to ruminate on past problems, that way of thinking colors the way you think about the present and the future.

A perpetual victimhood mindset disempowers your ability to make positive choices. If everything is and alway has been terrible and there’s nothing you can do about it, then you’ll be doomed to a life of negativity. The flourishing life you really want to live will always be out of your grasp because you empowered others and circumstances to choose how you feel. You’ve given away your autonomy, your power to choose.

What you want to do is choose to reflect positively on your past. Reflect on those people and situations that were a blessing. Cultivate gratitude for the good. You definitely want to acknowledge the challenges you overcame, the obstacles you sidesteped, and then think about the people who were there for you to light the way. Be thankful. Ruminate on good things.

Do you know where we get the word “ruminate.” It comes from the farm. Cows chew their cud. That’s to ruminate, to chew on something. They chew on it in order to extract every last bit of nutrition so they can be healthy. You want to ruminate on things that bring you health. Gratitude helps build a healthy, positive sense of your past and of you.

You may have made some real numbskull, destructive decisions in your past. Be thankful you’re still here, that you didn’t totally blow it, that you have the ability, now, to avoid some of the bad choices you’ve made before.

As you look back with gratitude, it helps shape a more positive, optimistic sense of the future.

2. Be Future-Oriented

I’m not a historian, but I’ve studied a lot of history and to this day I read history. I think history’s important. Understanding the past, what happened, why things happened the way they did, enables us to understand the present and helps us prepare for the future. 

There are great benefits to reflecting on your personal history, on comprehending why you did what you did, why you responded to circumstances in your life the way you did. How those responses and activities were helpful or a hinderance to living a fulfilling, happy life.

But, saying all of that, I want to remind you the bulk of your mental energy needs to be focussed on the future if you want to develop a more optimistic attitude.

What are the personal consequences in the future to the action I’m taking right now or the attitude I’m adopting in the present? A future-orientation benefits you in the future.

I love that song from the musical, Annie: "The sun'll come out/Tomorrow/Bet your bottom dollar/That tomorrow/There'll be sun!"

This may be an overly simplistic attitude for some circumstances and situations, but be careful you don’t make the opposite mistake and make things too complicated. The reality is that you have the power to make tomorrow better than today based on the choices you’re contemplating right now about your actions and, especially, your attitude.

Learn from the past, but lean into a positive, optimistic future. This naturally flows into the third practice:

3. Focus on what You CAN Do

I had a really annoying teacher in elementary school who, in response to a student saying “I can’t” would always say, “You’re an AmeriCAN not an AmeriCAN’T!” If she said that once, she said it a hundred times.

Well, you can’t do everything, but you can do some things. And focussing on what you can do makes a big difference.

In mathematics there’s the concept of Set and Subset. A set is a collection of things, numbers, objects, whatever. A subset is a smaller collection of things, which are all part of the larger set.  Think about dogs, all dogs, that’s a set. There are different subsets. Chihuahuas represent a subset of the set, dogs. All Chihuahuas are dogs, but not all dogs are Chihuahuas. Chihuahuas represent a subset of the set containing all dogs.

There’s a Set of “Things I Care About” and a Subset of “Things for which I’m Responsible.”

The number of things I care about is larger than the things I’m responsible for. I care about the choices my adult children make. I’m not responsible for them. I have some influence, but ultimately, they make the decisions. I care, but I’m not responsible. My adult children’s choices are in the set of things I care about, but not in the subset of things for which I’m responsible.

I am, however, responsible for my own choices. I’m responsible for what I eat, whether or not I exercise, what I take into my brain through television and the internet, the people with whom I choose to spend my time. These things are in both the set of things I care about and the subset of things I’m responsible for.

If you stay focused on stuff that matters to you, that you care about, but don’t really have responsibility for, well, you can get frozen and do nothing, or get frustrated because all your mental energy isn’t helping, or lapse into a victimhood, negative, pessimistic mindset. 

What are you actually responsible for? What can you influence? Where can you make a difference? That makes up the subset of the things you can do, and you need to do the things you can do, not worry about the things you can’t.

4. Combat Negative Thoughts

Mindfulness is the art of being aware of your inner dialogue. Each of us has an inner dialogue that runs through our waking hours. This self-talk has a much to do with whether we’re optimistic or not. Lots of negative thoughts about yourself, your companions, and the world, will naturally lead to a more pessimistic mindset, and to a less-than-happy experience of life.

Pay attention to your thoughts. Does your mind tend toward negative explanations for what’s happening or positive? For instance, you text a friend and there’s a delay in response. Negative explanations may sound like this: “He doesn’t like me,” or “She never answers back in a timely manner,” or “I don’t really matter to him.” 

Those negative thoughts can snowball into a negative mindset, which leads to pessimism. Instead of evaluating your circumstances negatively, combat those negative thoughts with something more positive or neutral. 

“He might be on a call;” “She may have silenced her phone.” or “He’s in the middle of something, he’ll get back to me as soon as he can.” 

When you have a negative thought, you want to challenge it and substitute a better thought. Consider a student faced with a bad grade. They could say, “I’m stupid,” or “I’ll never do better than this,” or “I just don’t have what it takes.” These three explanations are almost certainly untrue, but if you say them to yourself and believe them, they may devolve into a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. 

It’s best to combat those negative thoughts and provide a substitute: “I didn’t get much sleep before that test. I’ll do better next time.” Or, “I find this subject challenging, I can seek out some extra help.” 

You’re not a bad person because you thought a negative thought, but you also don’t have to believe that thought. You can dispute it and substitute something more positive and become a more optimistic person.

5. Consider Your Friends and Co-workers

With whom do you spend most of your time? It turns out that optimism (and pessimism) is contagious.

Take notice of the people you’re around. What’s their outlook? How do they deal with adversity? Listen to them describe life and circumstances. How is this person’s optimism or pessimism affecting you? 

Just as you combat your own negative thoughts, you can combat the negative expressions of others. Now, it might not be helpful to do this out loud. I mean, you’re not looking to get into an argument. If your friend says something like, “Nothing ever goes my way!” You can simply dispute that in your own head, “That’s not really true, they just got a new job, or they’ve overcome similar problems in the past.” You may want to share more positive thoughts in subtle ways, it can help. 

There are, however, some people to whom you’ll want to minimize your exposure. The toxic negativity of some of your friends or co-workers can be a serious drag on your efforts at becoming more optimistic. At least, for a season, while you build up your positive thoughts, emotions, and optimism, you may want to invest more time in people who are positive, allowing their good vibrations to rub off on you.

These are five practices to boost your optimism. Developing an optimistic, future-oriented, outlook on life is one of the keys to cultivating happiness. I hope you can put one or more of these practices to use in your life and see some positive results.

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Check out the YouTube Video of this post here.

How to Be Happy(er) in a Pandemic

Can you be happy(er) during a pandemic? If you bought Zoom stock in January of last year, you’re probably feeling pretty good right now. However, money can’t buy happiness, so, is it still possible to be happy in the middle of a pandemic? The first vaccines are rolling out, which is great news! It’s still going to take a little while to make it to everyone and produce herd immunity. I’m afraid we’re in for a long winter with many of the same pandemic lockdowns we’ve been experiencing throughout 2020. How can you be happier facing the challenges COVID-19 creates? 

I’ll get into a more robust definition of happiness in a future entry, but suffice it to say, now, that happiness is another way of saying flourishing or well-being. A person who is truly happy is content and fulfilled in life. Another word for happiness is the word “blessed.”

So, how to be happy in a pandemic? It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s not impossible. Lots of factors contribute to happiness. Unfortunately, a pandemic creates real barriers. Take work, for example. One of the building blocks of happiness is regularly engaging in meaningful work that taps into your key strengths. If you’re out of work due to the pandemic, or your work is significantly reduced, well, that presents a problem.

Another area affected by the pandemic especially challenges you if you live alone: that’s relationships. If you’re a young and used to hanging out with friends on a regular basis, the closing or restaurants and bars can put a real dent in your sense of relational connectedness. If you’re a widow or widower accustomed to interacting with others at the senior center or church, the pandemic’s tossed all that into turmoil. 

Yes, there are very real challenges, but there are some positive steps you can take to help yourself live a richer, more fulfilling life, even during a pandemic.

Here are 5 Pandemic-Busting Happiness Activities:

1. Exercise. 

You don’t need a gym to exercise, regularly. A gym’s helpful, but not necessary. You just need a decent pair of shoes. Get out of the house and take a walk around the neighborhood. Don’t forget your mask in case you run into someone with whom you’d like to strike up a conversation. Conversation is another way to bolster your level of happiness, so be prepared. Exercise gets your heat-rate up and pumps oxygenated blood into your brain which is really, really good for your brain. Your brain loves oxygen! Studies show that a relatively small amount of walking every day boosts your mood and helps elevate your happiness.

2. Play Video Games. 

Now, this probably won’t be too helpful for the older set, so I’m adding a bonus at the end for you. Seriously, video games are a good way to get into a mindset known as flow. Flow happens when you engage in an activity that challenges you and keeps your mind occupied. Athletic activities, working puzzles, solving problems, and intriguing reading are among the activities that can induce flow. People sometimes refer to flow as “being in the zone.” During flow you’re totally focussed and often lose track of time. Playing video games can get your brain into flow. 

Now, to be sure, too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. So, be careful, but give yourself permission to indulge in a little Fallout or WOW or Animal Crossing, or whatever floats your boat. Within reasonable limits, video games are good for you, certainly better than the passive intake of other forms of entertainment like television or binge-watching old episodes of The Office.

3. Invest in Relationships. 

If you want to be happy, you’ll want to form and invest in deep, meaningful, personal relationships. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this has proven particularly difficult, especially for single people. Marriage provides a built in, full-time partner and companion in life. If you’re married, you’ll want to take advantage of the extra time with your spouse and be sure you’re putting in the effort to maintain a loving, supportive relationship. Whether married or single, with or without kids, relationships are vital to happiness. If you find yourself isolated and lonely, make the effort to connect with friends and family over FaceTime, Zoom, or Google Meet. You need intentional times of conversation and people with whom to share your life. This is where church small groups and Sunday School classes can be particularly helpful. You’ll want to make that extra effort, if nothing else, than to plan regular phone conversations so you can both give and receive the care and concern each person needs.

4. Make a Difference. 

Contributing to something bigger than yourself and your own happiness is a great way to actually bolster your happiness. Get your mind off you, your personal happiness (or sadness) and onto something, and, or someone else. Offering your time and energy to a worthy cause can help untold numbers of people and lift your sense of well-being as you make a difference. You can Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo volunteer opportunities in your area, you’ll likely find an aggregate website with multiple ways of connecting to a variety of organizations making a difference while keeping a safe distance and protecting everyone’s health.

5. Take a Break from Social Media.

 During the pandemic you may be tempted to spend more time indulging some of your unhealthier habits, like watching too much television, or investing an inordinate amount of time on social media. Social media has it’s place. It’s a good way to keep up with friends and family from a distance. Some people use social media as a communication tool. However, the pitfalls often outweigh the benefits. Overindulging in social media can lead to comparisonitis, a term coined by Windy Dryden, a cognitive behavioralist. Comparisonitis is a nasty form of envy that gets hold of you when you constantly compare your real life with the Photoshopped and filtered lives people post on social media. Most of your friends don’t post their bad-hair-days, their down days, their challenges. They post happy, beautiful, cheerful moments. When you compare your regular, everyday life with the super-duper-happy-oh-so-successful life they share on Instagram, well, you’re life comes out looking kinda sorry. Take a break. You’re not seeing reality on social media, just a slice of the pie. It will do your brain some good to get off that constant comparison treadmill. Read a book. Write a blog. Play with your cat. Do something besides staring at your phone.

Bonus: Begin a Gratitude Journal.

Every day set aside a time to be grateful. Some people find this a helpful evening activity. Reflect on the day behind you and write down five or six things for which you’re thankful. You don’t have to be creative and come up with five new things every day. The important thing is that you spend time reflecting on those things for which you’re thankful. “I’m thankful for my friends.” “I’m thankful for my job.” “I’m thankful for YouTube.” I’m thankful for my spouse, my kids, my dog, my cat… Whatever it is, be thankful. 

Regularly practicing gratitude is one of the most potent activities you can do to boost your sense of well-being.

I’m convinced we’re designed for happiness. We can live blessed lives. Thankfully, we have these positive ways to keep our minds occupied, our bodies moving, and our lives engaged, even during the lockdowns, the shutdowns, and isolation of this pandemic.

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Check out the Video Version of this Post here: Cultivating Happiness

Christmas: God's Search for Humanity

The 12^th century Buddhist poet, Saigyo Hoshi, wrote the following after a visit to a Shinto Grand Temple:

    God’s here?

    Who can know?

    Not I.

    Yet I sigh

    And tears flow

    Tear on tear.

The world longs to experience ultimate reality. People want to believe in and experience a being and power far greater than themselves. All human religions are merely the human search for God.

The Christian faith is radically different. We believe God searches for humans. God sent his only Son, Jesus, to become human so we could know him, experience his love, and know what it is to be truly human. The message of Christmas is the most needed message in the world today. We’re not alone. Life has meaning. There is a purpose driving our existence. There is One who loves us and has reached out to us that we might know and love him.

This Christmas, my prayer is that you would know Jesus and live in such a way that your words and actions help others know and experience God’s presence and grace.

Don't Bypass Advent

Years ago I was invited to preach a revival at Cadiz United Methodist Church. My father had served there beginning my senior year of high school. I stayed in Louisville to finish up school, but visited my parents and that church weekends and summers when I was in college. Cadiz is a charming town nestled in gently rolling hills of Western Kentucky. It’s famous for Broadbent Country Hams and crappie fishing on Lake Barkley.

When I returned to preach the revival I was surprised at the changes since my last visit. A bypass had been built, diverting traffic around Cadiz. No doubt, this bypass was convenient for folks traveling to the Lake Barkley Resort State Park and beyond. I couldn’t help but think, though, that travelers were missing something when they skipped around this picturesque community. Ah, progress.

I have to admit, I’m pretty happy about bypasses and interstate highways. Travel is much more convenient than in times past. But bypasses aren’t always good. Take the bypass around Advent on the way to Christmas. Nowadays, radio stations and marketers bypass not only Advent, but Thanksgiving, and even Halloween. I’m beginning to think we’re headed toward a never-ending Christmas shopping loop if the trend continues!

We risk two clear dangers in bypassing Advent. First, we miss out on Advent. Advent is a distinct season of the Christian Year with its own important emphases. Advent occurs at the darkest time of the year. Advent reminds us that the world is dark, and without Christ, hopeless. Just as Israel longed for the coming of the Messiah, so we long for his return to fully establish his Kingdom, so God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. We’re waiting for Jesus to return, but while we wait, there’s work to do.

Another risk of bypassing Advent is a cheapening of the Christmas celebration, itself. We’ve so commercialized the holiday as to nearly drain its Christian significance. Christmas is the celebration of the Incarnation, God-with-us, the Word become flesh to dwell among us. Gifts are associated with Christmas, but only because Francis of Assisi put the wise men in the nativity scene. They don’t really belong there. They came later. That’s Epiphany. The gift that really matters for Christmas is the gift of Jesus, God-in-the-flesh.

This year, especially this crazy year of COVID, don’t rush your celebration of Christmas. Hang out in Advent. That longing we all have for a better world, a world healed, a world made whole, is part of what we’ve been looking for all our lives. Jesus is coming. And when he does, we’ll celebrate and rejoice in God’s presence and peace.

Set Free for Freedom

A young couple goes to the church office to answer some pre-marital questions with the pastor. The young man, who’d never talked to a pastor before, was nervous, so the pastor tried to put him at ease.

When the pastor asked the question, “Are you entering this marriage of your own free will?” there was a long pause.

Finally, the girl looked over at the apprehensive young man and said, “Put down yes.”

Do we have free will, or are we just puppets of God, or fate, or of a cascade of electrical and chemical processes that originated with the Big Bang.

Is everything in life on a predetermined course, set off at the beginning of the universe? Is everything like the domino effect? Just a chain reaction reaching back to the recesses of the beginnings of time? Are we just players on a stage following someone or something? Do we have free will or not?

I think free will is important to consider when analyzing a person’s potential for wholeness. If it only comes down to God’s choice, and he’s given us no freedom in the matter, then there’s nothing much we can actually take charge of in order to make positive changes in our lives. If, however, God has endowed us with free will, then we can use that free will to make positive choices, responding to God’s gracious initiative, and impact our sense of wholeness, physical, emotional, and spiritual.

I want to dig in a little bit deeper than I was able to talk about in my sermon. 

The Fake News I addressed is the saying: “Everything Happens for a Reason.” This way of thinking is called Deterministic Fatalism. It’s a philosophy which teaches humans don’t have free will. Instead, everything is predetermined either by God or by fate, or simply genetics and biology. You don’t have control over anything that happens to you. You don’t have control over your choices. Think about it. A lot of what happens to you is the result of other people’s actions, but they don’t have free will because these happenings were predetermined. Thus, everything you do is also predetermined, so you have no free will.

When you think about this, it means you’re not responsible for anything that happens to you. You could blame the Universe, Fate, or God, or society, or your parents, your DNA, or whatever… anything but you because you don’t have free will.

In a way, a whole lot of what’s going on in popular culture today is related to this kind of worldview, a worldview of fate. Responsibility has been taken out of the hands of the individuals and posited somewhere else: the person’s family, their upbringing, the group to which they belong, their race, their gender, their national origin. Because this person is part of this disadvantaged group, they’re not responsible for their actions. People and society as a whole are now looking for any way of removing responsibility from the self and onto something else, something outside the self, something larger, possibly less personal, a force, impersonal injustice in the system, or simply fate.

But that’s not how the world works. Each individual person is is endowed with freedom to choose. You have free will.

A big influence on my own thinking on this is the Jewish psychiatrist and survivor of the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl’s parents, brother, and wife died in concentration camps. Before the war, he was a Freudian determinist who believed persons are slaves to their subconscious memories. His experiences in the concentration camps changed all that. He wrote:

“We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 

Humans do, indeed have freedom. We don’t have to automatically react to circumstances like an animal acts out of instincts. There’s something higher than the animals in our being.

In the Bible we learn that we are created in the image of God. People of faith have struggled to tease out exactly the Scriptures mean by this and there are a variety of responses. Most agree that at least part of the image of God is free will, as God is the most free being in existence.

John Wesley, in his sermon The New Birth talked about what it means for humans to be created in the image of God. He states there are three aspects, or facets, ways of understanding the image of God. We have been stamped with the natural image, the political image, and the moral image of God.

According to Wesley, the natural image of God includes “a picture of his immortality, a spiritual being endued with understanding, freedom of will, and various affections.” The political image implies that a human is “the governor of this lower world, having ‘dominion’” over the created order. The moral image implies we are created in “‘righteousness and true holiness.’”

Because of the Fall, the image of God was voided or decimated. Obviously humans aren’t by our current, fallen nature, moral beings. The image of God has been marred. But, because of God’s grace, a measure of that image is restored. This is what Wesley labeled “Prevenient Grace.” Through faith, we respond to that grace and we growth in grace, embodying more and more of what it means to be God’s creatures. The more mature we grow in grace and faith, the more like God we become,  and the more freedom we have. We exhibit greater degrees of righteousness and holiness because we are reflecting the character of God expressed through the image of God.

As God ministers his grace, we’re free to respond to that grace, which opens our lives more fully to his gracious initiative.

We do have free will, because of God’s grace. The question we must ask ourselves is, what will I do with my free will? Am I to choose to respond to God’s grace or will I fall away from God’s goodness and become a slave to sin? The choice is ours. We can join God in his mission of rescuing the people of the world, largely from themselves, from their abuse of their freedom, and help them discover the New Birth that Jesus Christ made possible, so they can be truly free. 

For freedom, Christ has set us free.

Photo by Julian Jagtenberg from Pexels