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Buy the Book
Happiness Happens
Father Jonathan Morris’s new book will change lives.
God Wants You Happy: From Self-Help to God’s
Help
By Father Jonathan
Morris
(HarperOne, 224 pages, $24.99)
Books on happiness are notorious, both in their number and their difficulty to write. I know, because as an author on the history of happiness I read most of them over a ten year period in my academic days. Thus, I groaned a little when I received the new book from Rev. Jonathan Morris, a diocesan priest in New York City and analyst on Fox News, with the title God Wants You Happy.
However, Father Morris has succeeded where many others have failed, both in clarifying the much-abused notion of happiness and, more importantly, setting our natural desire for self-fulfillment firmly in the context of our, just as natural, search for God. His book is well-written, immediately engaging, and was for me, insightful and personally uplifting. I will return to it again and will be recommending it to all, but especially to those whose spiritual trials have made them squeamish about honesty.
Father Morris admits he passed through this trial himself. As a priest in the Legion of Christ he had to face disclosures about the private life of its founder Rev. Marcial Maciel that led him to leave his order.
I cannot tell this story without being overwhelmed by grief. Had I known as an idealistic young man of twenty-one that saying yes to God would mean to follow in the footsteps of a man some psychologists would later call a psychopath or sociopath.… I would instead have chosen suburbia and a white picket fence.”
Father Morris’s book is not about Maciel, and it is not an explanation of why he left the Legion of Christ. But, he candidly admits he could not write about spirituality “without opening my heart to you and showing how and why my soul moves as it does today.” I’m sure Father Morris struggled with a decision about whether or not to include a section on Maciel in his book, but he made the right choice — his willingness to place his struggle alongside those of the others he discusses, and the reader’s, saves his book from sounding like just another exercise of pious instruction.
At the same time self-help books have made millions for their authors and publishers they have been viciously and deservedly lampooned, no more successfully than in Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self Help Book (FSG, 1983). Percy, himself a Catholic convert, adopts the style of self-help to conduct the reader through a consistently humorous existential-semiotic-Augustinian self-examination.
Father Morris, however, uses the self-help mode in a straightforward way — without any sense of irony — in a way, I think, would earn Percy’s approval. Morris consistently makes reference to deficiencies of the American self-help tradition, as represented by Eckhart Tolle and others, while connecting its nuggets of common sense to a Catholic spirituality rooted in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.
Father Morris rightly characterizes self-help approaches to happiness as grounded in “feelings-based or consequence-based conceptions of love,” which in his view are doomed to failure in the long term because they are “divorced from God’s help.” What we, as human creatures, are called to is the more radical “disposition of living love.” Self-regarding conceptions of happiness actually encourage us to fixate on failures rather than move us forward toward the transformative process of our intellect being healed by faith, our fear, anxiety and shame healed by hope, and our self-centered will healed by the “living love” of charity.
This is what Father Morris means by what he calls “the Faith-Hope-Love-Cure” which is “valid for each and every one of us, no matter what self-destructive or self-limiting patterns we are struggling with.”
I was particularly struck by his treatment of hope as a way of healing our memory, allowing us “to move forward in confidence, despite our remembering our own many failings of the past, and how others have failed us in the past, because we know that God is all-powerful, is all-living, and will be faithful to his promises.”
This type of healing, however, makes great demands on us, for example, in our ability to forgive not just ourselves but others. Healing the memory requires in forgiveness that we give up all “just causes.” Forgiveness “is not a debt-reduction gimmick” but a “letting go of a just cause we rightly have against someone. It is burning the accounts-receivable file.”
The personal stories told by Father Morris to illustrate these concepts are quite memorable; some will undoubtedly bring tears to your eyes, as did that of Ana who had been married to Lionel for forty years. Lionel, an engineer for General Motors, was the kind of man who pursued precision in all things and was always seen with a jumble of writing and measuring instruments protruding from his pocket protector. When Lionel was suddenly let go by General Motors it was discovered he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and could no longer perform his job or keep track of the smallest things. Ana’s frustration with Lionel quickly turned to anger — “He was driving her nuts.”
As Father Morris tells the story, Ana came across verse 10:14 in the Gospel of Mark, “Let the little children come to me,” and it got her thinking in the middle of the night. The next morning Ana bought a bunch of colored markers — “because Lionel loves pens!” — and a whiteboard, which she mounted on the kitchen table. Using different colored pens she would outline each day’s activities from waking up and morning coffee through going to sleep. A friend of Ana’s made this comment, “You should see her now; it’s like they’re teenagers in love again. She treats him with such respect and dignity.”
As Morris puts it, as followers of Jesus we are “called to throw out every scale and balance in our relationships.” Ana could have continued stewing in her disappointment and resentment, but God showed her a way to accommodate her husband’s disability and rediscover the joy in their marriage.
About the Author
Deal W. Hudson was chair of RNC Catholic Outreach and is the author of Onward Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Threshold). He is president of Catholic Advocate in Washington, D.C.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (28) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Deal W. Hudson
More Articles From Buy the Book
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Dee See| 4.12.11 @ 7:12AM
BTW
Still absolutely NO SIGN of conscience, or even consciousness, from our Rockefeller infiltrated and corrupted clergy on the trifling issues
of MASS covert EUGENICS now calling the shots
of the Global Pillage ---UH, we mean Village.
--------------------NOT even a single high profile
peep!
NOTHING-------------------------------------------!!!!
Stormzeye| 4.12.11 @ 7:58AM
Does this site have an administrator? How can you let the non-sensical rantings of Dee See continue. He's sounding more like Charlie Sheen's guru everyday. BTW, removing the "reply" button was a big mistake and has resulted in disbanding a growing community of readers.
Ryan| 4.12.11 @ 8:51AM
No real problem with the article...but it has a problem in that it appears a non-Christian might have written it with very few differences.
If it doesn't address the Gospel in our happiness, what's the point?
I would recommend John Piper's "Desiring God: Confessions of a Christian Hedonist" for a similar perspective.
And bring back the reply button!
Truth is King| 4.13.11 @ 9:06PM
The same Piper that recently compared the burning of the koran to crucifying Christ?
David T| 4.12.11 @ 10:11AM
I haven't read this book, but I've read others by Fr. Morris . He's a clear, cogent writer with a simple theme: Focus on God, not yourself.
Ryan--Please don't take offense, but I've read Piper and found him to be muddled and confused and self-absorbed, a microcosm of U.S. evangelical Christianity. Thanks to writers like Fr. Morris--Scott Hahn, Peter Kreeft, Patrick Madrid, Stephen K. Ray, and, of course the majestic philospher-pope Benedict XVI--I left Reformed Protestantism for the historic faith of the Catholic Church.
Ryan| 4.12.11 @ 10:21AM
I'm not so sure that "self-absorbed" describes Piper much at all; I would almost state the opposite, that he attempts to be "God-absorbed."
He can get occasionally confusing at times - some of the stuff that he writes is occasionally pretty heavy, but he's actually one of the main reasons I hold a Reformed viewpoint - pointing out scripture and helping to maintain the central aspect of the Gospel.
aj| 4.12.11 @ 10:21AM
Our happiness is vastly over-rated. The Creator's first priority is His own glory. If that notion offends your egocentric sensibilities you need to do some serious thinking.
In the process of magnifying his own glory He is less concerned about our 'happiness' ('happy' appears a few times in the KJV) than our joy (which appears many more times).
It isn't about us. As the WCF Shorter Catechism says:
Q1: What is the chief end of man?
A1: Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.
Ryan is right to recommend Piper.
Jim| 4.12.11 @ 12:54PM
I've not read the Piper book mentioned above, but I've read others of his and perspicuity is not his strong point. Unless one intends to write for "professionals" in whatever realm, a book should be easily understood (for the most part.)
Ryan| 4.12.11 @ 1:59PM
Desiring God is probably the book that is the core of everything else that Piper does outside of the Bible.
For aj, I think you need to be careful there - you're coming close to not quite explaining that position enough.
God desires that we find our happiness IN HIM - because we search automatically for that which makes us happy. His Glory is found when we seek to find our happiness in that which is the Greatest thing we can find - God.
PJ| 4.12.11 @ 2:15PM
Ryan,
Your last paragraph is a perfect & clear summary on Judeo-Christian happiness. I bet you are not too far from the kingdom of God! (assuming you believe & practice what you write.)
mames| 4.12.11 @ 2:31PM
A decidedly non Christian view of life. First of all man does not seek God, GOD SEEKS MAN. (spiritually blind, dead, enemies do not seek God nor do they have the ability) The "father" might understand that if he studied The Scriptures in context for even a short time. Secondly in life all happiness is fleeting, we are to cultivate JOY which finds its comfort in Gods love for us in Christ in the midst of a sinful world in which we are pilgrims for a very short time. Our JOY comes in knowing who we are, who God is and everything in the context of eternity with Him. "happiness" is for sissies. Joy is not found in navel gazing monasteries either, it comes by focusing on Christ. 'Sorry to sermonize but you brought it up!
mames| 4.12.11 @ 2:37PM
After reading this article again I am not sure what "god" the father is talking about. It is a god not found in scripture.
KyMouse| 4.12.11 @ 3:00PM
I have heard Jonathan Morris a number of times on Fox, and have been disappointed to hear him say in various ways that personal faith (obedient trust) in Jesus is not necessary for salvation. Most recently, I heard him indicate that salvation is available to Muslims. Islam denies (among other things) that Jesus is God and the Son of God, that He died on the cross, that He paid for all of the sins of those who trust in Him, and that He was resurrected.
I believe the Bible, in which Jesus says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life...He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God" (John 3:16, 18).
True happiness begins with being born again (John 3:3,5) through repentance and obedient trust (faith) in Jesus. Being born again does not come about through membership in any particular church or denomination, including the Catholic Church. God's grace is directly available to everyone who trusts in Jesus, and is not dispensed through any institution, including the Catholic Church. And there is no mediator, including Mary, between God and human beings except Jesus (I Timothy 2:5).
The Bible should never take second place to church teaching or tradition. I'll start listening to Jonathan Morris when he agrees with that.
PJ| 4.12.11 @ 6:19PM
Why don't you read from an authoritative source, like the Catholic Catechism, about Catholic Church beliefs, before commenting incorrectly about it?
Tony in Central PA| 4.12.11 @ 10:01PM
A couple of points, KyMouse. Salvation is available to everybody, including Muslims. You will find that the Catholic view of salvation is only through Jesus Christ and requires one's continual cooperation. The sacraments are channels for grace instituted by God for the benefit of human faith. Catholicism teaches that Jesus takes away our sins, not our free will.
This is very different from what I have heard from many of the " born - again " authorities, who claim salvation results from a one - time profession that apparently takes place on mainly an emotional level. This doctrine is based upon an erroneous interpretation of Jesus' explanation of baptism. It is very appealing because of its apparent ease and simplicity. I think it can also be a very dangerous belief in that it could cause somebody to see their own sins as inconsequential.
As far as the Bible, it was born from the Church. We didn't have it until the 5th century. Catholics consider the Canon of Scripture sacred, but it certainly did not exist since the beginning of the Church in its current form. I challenge you to attaned a Mass sometime and you may be utterly shocked by the amount of Bible you encounter, not just in the readings but also in the liturgy. Having attended both Catholic Masses and a variety of Protestant worship services over many years, I can tell you there's a lot more Bible in the average Mass.
Ryan| 4.13.11 @ 8:10AM
I actually somewhat agree with your middle paragraph, to a point. I think that too often we Protestants can over-simplify salvation to an experience, and not relate it to Justification (the act of being made right with Christ) and Sanctification (the process/work of being made LIKE Christ).
Truth is King| 4.13.11 @ 3:14PM
"the " born - again " authorities, who claim salvation results from a one - time profession that apparently takes place on mainly an emotional level. "
And who is the born again Authority?
"Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." Nicode'mus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Jn. 3:3-6.
Tony in Central PA| 4.13.11 @ 8:03PM
If all that was necessary was a profession of faith, why did Jesus and the Apostles baptize people ?
Truth is King| 4.13.11 @ 8:35PM
"Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Acts 2:38.
Repentance, then baptism.
And Jesus also has another requirement for entering into His Kingdom:
"Then Jesus said to the Jews having
believed into Him, If you continue in My
Word, you are truly My disciples.
And you will know the truth, and the
truth will set you free." Jn. 8:31 & 32.
Truth is King| 4.13.11 @ 9:22PM
"The sacraments are channels for grace instituted by God for the benefit of human faith."
FALSE.
"For the Law was given through Moses,
but Grace and Truth came through Jesus
Christ." Jn. 1:17.
"As far as the Bible, it was born from the Church."
FALSE.
It was "born" from God. Men put together the books, and the Catholic Religion didn't even exist. And in fact, they added to it later books that were NOT intended.
GENE HAUBER| 4.12.11 @ 3:26PM
The only self-help book for salvation is THE BIBLE.
There is only ONE RISEN LORD and that is JESUS, THE SON OF GOD, as professed in the old testament of THE BIBLE.
Christianity has the ONLY Lord that has risen from the dead........THE ONLY ONE! This needs to be understood for your own salvation.........no one else has risen from the dead, MUCH LESS MOHAMMED.
When ALL reason fails us...., we must turn to faith, the faith given to us by Jesus that we will be saved and taken to Heaven simply because we believe that He, Jesus, gave His life on the cross to save us from the everlasting suffering of the fires of HELL.
I, NOR NO ONE, HAS PROOF OF THIS EXCEPT FOR THE WORDS OF JESUS HIMSELF. THAT IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME..........I DO NOT DOUBT!!
Truth is King| 4.12.11 @ 5:27PM
Let's go to the Bible for God's views on the subject of how to be happy:
"If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off for ever." 1 Ch. 28:9.
"The Hand of our God is for good upon all that seek Him, and the power of His wrath is against all that forsake Him." Ez. 8:22.
"Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with their whole heart.." Ps. 119:2.
"And without faith it is impossible to please Him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek him." Heb. 11:6.
"Thou hast said, "Seek ye My face." My heart says to Thee, "Thy face, LORD, do I seek." Ps. 27:8.
"..for the joy of the LORD is your strength." Neh. 8:10.
"Look to Him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed." Ps. 34:5.
"For all the promises of God find their Yes in Him. That is why we utter the Amen through Him, to the glory of God." 2 Cor. 1:20.
"Therefore put away all filthiness and rank growth of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls." Jas. 1:21.
Tina B| 4.12.11 @ 6:26PM
Personally, I'm hooked on "Seek ye first . . ." and "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart," because your desire IS Him, and He gives Himself to you!
This was hard to imagine when I was young, single and stupid, but very much a promise constantly fufilled in my life today.
Aaron| 4.14.11 @ 4:14AM
This is a questionable topic for Morris to explore:
His (and mine) Legionary formation meant that he had to SMILE and show a pleasant demeanour all the time because a legionary face belongs to others and he should NEVER show the true state of his inner emotions in his face.
Happiness was very much a prescribed recipe in the Leigon - we were taught what was appropriate happiness and what was not appropriate happiness, even how our laughter sounded was scrutinized.
We were controlled in our "happiness" and in our every emotion. In fact our LC vocation was nothing but happiness, because we were not allowed to see it in any other way.
Negative emotions (which may be normal, such as grief) were not allowed to be displayed and could only be shared with our superiors.
I believe that this is a serious deformation of the individual and is a harmful practise: thou shalt only be happy.
I am questioning Morris' ability to expound on happiness given his Legionary "formation".
Margie| 4.14.11 @ 9:58PM
Sounds like a horrible cult.
How would they explain what the God of the Bible says, when He says this, or possibly even understand it:
"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." Ecc. 7:4.
And this one:
"..and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him." Rom. 8:17.
Of course, our suffering is nothing compared to what the Christians of old had to go through, and is mostly the struggles that come from within~ those of resisting sin. We haven't yet resisted to the point of shedding our blood, as it's written.
Happiness is one thing, but real joy is something that doesn't come from finding anything from this world~ it comes from God's Spirit living inside of us and we have it because we serve Him.
"..for the joy of the LORD is your strength." Neh. 8:10.
Thank you, Jesus.
There's always hope in Him.
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