Lost Virtue of Happiness

Moreland, J. P. and Issler, Klaus.  The Lost Virtue of Happiness (Navpress).

Far from being a self-help book, Moreland and Klauss (MK) define happiness in terms of its more ancient setting: a happy life is one that allows me to pursue virtue. In Christian terms, a happy life is a disciplined life that allows me to pursue the Kingdom of God.

Today happiness is defined as “good feeling” (MK 16). If happiness is defined as my good feelings, and if the goal of happiness is to pursue my good feelings, then everything has to center around…me! This creates what sociologists call “the empty self.”

Further, the empty self is what we project outwards to others. MK also have interesting suggestions on how the empty self leads to loneliness–and they posit solitude as the correction to loneliness.

Unlike other spiritual disciplines books, this offers a number of practical suggestions for enabling the “disciplined life.” Of course, the reader won’t accept every suggestion (and in fact, I disagree with a few of them). Nevertheless, most are quite helpful and have further enriched my own prayer life.

Of Particular help:

studying: the mind works from whole to part to whole. Moreland suggests–and this is something I’ve been doing for about a decade–to study the table of contents before you read a difficult book. If it is well-organized, the book won’t be that difficult.

increasing prayer time: It’s hard to kneel down a pray for a good, cold hour. However, Moreland suggests a number of strategies that can enrich and eventually lengthen prayer time. Instead of “dive-bomber prayers,” he urges “pressure cooker prayers.” Instead of saying, “Dear Jesus, please be with Suzy today,” we can keep coming back to the Lord in 2 or 3 minute increments and lifting Suzy up, often bolstered by Psalms, and “wrestling with the Lord in prayer” over Suzy. After a while, we realize we have been often in prayer, even working with God.

Calm down: Moreland has a controversial, yet probably workable suggestion on anxiety. He has noted that neuroscience is seeing that the heart has its own “system.” He recommends breathing techniques that will calm the heart. This is fine as long as we don’t say “thus saith the Lord.”

Deliverance ministries: MK are correct that demons cannot possess believers. Let that be said loud and clear. However, demons can attack and afflict believers. This isn’t that startling a statement. If you are attacking satanic strongholds and winning victories for the kingdom, do you really expect Satan to stand idly by? How will a demon attack you? As Paul says, by letting sinful passions “gain a foothold.”

Evaluation:
I recommend it for intermediate believers who already have a strong foundation in the spiritual disciplines.

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