Happy Pills

My senior pastor presented a message tonight that has obliterated me. It was filled with gobs of information to download, but the biggest for me was a thought experiment.

If I presented you with a Matrix-like opportunity to choose from two pills, one that would make you eternally happy, and the other that would allow you to see truth, which would you choose?

A recent Newsweek article has raised questions about Americans and our incessant appetite for being happy. Americans seem to have collectively chosen happiness as a religion – so much so that we will take pills of happiness, spend our lives making resources to be happy, climb a ladder of success by stepping on others, ignore opportunities to grieve, and pretend sorrow is evil. Perhaps the mode of the day in this area truly is “ignorance is bliss.” The funny thing about ignorance is that it is an absence of knowledge, though if one is pursuing ignorance, it borders an attempt at delusion.

We have bought into a lie that by acquiring a nice house, decent vehicle, great clothes, etc, we will acquire not happiness, but something that resembles it: comfort. Americans are in love with comfort. Our entertainment dollars are being spent at a record pace to be “happy,” but it doesn’t seem to be working. Perhaps Nirvana wasn’t just singing about nonsense as some would suppose.

With the lights out its less dangerous
Here we are now
Entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now
Entertain us

 Perhaps UrbanDictionary’s main definitions of “happy” are indicitave of what we’re looking at:

•  A chemical reaction
• A feeling of contentment and peace, like you don’t need anything else.
• Happy plays the Camden family dog, also named Happy.
• what everyone wants to be without the aid of mind-altering substances

I see these and think to myself:

• Pills
• Eastern ideas of nirvana
• Yes, his name was happy
• Funny that a somewhat more realistic definition has fewer votes than the Camden’s pooch

Christians, that is, those who are supposing that they want to be like Christ, won’t be satisfied by happy pills. It is the pursuit of truth and grace that will bring something that isn’t “happiness,” but satisfaction.

Christ didn’t proclaim, “Come to me all you who are bored and unamused and I will give you pills of temporary forgetfulness.” We are fortunate that He is proposing that by losing your life, that is, your existence your way, you will gain your life and salvage yourself. Emptying your pill bottle (whatever that may be) will actually set you free to be.