Before we get to the spaghetti, just a word to let you know that Becky and I will be away for the next couple of weeks – a trip to Israel! “Observations” will be back when we are back

She is called Yale’s “Happiness Professor” and in addition to her immensely popular classes on the psychology of the good life offered at Yale, Laurie Santos hosts the “Happiness Lab” blog, looking at scientific research on happiness and offering tips on avoiding anxiety, negative emotions, and what she calls that “meh” feeling.

Professor Santos recently sat down for an interview with a New York Times reporter. Excerpts from the interview were published in this past Monday’s paper.

The reporter asked an interesting question, “A lot of stuff that we know can have a positive effect on happiness — developing a sense of meaning, connection with other people, meditation and reflection — are commonplace religious practices. How helpful are they outside religion?”

I found the happiness professor’s answer interesting, as well.

There’s a lot of evidence that religious people, for example, are happier in a sense of life satisfaction and positive emotion in the moment. But is it the Christian who really believes in Jesus and reads the Bible? Or is it the Christian who goes to church, goes to the spaghetti suppers, donates to charity, participates in the volunteer stuff? Turns out, to the extent that you can disentangle those two, it seems to not be our beliefs but our actions that are driving the fact that religious people are happier. That’s critical because what it tells us is, if you can get yourself to do it — to meditate, to volunteer, to engage with social connection — you will be happier. It’s just much easier if you have a cultural apparatus around you.

That social scientists find religious people to be generally happier than non-religious people is old news. And apparently the finding is true. But I think Professor Santos’ answer does social science a disservice.  She says it’s our spaghetti, not our creed that makes us happy. What we believe is just a crutch, a social apparatus. Why not skip the worship service and go straight to the potluck line?

Of course, happiness is not the goal of the Christian life, and there is a difference between happiness and joy, joy being among the fruit of the Spirit.  But happiness, even as the social scientists measure it, is a happy if not guaranteed consequence of the Christian life.  We give our money, volunteer our time, and seek the community found in a church basement not in pursuit of happiness, however, but because of what we believe about God and his claim on our lives.  As the Apostle John writes, we love because he first loved us.

Professor Santos would like to find a way to happiness that does not require us to go through faith in Jesus and knowledge of the Bible. Maybe she will.  But will she find the kind of meaning and purpose in her life that allows her to give her money and her time for the sake of others when both seem in short supply? Will she seek community when she is feeling negative or anxious or just plan “meh”?  Will she ever find herself unexpectedly, in C.S. Lewis’ words, surprised by joy?

I’m going to end with Professor Santo’s final words, and, frankly, it is thin gruel.

But before we do, and lest we assume the triumph of the Christian life too quickly, it seems to me that we must confess our Christian tendency to, in the professor’s word, disentangle faith and works; to disconnect word from deed.  Progressive Christians are rightly admonished for their tendency to think they can skip the sermon and go right to serving a just social cause in the name of Christ.  The name of Christ is forgotten soon enough.  But increasingly Evangelical Christians have tended to skip their Bible studies and have ignored sound teaching from the pulpit in order to join partisan political movements that betray both the holiness and the justice of our calling to follow Jesus.

The happiness professor has discovered that happy people have a purpose in life, but, apparently, it doesn’t much matter what that purpose might be.  Here’s the thin gruel of her closing comments, “So what’s the answer? What’s the purpose of life? It’s smelling your coffee in the morning. Loving your kids. Having sex and daisies and springtime. It’s all the good things in life. That’s what it is.”

The parents of Yale students are paying $78,000 per year for their children to study in New Haven. I’m not sure they are getting their money’s worth.  I’ll take glorifying God and enjoying him forever; I’ll take doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with our God over morning coffee, sex, and daisies as the purpose of life any day.

For those of you not much involved in a church, let me tell you, it’s not the spaghetti that makes a difference.  It is the Gospel. It is a good news that is still good when the coffee is cold, when romance has died or is just not possible, when it’s the middle of winter and there’s not a daisy to be found.