Having a belief in order to be happy?

JohnClay said:

For Christians - Is a primary reason for your faith to feel happier about your life? How it makes you feel might be irrelevant to whether it is true... but it might be very difficult to give up your faith since it is so emotionally attractive...

I guess Pascal's Wager is related but I'm wondering about more emotional reasons.

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If that were the case, I'd pick a belief system that is less restrictive.

I like this C.S. Lewis quote on the matter:

JohnClay said:

For Christians - Is a primary reason for your faith to feel happier about your life? How it makes you feel might be irrelevant to whether it is true... but it might be very difficult to give up your faith since it is so emotionally attractive...

I guess Pascal's Wager is related but I'm wondering about more emotional reasons.

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I guess somewhat.

1) I came back to Christianity after leaving college for graduate school. I had a lot of fears about my future that did materialize in grad school. The statistics class in college caused me a lot of problems, and got me in graduate school as well. But I had a lot of fears about my future, and depression and thoughts of suicide if I didn't achieve my career goals that I thought would be necessary to have a happy life. Well that stuff didn't work out, but the general prohibition against suicide in Christianity did keep me from taking my life on numerous occasions so I guess that is something.


2) I think I'm a better person as a Christian. It seems to bring out the best in me as far as my conscious and conscientious behavior goes. There are some situations where I might be tempted to be a bit vengeful or spiteful if I was an atheist or agnostic, like when people act like jerks or worse toward you unjustly etc. As a Christian I can let that stuff go, but otherwise I find myself wanting to even the score.


3) I get a lot out Christianity, as an applied Stoic Philosophy for life.

For years i had this funny suspicion that Christianity was like Karl Marx said 'the opiate of the people.' Keeping them happy with an after life means we can exploit such people in the current life. However thinking like that did not bring me happiness but a lot of frustration, anger, doubt and unbelief.

When i had my Jesus revelation then i knew He was true to His Word and i stopped doubting Him, it was only then that i began to gain ability from my faith.

Faith in God's love brought me an able life, not a happy one. The things i can do with Christ so far outweigh the things i can do without Him, that any doubt in His good will vanished long time ago.

i have gotten so much benefit out of my faith down here that even if Heaven were proven not to be true, i would still choose to have faith in God's love. It is amazing what faith in His love has brought me. To me this is the guarantee that God's promises are true, for He always keeps His word to me and gave me the ability to survive my mental illness.

All Glory to His name.

JohnClay said:

For Christians - is a major reason for your belief in Heaven to feel happier?

If it could be proven that there is no afterlife, would you still want to believe in it?

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I saw your first post and now this one.

To both posts, I have to honestly answer that when I became a Christian - my own personal happiness bore no consequence, relevance, or bearing.

I wasn't thinking about my happiness, I was thinking about obeying God and his desire for me to choose Christ.

Happiness is fleeting and wavers. That same thing that makes you hysterically happy can also bring you great pain:

• your own children and/or spouse
• medications
• the weather
• your own moods
• life in general

There is great joy in being a Christian and that kind of joy isn't giddiness, but a comfort no matter what the circumstances of life bring you. Life is literally a roller coaster - ups and downs - happiness and pain - the good and the bad. But joy rises above all of that.

Like Paul said, he had learned in all things to be content. Paul suffered shipwrecks, a snake bite, MUCH imprisonment, beatings, lies told about him and his ministry, and more. Yet he was content.

I am content with Christ. Heaven or not, I live for him, in him, and with contentment. I've had and have great pain in my life. I'd had some happiness. I'd had contentment in Christ in all things.

JohnClay said:

For Christians - is a major reason for your belief in Heaven to feel happier?

If it could be proven that there is no afterlife, would you still want to believe in it?

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Not for me. When I first became a Christian it wasn't long before I started to believe my closest relatives were in hell. It had nothing to do with my happiness on Earth. It's not very useful to talk about the afterlife and leave out hell.

Thanks to God he has given me hope now for my relatives.

I'm not saying you for definite but I have seen this belief amongst agnostics etc who believe a big factor of being Christian is being scared of death or in some way not wanting to accept it so we believe in heaven. I haven't seen one Christian were this was a major factor in their beliefs.

JohnClay said:

For Christians - is a major reason for your belief in Heaven to feel happier?

If it could be proven that there is no afterlife, would you still want to believe in it?

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No it is about truth and responding to the truth.

JohnClay said:

@Sketcher
Ok that's interesting... well I changed the original post. It is based on an elderly man's statement that he needs his belief in Heaven....

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JohnClay said:

If it could be proven that there is no afterlife, would you still want to believe in it?

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If it could be proven - and I don't believe it can be - I might not believe in it anymore, but I think I'd still want to.

Still, the nature of Heaven that I believe in is different from what I would want Heaven to be - but that's because my mind is too small to discard some of the things I want out of it.

JohnClay said:

For Christians - is a major reason for your belief in Heaven to feel happier?

If it could be proven that there is no afterlife, would you still want to believe in it?

Click to expand...

How would a person prove such a thing? Isn't that like proving a negative?

If only more people sought to feel genuinely happier. But most people are using things like religion to justify themselves or their social status, which is subtlely different.