{"id":12448,"date":"2010-05-01T06:36:28","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T11:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=12448"},"modified":"2010-05-01T00:36:59","modified_gmt":"2010-05-01T05:36:59","slug":"taking-happiness-at-face-value","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2010\/05\/taking-happiness-at-face-value\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Happiness at Face Value"},"content":{"rendered":"

“…wickedness never was happiness.” — Alma 41:10<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve only ever heard this phrase from the scriptures used as an encouragement toward righteousness — “if you are wicked, then you won’t be happy, so be righteous!” But reducing the scripture to a causal relationship like “if ( wicked ) then { not happy }” necessarily implies the contrapositive: “if ( happy ) then { not wicked }”.<\/p>\n

Both of these readings reduce the rich context of the passage to a logical proposition, and these sorts of shallow reductions don’t often translate well to the complexity of real life. Even so, I think it’s worth considering the passage from both directions. I can’t tell how often I’ve heard said at church, “Those people out there sinning may look like they’re happy, but it’s not real<\/em> happiness.”<\/p>\n

As my circle of friends has widened to include people of various lifestyles, I’ve found that, while yes, some of them are not happy, many of them are. If I’m reading Alma correctly here, my job isn’t to judge others’ happiness, nor their righteousness. Rather, my job is to come to righteousness through happiness, and to come to happiness through righteousness, and that perhaps through both of those approaches together, the blessings and peace of God may be manifest in my own life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“…wickedness never was happiness.” — Alma 41:10 I’ve only ever heard this phrase from the scriptures used as an encouragement toward righteousness — “if you are wicked, then you won’t be happy, so be righteous!” But reducing the scripture to a causal relationship like “if ( wicked ) then { not happy }” necessarily implies the contrapositive: “if ( happy ) then { not wicked }”. Both of these readings reduce the rich context of the passage to a logical proposition, and these sorts of shallow reductions don’t often translate well to the complexity of real life. Even so, I think it’s worth considering the passage from both directions. I can’t tell how often I’ve heard said at church, “Those people out there sinning may look like they’re happy, but it’s not real happiness.” As my circle of friends has widened to include people of various lifestyles, I’ve found that, while yes, some of them are not happy, many of them are. If I’m reading Alma correctly here, my job isn’t to judge others’ happiness, nor their righteousness. Rather, my job is to come to righteousness through happiness, and to come to happiness through righteousness, and that perhaps through both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12448"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12454,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12448\/revisions\/12454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}