A new study suggests that having children doesn’t make you happy.  Or perhaps I should rephrase.  A new study suggests that people with children report lower happiness levels than those without.  This is unexpected, to be sure:

In fact, no group of parents-married, single, step or even empty nest-reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It’s such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they’re not.

This is a complicated matter.  How would one explain such results?

For the childless, all this research must certainly feel redeeming. As for those of us with kids, well, the news isn’t all bad. Parents still report feeling a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their lives than those who’ve never had kids.

But still, how do you explain that parents show less happiness than non-parents?  The easy answer is that kids are no fun, but it seems it would be more complicated than that.  My answer is that happiness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

Reading this article at Slate made me think of this much older, and much more educational, article by George Orwell.  The Slate article references popular “catchphrases” in American culture (also called, by people who like the English language, “metaphors”) and how the get born and how they die.  I hear one particular catchphrase all the time on reality shows, and it makes me want to hurt people: “Step up to the plate.”  As in, “Johnny needs to step up to the plate and __________ or he’s going to get voted off!”

Metaphors, once overused to the point where the analogical power of the phrase ceases to suggest anything analogical, become clichés.  The article discusses some others, too, including throwing someone under the bus (another popular reality show phrase), my bad and it’s all good (which are metaphors in a very, very loose sense), and others.  If you use these clichés too much, or if you’re not sure if your conversational metaphors are dead or still alive, you might like to read “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell, the E.B. White of English letters.

Melinda Henneberger writes about an unorthodox subject for Slate: the Lord’s supper, also known as communion.  For most Christians, communion is a pretty big deal, which is really a pretty enormous understatement.  It’s one of those few things that nearly every modestly confessional or doctrinal or biblical church takes seriously.  Despite differences in theology – specifically A) what it is (real body and blood, or a metaphor), and B) when it’s to be taken (every week, or every month, or every quarter, etc.) – most churches are careful to proclaim that it’s an exclusive meal open only to believers.  This exclusionary proposition isn’t welcome to contemporary ears, but that’s just how it is.  I won’t get into the meaning and purpose of communion here, but I will share this article with you, about how one person’s cavalier attitude toward communion made someone take note about their own cavalier attitude. 

Henneburger writes about how Sally Quinn – a writer at the Washington Post-Newsweek religion site “On Faith” – decided to take communion at Tim Russert’s funeral.  This quote is from Quinn’s own narrative about what she did.

Last Wednesday at Tim’s funeral mass at [Holy] Trinity Church in Georgetown (Jack Kennedy’s church), communion was offered. I had only taken communion once in my life, at an evangelical church. It was soon after I had started “On Faith” and I wanted to see what it was like. Oddly I had a slightly nauseated sensation after I took it, knowing that in some way it represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Last Wednesday I was determined to take it for Tim, transubstantiation notwithstanding. I’m so glad I did. It made me feel closer to him. And it was worth it just to imagine how he would have loved it.

Oh, this is wrong on so many levels.  First, Quinn has a prestigious platform for religious journalism, so doesn’t she know that Evangelicals don’t believe in transubstantiation?  One Jesuit writer said this:

[I]t is probably not too much to expect that the co-founder of a prestigious online blog about religion run by two of the nation’s premier journals would understand something about the most basic practices of the Catholic church. Most intelligent people know a few facts about the Catholic church: this is one of them. And even if one doesn’t know this, one would know to act with great care when in the midst of a worshiping community not your own.

Read the whole article.  It should offend anyone who takes communion seriously, not to mention anyone who takes journalistic professionalism seriously. 

And for a basic few points about the different Christian views on communion, read this.

I was recently reminded that the English word person has its origin in the Greek word persona, which was the name given to large masks Greek actors used to wear on stage. How fitting that this is what we call ourselves. In a related moment of epiphany, I recently read a pastor’s account of attending a James Taylor concert. She said that in between songs, someone shouted: “I love you, James!” There was laughter, but then Taylor stepped to the microphone and said: “That’s because you don’t know me.”

And this is one of the reasons why we are these clipped personae calling ourselves persons, because each of us wants to be loved, yet many of us believe that we are, in our truest selves, not all that lovable. Years ago I gave up writing for a time, and when I announced it, my wife was saddest of all. (Let’s be honest; she was probably the only person who was sad about it.) She told me that reading my words helped her see into my heart, a view that I didn’t often afford her.

We’ve labored down a long path together since then, and I like to think that I reveal more of myself to her now than I used to. Still, it’s hard for me, having grown up in fear of being vulnerable, to talk to anyone. With this in mind a friend recently suggested that I read what I write to her. He thought it might draw us closer, what with the intimacy of my voice speaking to her the words I only dare offer up because I don’t have to look any of you in the eye when I write them.

I protested that these words aren’t who I really am. I don’t write out the black-hearted parts of me, at least not in non-fiction. I’m much worse, I told him, than what anyone sees of me.

“I know,” he said. “But so is everyone.”

Most of us are personae at least some of the time, and many of the people who believe otherwise are personae to themselves. We hide who we are because we see who we are, and because everyone else is hiding himself. So we can fall into the trap of thinking we are worse than most — less organized, more resentful, more covetous, more easily discouraged.

I suppose the truth is that most of us aren’t any worse than anyone else, but let’s face it: that isn’t saying much. When I think about who I really am — who we really are — I am overwhelmed by God’s word breathed through the lungs of Paul, that we will know just as we have been fully known. We have our personae with one another, but every one of God’s children is fully known, and loved. We are personae with ourselves, seeing in a mirror dimly, but in that day of final homecoming we will be face to face, with ourselves as we were intended to be, and with a loving God who has offered up His life for us in full knowledge of who we are.

It’s a revolutionary idea, if you’ll let it be. It can change how you view yourself, how you view others, how you view God. No matter how low you have fallen, child of God, you are loved in full knowledge of what you are. No matter how lowly you think someone else is, how then can you deny him love, knowing that the perfect God knows him more fully than you, and loves him unto death? And finally, while bad preaching and bad theology can render God a distant, dispassionate entity, how comforting is it to learn that He knows us fully, and that in time He will make himself fully known to us, face to face, as father with child?

The world expects us to wear an acceptable mask, but we know that God sees us as we are. I like to hope, in my better moments, that knowing this will give me the courage to set my mask aside from time to time, if only for a while. Maybe we all can.

It’s funny how we’re always thinking about the things we should be taking on for God, when it may be more to the point to think about the things we should be letting go. Who among us trust Him enough to let go of worry about tomorrow, about money, about our appearance, about being socially “okay”? We voluntarily drag this ball and chain all day long, and then drag it into bed with us. It would be heroic if it weren’t mutinous.

I have tried both — doing things for God and letting things go. It’s easier to do something for God than to give up some pet fear. Easier but ridiculous, when you think of it. As the Lord said through the Psalmist: “If I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you” (50:12).

Jesus invites us to go to His redemption center and make exchanges, and it’s a pretty good deal: Give Him our tomorrows, our cash flow problems, our okayness issues, our kids’ futures. And our end of the bargain is to deal with what’s on our plate today (Matthew 6). Day-size is doable.

Think about something you’re not giving up. Some fear you keep in a secret pocket and stroke when nobody’s looking. Kill the little darling, this instant. And if you can’t bring yourself to kill it, hand it over to Jesus and He’ll do it. Take his light load in exchange for your heavy one. His shoulders are broader than yours. 

Christian activist Shane Claiborne is staying busy this election year traveling around the country stumping for his candidate of choice: Jesus. The co-author of Jesus for President, Claiborne wants to see young evangelicals get politically and personally involved on issues of justice and move beyond the typical platform of the religious right. And as large crowds flock to hear him speak, it seems Claiborne’s message is resonating with young evangelicals, who represent important swing votes this fall.

… Claiborne said, “This is not about going left or right, this is about going deeper and trying to understand together. Rather than endorse candidates, we ask them to endorse what is at the heart of Jesus and that is the poor or the peacemakers and when we see that then we’ll get behind them.”

Claiborne says the movement of younger evangelicals is growing and looking at the Bible in more holistic terms. He is quick to say the call of Christ has more to do with how people live their lives on November 3 and 5 than how they vote on November 4.

Claiborne, who is also one of the founding members of a New Monastic community called The Simple Way in Philadelphia, says the whole “Jesus for President” project is about provoking Christians’ political imaginations: “The language of Jesus as Lord and savior is just as radical as it would be to say ‘Jesus as our commander in chief’ today.”

Yesterday John McCain met privately with evangelist Billy Graham and his son, Franklin, at the family’s mountaintop retreat in western North Carolina. McCain, who is actively courting the evangelical vote and requested the meeting, said the trio “had a very excellent conversation. I appreciated the opportunity to visit with them,” but noted that he did not ask for their votes.

After the meeting, Franklin Graham issued a statement praising the Arizona senator’s “personal faith and his moral clarity.”

“The senator and I both have sons currently serving in the military, and also have a common interest in aviation,” Franklin Graham said. “I was impressed by his personal faith and his moral clarity on important social issues facing America today.”

Although Franklin Graham said he was not endorsing anyone for president, he said they “had an opportunity to pray for the senator and his family, and for God’s will to be done in this upcoming election.”

Happy last day of June!

Today’s quote is from a writer: “I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.”

A mostly self-published book by a new and undiscovered Christian author is selling like hotcakes.  It’s called The Shack, and its sales are impressive.

Just over a year after it was originally published as a paperback, “The Shack” had its debut at No. 1 on the New York Times trade paperback fiction best-seller list on June 8 and has stayed there ever since. It is No. 1 on Borders Group’s trade paperback fiction list, and at Barnes & Noble it has been No. 1 on the trade paperback list since the end of May, outselling even [Eckhart] Tolle’s spiritual guide “A New Earth,” selected by Ms. Winfrey’s book club in January.

I’d never heard of it before reading this article, but you may have.  Here’s a little of the plot:

Early in the novel the young daughter of the protagonist, Mack, is abducted. Four years later he visits the shack where evidence of the girl’s murder was discovered. He spends a weekend there in a kind of spiritual therapy session with God, [a happy black woman] who calls herself “Papa”; Jesus, who appears as a Jewish workman; and Sarayu, an indeterminately Asian woman who incarnates the Holy Spirit.

Al Mohler has called the book “deeply troubling” for its theological implications and other Evangelical leaders have said as much.  Oh, I don’t know about all this.  I think it’s great for an unknown author to publish a book that people are buying.  I think it’s great for that author to be Christian.  I think it’s great if that book discusses faith, or concerns itself with faith.  I think it’s bad if the book is The Purpose Driven Life With a Plot.  I think it’s bad if people are buying the book like hotcakes, not because it’s quality literature, but because it’s about Jesus and Christian Stuff.  A bad book about Jesus and Christian stuff is oh-so-more-dangerous than any number of good books about depraved people.  But maybe it’s quality literature.  Maybe it’s good stuff.  You can buy it here.

There’s nothing like attending a sporting event in person, experiencing all the sights, sounds, and smells—not even high-def TV can match it! And sometimes when you least expect it, you buy a ticket, take your seat, and end up witnessing a slice of sports history: a no-hitter or a perfect game, a record-setting scoring night, an underdog pulling a major upset. As the years go by, thousands, maybe even millions, will claim they were there when …

So tell us about the time you were there when …