Thoughts on Happiness 3: The Wrong Diagnosis

“This is stagefright. I had it once during Lady Windermere’s Fan. The only cure is to go on stage and not be frightened.”

Up the Women S2 E6, ‘Panto’ (2015)

Apparently they get doctors to wear white coats and stethoscopes because it makes people feel trusting towards them, regardless of whether said white coats and stethoscopes are actually helping them do their job or anything.

Remember the ‘historical paramedics’ sketches that formed a memorable component of Horrible Histories’ excellent third series?¹ In these, some unfortunate modern-day person, having called an ambulance for an ill or injured acquaintance, is promptly greeted by versions of Mat Baynton and Jim Howick hailing from some bygone era, who are keen to employ their self-proclaimed medical expertise in aid of the invalid, but then again, equally keen to make themselves scarce as soon as the real paramedics show up. It’s a fun and fast-paced reworking of the earlier ‘Historical Hospital’ sketch series,² and manages to stand out as a highlight of the programme among some very stiff competition.

The significant feature of the ‘historical paramedics’ sketches insofar as concerns this post, nonetheless, is this: because the writers like to cram in as many entertaining historical cures as they plausibly can into the two or three minutes of the sketch’s duration – everything from swallowing live buttered spiders as a remedy for generic ‘sickness’, to wrapping a sweaty sock around the neck to deal with a cold – the historical paramedics often attempt to treat many more ailments than their reluctant patients are actually suffering from. They mistake a birthmark for a boil or wart; they yell in a lady’s ear only to conclude from her recoiling that she is suffering from earache; and they waste some while debating the exact nature of a supposed stab wound that turns out to be nothing more than the stain of a dropped strawberry-flavoured ice lolly.³ The historical paramedics’ cures all, of course, sound ridiculous to modern ears – that’s the heart of the comedy here – but on top of that, they sometimes exercise one of those ridiculous cures on a patient who isn’t even suffering from the affliction it’s intended to treat.

It’s one thing to be wrong about the cure. To be wrong about the diagnosis, however, is to make double the mistake: the chances of you picking the right cure for your condition when you haven’t even correctly identified what that condition is are doubtless very small indeed.

So yes, I’m swinging back round to medical analogies for the final post of this little series on happiness. Call last week’s a digression and this an expansion of the first, if you like. In that one I made the point that Jesus didn’t do what he did on our behalf in order that we might have a happier life, but rather in order that we might have life, full stop. Now I’d like to have a closer look at what some of the implications might be if we get that wrong.

I was once with a non-Christian friend at a church event whose dominant theme was stress. The teaching component consisted of a clip from an instalment of J John’s ‘Just 10’ series on the Ten Commandments, namely the one pertaining to the prohibition of work on Shabbat.⁴ At one point J John launches into a series of idioms describing the stressed-out situation that can be relieved by the rest found in Jesus:

“Do you feel like you’re ready to throw in the towel? Do you feel like you’re at the end of your tether? Do you feel like you’re a bundle of nerves? Do you feel like you’re falling apart? Are you at your wit’s end? Do you feel like resigning from the human race?”

 

Apparently the expression ‘throw in the towel’ comes from the practice of throwing a towel into a boxing ring to indicate that a contestant forfeits the match.

Before the clip was shown, we had been given a sheet of paper on which was printed a slightly adapted version of this list of idioms with some of the key words blanked out, as a little guessing game kind of thing. My friend frowned over ‘I’m a bundle of [blank]’ before eventually hazarding, “bundle of fun?”

The cure J John was advocating was to find rest in Jesus. All well and good. But the diagnosis that came out of the clip we saw (I don’t attempt here to deliver a verdict on the whole half-hour sermon) was being a bundle of nerves and so forth. And I don’t at all mean to say that Jesus doesn’t offer relief from the pressures and burdens of the world – come to him all who are weary and heavy laden, for he is gentle and humble, his yoke easy and his burden light⁵ – but that’s not the core of the reason we need him. Or do only those feeling stressed and deprived of rest – upset and deprived of happiness – need Jesus? In which case, what about those who don’t identify with that diagnosis? What about those who would describe themselves more as a bundle of fun than a bundle of nerves?

The stress thing is only one angle: far too often, I think, and in far too many ways, we as Christians like to try to tell the rest of the world how they feel. You’re stressed, we tell them, and you’re dissatisfied, and you feel this emptiness, this hole in your life, and you fear death, and you harbour regrets, and you worry that life is meaningless, and you’re not, at the end of the day, happy. And granted, for many people, one or more of these kinds of assertions is likely to be true – but others might turn around and say that they feel quite happy enough, thank you very much, and so whatever cure we’re offering, they don’t need it. They don’t suffer from the affliction we’re offering to treat. We’re about as much use to them as the historical paramedics are to their poor misdiagnosed patients.

Maybe we’re just afraid of the fire-and-brimstone stuff. Maybe we don’t like the idea of telling people that the reason they need Jesus is because without him they’re going to hell. And there’s absolutely grounds to try to be sensitive and gentle and winsome when we’re sharing the gospel, rather than just stating the facts of it in whichever rough-and-ready fashion takes our fancy.⁶ Still, if we end up taking that principle to an extreme where we obscure the diagnosis of the human condition, we may very well end up doing more harm than good. The diagnosis of the human condition being, of course, that before we trust in Jesus’ resurrection, we are, in spiritual terms, nothing less than dead. (And I don’t even have to quote Ephesians to prove it.)⁷

“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” – Genesis 2:16-17

“The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’ … Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live for ever – ’

therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.” – Genesis 2:12, 22-23

“For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” – 1 Corinthians 15:21-22

If the given diagnosis is anything less than spiritual death, then Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection make about as much sense for a cure as do buttered spiders or a sweaty sock. We do the unbelieving world a disservice, and our God a dishonour, when we imply that the diagnosis that warrants the cure of the cross is stressed-out-ness, or dissatisfaction, or unhappiness of whatever variety. And we shoot ourselves cleanly in the foot as far as our own proclamation of the gospel goes as well. Jesus came, as per John 10:10, that we might have life;⁸ anything less than that is not really the gospel. Granted, people might still think the cure sounds ridiculous if we explain the diagnosis rightly, but if we don’t do the latter, we make double the mistake, and leave a very small chance of anyone accepting the cure.

On which note, much as I know I tend as a rule to address my blog posts as if to fellow-believers, allow me to transgress that norm for a moment: if on the off-chance you’re reading this as someone who doesn’t know and love the Lord Jesus, then please know that, whatever I or anyone else may have implied in the past, the reason Christians think you need Jesus isn’t because you need to be happier. The reason Christians think you need Jesus is because you need to be alive – in a way that goes beyond the three score years and ten of earthly existence that you’ll manage to snag if you’re lucky (a mere blink of an eye in terms of eternity) – and because he’s the only one who can give you life.

The diagnosis is death. The cure is resurrection. Jesus has shown that it works. Come to him all you who are feeling weary and heavy laden – and come to him also all you who aren’t feeling particularly either. Come to him whether you’re a bundle of nerves or a bundle of fun. Come to him and rise from death – because without him, through our common ancestor Adam, all are dead. It’s one diagnosis and one cure for all, folks: come to Jesus.

Footnotes

¹ If not, here’s one to give you a flavour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZIMRVpKLFg. There was also one in Series 2, incidentally, as I learned here, https://horriblehistoriestv.wordpress.com/historical-paramedics/, but the majority were in Series 3.

² Featured in Series 1 and 2, and once in Series 3: https://horriblehistoriestv.wordpress.com/historical-hospital/.

³ I highly recommend Mary Berry’s no-churn ice-cream recipe, https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/no-churn_ice_cream_72012, though you’re better off freezing the finished product for two days than two hours.

⁴ The newest version of this sermon series was filmed at the out-of-town megachurch in my very own home city: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SerTk8VO-H0. The bit I reference is a couple of minutes from the end of the video.

⁵ This is the passage J John references in the bit of his talk immediately preceding the list of idioms, and it’s from the end of Matthew 11: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+11&version=ESVUK.

⁶ “Do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behaviour in Christ may be put to shame.” So said the apostle Peter on the subject: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter+3&version=ESVUK.

⁷ Here’s Genesis 2, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=gen+2&version=ESVUK, so you can just click across one page to the right for the following chapter; and here’s 1 Corinthians 15: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+cor+15&version=ESVUK.

⁸ This was the key Bible reference in my post two weeks ago. See also what a dear friend of mine has to say on the subject: https://www.exeterecu.com/#!Life-to-the-Full-Life-at-all/b4dab/56a9432f0cf22a80b02beb2a. Seriously worth reading.