When learning I was attending the Third Annual Conference on Happiness and its Causes at Darling Harbour last month - spruiked as the leading forum on human happiness in the world - Christian friends gave me little encouragement:
"I want to be holy not happy"
"I'm too busy to worry about happiness"
"The Bible doesn't say much about happiness, does it?"
So what has happiness got to do with being a Christian? After enjoying a heady couple of days, I was left scratching my head.
Is seeking happiness self-defeating, like trying hard to get a good night's sleep?
And why were over 80 percent of those in attendance women? Aren't men interested in being happy?
Over 2,000 people attended the conference from a wide range of backgrounds. The speakers included an eclectic mix of experts on psychology, Buddhist luminaries, and a swag of prominent media personalities, including Wendy Harmer, Norman Swan, Steve Biddulph, and Michael Carr-Gregg. There was something for everyone: baffling science, profound insights, practical wisdom, cheesy asides, political correctness and much more.
To give one example, Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert argued that, contrary to popular opinion, children don't make you happy. He explained amusingly that we only think they do. Like Armani socks, they cost so much that we think they must be worth it. Like heroin, they do give pleasure, but only in a manner that severely curtails the rest of your life. And like a baseball game they provide moments of delight that make you forget the long stretches in between.
A range of definitions about what constitutes happiness kept the delegates guessing just how happy they were.
Dr Martin Seligman, a pioneer of positive psychology gave the fullest, defining happiness in terms of three things: positive emotion " the pleasant life; positive character " the engaged life; and positive institutions (clubs, churches) " the meaningful life. To Seligman at least, happiness is more than subjective wellbeing, but includes the experience of serving something bigger than yourself. The concept of happiness then overlaps with notions of life satisfaction and contentment.
Interestingly, holiness was never far from the discussion. This holiness was not the Christian sort, but in the frequent allusions to last year's main speaker, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The Rev Bill Crews, described by the Sydney Morning Herald as the token Christian on the platform, avoided any mention of God, preferring to speak of people thanking "Existence".
Jesus did appear, but only in a sentence comparing him to the Dalai Lama.
So does Christianity have anything significant to say about happiness? Are those ministers right who tell us that in the Bible love is not a feeling but an act of the will, joy is not an emotion but an attitude, peace is not a subjective experience but only an objective fact?
On the other hand, does "blessed" " as preached by Jesus most famously in his Sermon on the Mount - mean happy? And is God the happy God, as C.S. Lewis believed?
Furthermore, if money can't buy happiness, as all speakers insisted, why do most people still seek it as if it does?
Part of the Buddhist answer is to be free of desire. So is self-denial and taking up one's cross the Christian response?
I wonder if the redirection of desire is also part of the answer.
It seems strange to suggest that Christians ought not to expect to be happy. If the happy life is about purpose and meaning, don't Christians have something important to say?
In my view Christianity has more to say about happiness than many of us seem to think.
Dr Brian Rosner teaches New Testament and Ethics at Moore College.
