In a comprehensive new study of happiness for the everyday Christian, Andrew Wilson weaves Biblical, theological, philosophical, psychological, and sociological methods to answer six major questions about human flourishing in our broken world. In these two extracts, he explores what joy is, and how time can affect our happiness levels.
Human beings have complex emotional lives, and it is very common for us to experience (for example) deep happiness and shallow unhappiness at the same time.
Yesterday, I came home to discover that our kitchen was freakishly cold and the heating was not working. I pressed buttons. Nothing happened. I asked everyone in the family if they had fiddled with the unit. Nobody had. I rang a helpline to see if there was an easy fix. There wasn’t. I expostulated in frustration, lamented my lack of technical ability, complained that things like this always happen at the coldest point of the winter, went in search of suitable screwdrivers, expostulated in frustration again, and eventually found the source of the problem: a fuse unit that had turned to charcoal. I huffed and puffed about the expense and inconvenience of having to call an electrician but eventually came to terms with the reality (which [my wife] Rachel had been pointing out for some time) that I was getting unduly worked up about an ordinary problem and I needed to get a bit of perspective.
We live in a culture of deception – so what?
The phrase "it does what it says on the tin" suggests transparency and, certainly, no surprises. But if you buy …