Andrew Wilson Wants to Help You Pursue Happiness

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0:00:00 – (Andrew Wilson): As a general rule, trees, wide open spaces, children, hugs make you much happier than screens. Money, budget, you know, things which. There are things which in themselves present. So you have to deal with them, you have to interact with. We’re talking on the screen now. Yeah, think about that. Of course we do, but. But the things that you’re often drawn to do and the things that actually make you happier are often not the same.

0:00:25 – (Andrew Wilson): I think learning what they are and then making habits out of it is really fruit.

0:00:40 – (Collin Hansen): Andrew Wilson is one of the happiest guys I know, so it only makes sense that he would write a book called Happiness what It Is, where to Find it and how to Make It Last Forever, published by Crossway. After all, he’s the expert. I am delighted when I see Andrew at a TGC conference or a retreat for the Keller center for Cultural Apologetics. I look forward to every chance to spend time with him. And he writes, writes in this book.

0:01:05 – (Collin Hansen): Nothing is more honoring to a friend, a child or a spouse than saying they make you happy. Nothing is more demeaning to them than telling them that they don’t. Well, I can say to Andrew here with no reservation, he makes me happy when we’re together. Okay, but where does that leave the rest of us if we’re not naturally happy, if we’re not feeling happy right now, if we’re not hanging out with Andrew?

0:01:30 – (Collin Hansen): Well, the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago put happiness at the center of life’s aim. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, Andrew covered that statement in his excellent earlier book, remaking the how 1776 created the post Christian West.

0:01:54 – (Collin Hansen): Well, given this anniversary, I plan in this interview to sneak in a question or two about that fateful year and we’ll discuss much more, including the difference between joy and happiness, whether God promises happiness, and why millennials grew up to be sad. Andrew, thanks for coming back. Thanks for joining me again on Gospel Bound. Thank you.

0:02:12 – (Andrew Wilson): Thank you very much. You’ve really set me up now just to be a permanent, like the Cheshire cat. There’s nothing but a grin in every interaction with everyone who listens to this. But yes, thank you very much.

0:02:22 – (Collin Hansen): Well, I said all that nice stuff, Andrew, but why do I want to read a book about happiness from one of the happiest guys I know? I want maybe to hear from someone really struggles with it and has overcome it. Explain Yourself.

0:02:36 – (Andrew Wilson): Yeah, I mean, I, I warn about that actually that we get very start of the book. I know that there is a, in fact, one of the things I will go into a fair bit in the book is the role that temperament and disposition play and even brain chemistry and those sorts of things. And I do think it’s really significant. I, I, I think one of the ways in which I can hopefully offset that, and partly you admitted, but I think is to say that the temperamental qualities of many of the people who’ve written best on this subject are wildly different. So I think you, I think if you were to take St. Augustine and Jonathan Edwards and John Piper and me, I’m not putting myself in any other respect in the same company as those guys.

0:03:15 – (Andrew Wilson): I think you would find very temperamentally different characters. And I think the same is true if you look through even in scripture, the, you have to be a little bit careful to psychoanalyze the writers of scripture, but the people who talk about it. I don’t get the impression that Paul is just a sort of, he’s not just a sunny character. I mean, I think for him he’s, there’s a, there’s obviously a deep intensity to the man. I think he would have been sometimes quite spiky, edgy company if we were just hanging out, I would think.

0:03:42 – (Andrew Wilson): But you get this incredibly rich experience of joy with him and then you get some other characters you think this probably is partly temperamental and others where you go, no, this is a, this is a very different, you know, this is not naturally who you are, but you found it in God. And so I think what, what I’m wanting to write about is something that we can all participate in and something we’re all draw together to the happiness ultimately that’s found in God.

0:04:02 – (Andrew Wilson): But I do think that there are a lot of day to day things, ordinary life decisions that many of us can make that might not seem explicitly theological, but they nevertheless, nevertheless can significantly increase our happiness and joy in ordinary life. And I wanted to write about that alongside the theological case for joy, which I think many of us would be more familiar with. And I in the end concluded that the fact that I am quite a cheerful person wasn’t a good enough reason not to write about it.

0:04:29 – (Collin Hansen): You provoked a whole different question that I hadn’t thought about biblically speaking or in Christian history. Who would be some people who stand out for their happiness?

0:04:40 – (Andrew Wilson): Oh, actually that is, oh man, that’s, that’s difficult because I think the way in which people articulate Things across different centuries is. Is naturally. Is quite different, isn’t it? I think. And also I think the amount of suffering and just anguish that many of our forefathers would have experienced. I mean, I. I think Charles Spurgeon, if I can use him, seems to me like a pretty breezy. I mean, he’s always.

0:05:04 – (Andrew Wilson): As a preacher, he’s very, in some ways, is intense, but I think he’s intense in his sort of his florid language and his biblical passion. But I think it’s been a lot of fun. Sorry, but all.

0:05:17 – (Collin Hansen): But also depressed.

0:05:19 – (Andrew Wilson): Sure.

0:05:19 – (Collin Hansen): That’s interesting. Those two things can coexist in some way.

0:05:22 – (Andrew Wilson): And I talk about that in the book as well. I think he would have been. I think he would have been a lot of fun. And David seems.

0:05:31 – (Collin Hansen): David seems happy in that way. Yeah. King David.

0:05:34 – (Andrew Wilson): Yeah. I mean, and. But this is. This is one of the things. I mean, we’ll get into this straight away because I think this is one of the things you see throughout the Bible and throughout. When you read a lot of a few individuals, you. And to be honest, I probably haven’t maxed out on enough individuals in church history to have a fully rounded sense of their disposition, really. And ways of expressing it vary a lot from generation to generation. But definitely one of the things you find is that some of the people who express the greatest joys also express the greatest. His sorrows. And I think one of the mistakes which I try and challenge in the book is the idea that if you are.

0:06:05 – (Andrew Wilson): That happy people are never sad or that sad people are. That grief is incompatible with joy. Whereas Paul talks sorrowful yet always rejoicing, Jesus says flourishing. Are those who mourn or happy? Are those who mourn. You think, what kind of paradox world is this? But it’s actually true. We tend to think happiness is at one end of the spectrum, crying is at the other. But actually happy people cry more because they experience bigger highs and lows, deeper expression, deeper emotion.

0:06:34 – (Andrew Wilson): And they are both at the opposite end of the spectrum to someone who is almost listless, apathetic, emotionally detached, unengaged, cauterized, bland. And those are the things to actually to stave off in the Christian life. And obviously in that sits you’d say Jesus. I think Chesterton’s a very happy guy. That might. Just because he wrote about a lot. I think Lewis is a happy guy. But again, maybe that’s because he wrote about it a lot.

0:06:57 – (Collin Hansen): I don’t know.

0:06:57 – (Andrew Wilson): Right.

0:06:58 – (Collin Hansen): Edwards wrote about it a lot. And I don’t think anybody would think Edwards was happy guy. Most likely, no.

0:07:04 – (Andrew Wilson): And, and, but this, a lot of this is just intergenerationally difficult. I think the person who would probably make you laugh the most in some ways if you were sitting with them that I know of, would be Martin Luther. But that’s because he’s just such a. A kind of spiky, controversial, witty man. Not necessarily because he’s a barrel of laughs, sunny disposition. So. I don’t know. It’s hard to know.

0:07:26 – (Collin Hansen): Oh, well, I just hadn’t really thought about it before, but when he started working through Augustine and Edwards to Piper, I thought, well, you’re totally right. There’s different personalities here. And yet still writing about the scheme of happiness. Now, is there a difference between joy and happiness?

0:07:44 – (Andrew Wilson): I don’t really think so, no. I think I try and make the case. I know why people say there is, and I think I try and give that It’s. It’s the day in court, in a way. I try and I think a good faith reading of someone who says, and lots of people, good friends of mine who are really thoughtful people, have made the case for this, and I. I would hear them out and then say, I think I know what you’re trying to express. I think you’re trying to say there is a version of this emotion that is thin and anemic and temporary and trivial and not very valuable, although we know that it nevertheless makes us feel better.

0:08:17 – (Andrew Wilson): And there is another version of it that even when circumstances are very hard, is nevertheless the sort of deep well of resource of delight and an uplift emotionally, which is an extremely important thing. And if you are ever given the choice, you want to prioritize the deep over the shallow. That’s definitely true. And not just definitely true. We must contend for it, because the Christian life, we are not in control at all of the shallow thing.

0:08:44 – (Andrew Wilson): And if we chase the shallow thing at the expense of the deep, I mean, that’s in many ways what someone like the prophet Jeremiah is warning us against in saying, you’ve not taken. You’ve got broken systems. You’ve basically traded God for shallow things that don’t profit. So that’s really important. But I don’t think that joy versus happiness is a good way of framing it. And I think it actually leads us into a lot of cul de sacs if we do, because it means two things. It means that happiness, language in scripture or language of pleasure, you know, in your presence of is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forever. We end up making a mess of verses like that because the psalmist is clearly using them as rhyming terms.

0:09:23 – (Andrew Wilson): And we’re inclined to screen out, oh no, don’t need pleasure, don’t need, don’t need happiness, don’t need. That’s all frothy. You think, no, no, no, the Bible doesn’t seem to think that way. So that’s one misunderstanding we get. And then the other one is that you’re almost the kind of joy you seek. You’re not expecting it to actually make you, I don’t know, upbeat, positive, delighted at all. You’re going, oh, it’s, I mean, there’s a guy, a guy came in our church and admitted he’s a charismatic church the way this kind of thing happened. But he jumps up onto the stage during an eldership induction and he just kind of said, I just want to pray, lay hands on these guys and pray for them.

0:09:54 – (Andrew Wilson): And he starts praying, we’re like, what’s going to happen? And he starts praying for them. And he said, lord, we just want to ask for joy. And a joy that reaches the face. Because what he means is, of course a lot of people have this joy that’s so deep you can’t see it. And I think again, for Christians to live life thinking, well, I’m not very happy, but I’ve got joy. You think, oh, that’s not what you see in Paul.

0:10:17 – (Andrew Wilson): The joy that he has causes his soul to soar. It causes him, you want to sing, to delight and to rejoice. And so I think on both sides there is a danger of mistaking, of separating them too much and acting as if they refer to different things. I just don’t think that’s biblical. I don’t think it’s possibly helpful.

0:10:35 – (Collin Hansen): And just to make it even more simple, you argue in the book that we are translating terms into English, different words that are the same biblical original words, right?

0:10:46 – (Andrew Wilson): Yeah, we have about 50 happiness words in English and many of them seem in. And we’ve got more than biblical Hebrew or biblical Greek, although there are quite a lot of those. And English is a very rich language because it’s a mongrel of so many different other languages. So we have a lot more words at our disposal. But I think a lot of the words we use are not technically distinguishable from each other and there’s no direct one to one correspondence with the biblical term. So yeah, I think that’s important too. And I do think that there are different nuances to lots of happiness words. I think we know that there is a difference between, say, contentment and merriment.

0:11:23 – (Andrew Wilson): Those two are happiness words that we clearly know that they. We would expect one of them to feel more restful and the other one to feel more yay. And you know, so we got. We get that. So I’m not saying all happiness words are exactly the same in their focus, but I do think we have to be careful for linguistic as well as pastoral and theological reasons not to just not to draw too sharp distinctions between them. As if joy is spiritual but doesn’t affect your mood, and happiness affects your mood but isn’t spiritual. I don’t know. That’s healthy.

0:11:53 – (Collin Hansen): So related to this then, does God promise happiness to Christians?

0:11:58 – (Andrew Wilson): Yes, I mean, I think on the basis. I think this. So again, depends on the English words you use to translate it. But in the translation, a lot us would use the punchline at the end of the parable in Matthew 25, come and share your master’s happiness, which is just a beautiful promise at two levels. Obviously, it’s a come and effectively it’s an invitation to happiness for us, but it’s also an invitation to share in God’s happiness. And so I think the happiness of God, as well as the happiness that we have when we come and share in his happiness are both beautiful promises.

0:12:30 – (Andrew Wilson): And I think we can then broaden out from that. And if we buy what I’ve just said, that happiness and joy are nowhere near as sharply distinguished as we often imply they are, then we would say, you know, ask of me and your joy will be full. It’s not just I’m promising you some a bit of joy, I’m promising to fill you up with joy. And this is what my hope for you. And it’s a fruit of the Spirit. And so absolutely, at least if you buy anything like what I’ve just said about happiness and joy being largely interchangeable, I think delight, pleasure, rejoicing, happiness, these things are promised to us in Christ by a happy God, and he sends us his Spirit to bring us into the happiness of the Father. So I think that’s a very important biblical idea.

0:13:12 – (Andrew Wilson): That doesn’t mean, as we already said, that the shallow form of it is always going to be ours. And it doesn’t mean that we are going to bounce from day to day always in a permanent state of good mood, or even that our temperaments will change in that direction, let alone that our circumstances will. But I think it does mean that this is part of God’s inheritance for those who he loves and It’s a wonderful thing to learn about and therefore

0:13:35 – (Collin Hansen): to press into typical Andrew for your books. You weave in these really insightful cultural takes with the Bible, the theology, the narrative. It’s such a wonderful combination of all of the above. And there was a cultural observation that stood out to me as really powerful, even life changing in some ways. You describe how millennials generation born between 1980 and 1994 were happier than previous generations as teenagers, but less happy now as adults.

0:14:12 – (Collin Hansen): Why don’t you go ahead and explain that observation?

0:14:14 – (Andrew Wilson): Well, there’s an indirect sense in which I owe this point to you, Colin, which you probably don’t know, because I think you put me onto Gene Twenge in the first place and you definitely told me how to pronounce her name, which I would not definitely would have been Twenge if I truly Englishman in me was true. And so, yeah, and I, so I read her book Generations, and she makes this point in with lots of. With, with. I mean, she makes the point with, with data and then tries to explain why she thinks it’s true. And I think she would say, and I would say too, that this is a suggestion as to why it’s true, but it’s a pretty convincing one to me.

0:14:51 – (Andrew Wilson): So she shows first of all that, you know, millennials so happy as happier than say, Gen X’s, which is, you know, my generation, or, or boomers, whatever, as a teens, but as they’ve got older, they have dropped like their line of happiness has dropped and other generations have gone as over time overtakes them. And she says that I think the reason why that’s true is because the sorts of things that make us happy as teenagers are freedom from constraints, individual self actualization, and actually sometimes the freedom from the obligations that communities place upon us for a period of time makes us happier. As a 16 year old, you want to kick back against things and actually you feel more liberated and more excited and more happy in the way that these surveys often measure it.

0:15:41 – (Andrew Wilson): If you are cut loose from some of those ties. The problem is that within 10 years, the ties that you have liberated yourself from become very important to your happiness. And by the time you’re 37 or 47 or 57, they’re not only important to your happiness, they are among the most important things in your happiness. Your sense of embeddedness in community, the longevity of your relationships, your connectedness and health of your family relationships.

0:16:05 – (Andrew Wilson): And so she suggests, and it sounds very convincing to me, that the part of the challenge that a millennial has is that the thing that they lived at a, are alive at a particular period in which those sorts of long term community embedded entangled relationship ties were on the, on the way down. Which meant that they did great as teens because that’s what teenagers want. But by the time they reached their 30s, were struggling at a mental health level because many of the things that they’d got rid of as a result of wider cultural changes were now making them miserable because they didn’t have them anymore.

0:16:40 – (Andrew Wilson): And I don’t know if there’s a way to prove that, maybe there’s more research to be done, but it sounded like a very convincing explanation of that phenomenon to me.

0:16:47 – (Collin Hansen): It overlaps a little bit, Andrew, with observations in the 1960s. I know a period that you’re interested in as well, thinking about the United States, the idea that the 1960s, a lot of so called liberation that people experienced as something really positive was only possible because the structures of the 1950s were still in place. But once they had corroded the structures of the 1950s and the 1970s took over, that freedom then became bankrupt, the sex, drugs and rock and roll failed them.

0:17:23 – (Collin Hansen): So you could probably see a similar dynamic in the millennial push there, where all of a sudden you still have the intrinsic values, you still have the support of community, you still have the encouragement, but you have the sense that, wow, I can really pursue my own, I can really pursue money, I can really pursue fame, I can be something, I can make something of myself, those extrinsic values. But then all of a sudden when you stand those on their own and you’ve got the career, you have the influencer status, you have those opportunities, you’ve had the vacations, now you don’t have a family, you don’t have a faith, you don’t have a community.

0:18:04 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, it’s gonna come a bankrupt for you.

0:18:08 – (Andrew Wilson): Yeah, it’s the, it’s the classic soaring off the branch you’re sitting on problem. And I think to, in fairness to the, the children of the 60s, who are obviously our parents, I mean my parents anyway, they, I think there is a version of that that almost every generation does that it takes for granted the norms that they have inherited and looks to pursue the things that they don’t know. And when we’re doing that, we are often literally it’s kids, often it’s 16, 18, 21 year olds. You know, it’s the, and you know, as you know, we wouldn’t get without going down the deep war rabbit Warren of the 60s.

0:18:39 – (Andrew Wilson): You know, there’s there’s Vietnam, there’s all sorts of reasons why people would go, we have to make the most of this time. So I do get that, but I, but I agree with you. I think we live on borrowed capital. I’ve written about this, as you know, in the, in remake, in the world. When it comes to Christianity, the same thing is true where we take for granted Christian norms and then push back against them and find that when they fade, what on earth is going to replace them? I think we do the same with the need for community.

0:19:03 – (Andrew Wilson): And I think in many ways that pursuit of happiness idea is common to all of those things. It’s human beings trying to find happiness in the way that seems to make sense to them. But we don’t generally realize that the things that in a long term way make us happy are often things that take decades to build, that are not something that we generally discover or stumble across when we’re 18 or 21 anyway, and about which our ancestors actually have more to teach us than of course, we realize until it’s too late to learn from them. So I think that is quite a normal phenomenon. It just happens we are living in the midst of a new iteration of that in the 21st century.

0:19:41 – (Collin Hansen): I was being interviewed in the context of apologetics and the question came up if I were ever at a football match, we’re standing on the sideline and the parents are discussing and all of a sudden the topic of abortion comes up. How would I defend the Christian view in that setting? And I thought about it for a second and then just considered that setting, looked out there and said, we’re telling ourselves a story, a narrative about happiness. And happiness comes with the lack of constraint, and that’s at the heart of abortion, that you don’t want anything to tie you down, you don’t want any responsibilities or obligations. You can’t afford them.

0:20:23 – (Collin Hansen): They would inhibit you from achieving something else. And yet here we are standing, watching our children, in this case at a football match, at a soccer match, realizing that no, our deepest happiness comes in the constraints of loving other people, of caring for other people. We still know that to be true, and yet we tell ourselves the opposite story. I guess that’s the deceitfulness of sin.

0:20:50 – (Andrew Wilson): Not sure I really like that. I love the, I love the time with the football match. And of course the you. The punchline was hidden to me until three quarters of the way through because I didn’t know whether you were talking about the football that is thrown or the football is cooked. No, but I think that’s a really good, I think that’s a really good response. And I, I do. And I think that’s, there’s a little micro. I’m not saying I’ve got no idea what Gene Twangy thinks about this and that issue, but that is a little microcosm of what she is saying, which is that the sorts of things that we seek to make ourselves happy often when we’re young, often involves throwing off constraints that we then look back later and go, I really need those things.

0:21:28 – (Andrew Wilson): And there are, I, I don’t know, I remember watching the, the OJ Documentary or that maybe the Netflix adapt, maybe I watched both back to back. I think a few years ago I went down the, another rabbit hole and watched about that, about A.J. simpson. And just seeing in that man’s horrible story an extraordinary example of this, of somebody who just one by one, the constraints ob. Gruesome extent, threw off this and that and the other. And then there’s this sort of weird party he has at the very end when he gets, gets led off and comes back in and there’s all these people surrounding him. You realize this is one of the most miserable resolutions to a story I’ve ever seen. And it’s happening with a party with lots of glamorous, beautiful people in a guy’s house drinking and listening to music.

0:22:10 – (Andrew Wilson): It is so weird. And I think that in some ways that is obviously not to the same degree in most of our cases, God willing, but a little snapshot of what Twengie is saying and what many of us can do, which is not to realize, again, we prioritize the thin version of happiness because it’s easier and it’s right there and it gives us an instant dopamine hit. And I mean, the classic thing is you instead of interacting with your children, which brings the long term happy, the deep happiness, you interact with the phone, which gives you a short term big click, which is more distracting and in a little way makes you more immediately happy than building the relationship or certainly resolving a conflict or a discipline issue with a child. But no one in their right mind could possibly think that over your lifetime the phone is going to bring you more happiness than the child. It’s just that it tricks us in the moment to pursue the shallow. But if you pursue the shallow too much, you, over time, the deep gets hollowed out altogether and the shallow is all you have left. And so I don’t know, OJ and the kids of the 1960s and modern millennials and me, I’VE all got the same.

0:23:10 – (Andrew Wilson): You know, we don’t actually go for what brings us joy. We go for what is easier at the time. And that is. That’s a trend we have to push hard against, which is one of the reasons I’ve written the book.

0:23:21 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah. As you also describe in the book, trivially happy, yet substantially sad, I think, is an apt description of a lot of what we see today was slipping in a different direction, though, and explained to us, Andrew, the problem of superfluous happiness. I love this.

0:23:38 – (Andrew Wilson): Yeah. I think we are very aware, as Christian, a pastor and a writer and so on, are very aware of the problem of evil. Every time you get into a conversation with someone about their objections to Christianity, pretty much this one comes up. But what we don’t do very often is think about the opposite, which is the problem of superfluous happiness or the problem that there is a lot more joy in the world than there should be? You stand back from the world and you said there is no particular reason why things that make us happy ought to be there.

0:24:07 – (Andrew Wilson): Some of the things that make us happy, you could argue a sort of evolutionary origin for. And I would respect that you say, well, so the fact that we. The fact that eating makes us happy, well, you have to eat to survive. The fact that drinking does, the fact that having sex does. The fact the things which you need to perpetuate the human race, you can make the connections there. But there’s a load of things that make us deeply happy. Beauty that have got almost nothing. It would not seem in any way obvious why we found them beautiful. So why do we find a field of. Of poppies or lavender in southern France more beautiful than a field of potatoes when the potatoes are far more beneficial to us?

0:24:43 – (Andrew Wilson): Why do we find, you know, wild mountains and sort of the, you know, lofty mountain grandeur and in the words of the hymn, that sort of thing, more. More beautiful than just then. Sorry to those who come from this fine state. But Iowa, which in principle, or Saskatchewan, you know, just fields and fields of the growing wheat or corn, that’s really what we should prize for our own survival. But we don’t. We find joy in all kinds of things that seem almost entirely useless to us and that should. It’s one of many little touch points in the world to say there is a joy you find in this world that isn’t reducible to your need for it.

0:25:18 – (Andrew Wilson): There’s more happiness than there needs to be. And that, of course, in the Christian understanding, is the overflow of the bounteous. Creator who has not only created beautiful things when he didn’t need to. He’s created at all when he didn’t need to. And the very act of creation is a gift. And it’s something that God has done because he’s a God of love and abundance, not a God who has needs in the sense that.

0:25:39 – (Andrew Wilson): And I might. So I think in that sense, it’s just a. There’s a. There’s an inversion of the problem of evil that we don’t very often think about, but I think has its own power. Which is to say, this should prompt you to wonder whether or not this world is simply a series of atomic collisions or whether there is actually a person behind it who is bringing joy into being, because that’s who he is.

0:26:01 – (Collin Hansen): You also say that the pursuit of happiness helps us fight sin. What do you mean by that?

0:26:07 – (Andrew Wilson): I don’t think you can fight sin without pursuing your own happiness. And I think we touched on the negative of this already, which is that one of the ways in which we succumb to sin is because we don’t seek our happiness enough. I alluded to Jeremiah 2, and I think Jeremiah 2 is that classic text that I have. 2. My people have done two evils against me. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water.

0:26:28 – (Andrew Wilson): And they’ve hewn out for themselves broken cisterns which can’t hold water. So they have turned their back on God, who is the fountain of all joy. But they’ve also tried to make their own far less satisfactory broken sources of joy. Like a broken system. You know, sludge pouring into the water. Well, in the. In the ground. You just think, who would drink that when a fountain was available? But that’s what human beings do.

0:26:48 – (Andrew Wilson): And so therefore, the fight against sin is in large part seeing our greatest joy in turning our back on the broken cistern and finding it again in the fountain. And I still think that the best thing that’s ever been written or spoken on this outside of the Bible is the sermon by Thomas Chalmers called the Expulsive Power of the New Affection. Which I know will be well known to you and probably to some others listening.

0:27:11 – (Andrew Wilson): But that’s what he says. He says you cannot. There’s only two ways of trying to get people to pursue righteousness. One is, you say you have to overcome by sheer force of will the desire to do this thing by kind of suppressing your desire for happiness. And the other is, you say you need to find. You just need to realize that this thing is Ultimately not going to lead you to your happiness, and what will is to pursue the things of God instead.

0:27:33 – (Andrew Wilson): But the first one method, he says, is useless. It doesn’t actually work. The only way you can do it is by what he calls the expulsive power of a new affection. So you have to, if you are into whatever, just into eating too much, one of the ways you might get yourself to pull out of that is to say, okay, but I will be happier if I am fitter and I’m able to, to, you know, be more athletic. And the way you might then get obsessed with athleticism, but you might say, well, actually if I give all of my time to athleticism, I won’t be able to get a romantic relationship, which might make me happier than that. And then you, what, you get monopolized by that, and then you exchange that for maybe a career or for politics or whatever it is that might take you. And this is what Chalmers says.

0:28:09 – (Andrew Wilson): But in each one of those cases, the heart never goes, I’m not looking for my happiness. What happens is the heart exchanges something that doesn’t make it happy for something that will make it more happy. And of course, the ultimate example of that for Chalmers, for Jeremiah, and for us, is to exchange it for the joy that is found in God. And we could. There’s many examples even in the conversation we’ve had already of that being the way that we seek good things and seek joy for our own lives. And so that invitation, you know, come again. Come and share your master’s happiness pleasures forevermore. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice.

0:28:44 – (Andrew Wilson): The reason it’s such a strong theme is because God knows we are constituted that way and appeals to us to exchange lesser joys for deeper ones in him.

0:28:51 – (Collin Hansen): One of my favorite all time podcast interview moments was when I got to introduce the author of the Happiness Hypothesis, of course, Jonathan Haidt, to Thomas Chalmers, and not heard of the concept at all, of course, not a Christian. But I said, I think what you’re talking about is this. And he said, really? Wow. I really thought about it that way before. That was really, really interesting. And related to this, then why do virtuous people lead happier lives?

0:29:23 – (Collin Hansen): This is another one that I think when we just sit down and reckon with it, it seems kind of obvious. Yet it is the opposite of the dominant cultural narrative that people who are free, who are transgressive, are the ones who are truly leading happier lives. So why do virtuous people, Andrew, lead happier lives?

0:29:43 – (Andrew Wilson): Yeah, in short, because the God who creates the good, the true and the beautiful is the same. So I think good things, true things and beautiful things at their ultimate point are all effectively one and the same. They resolve in the character of God. So we can make distinctions between truth, beauty and goodness. But ultimately they do cohere in God. And I think the more sort of cashed out practical answer is that that the habits that make people most happy because God is good and has configured us to, he’s configured a world in a good way. The habits that actually lead to greatest joy are themselves the habits that not all traditions, but certainly Christian ethical teaching summons us towards.

0:30:29 – (Andrew Wilson): So a habit like gratitude, which is extreme, you know, you know, all the way through the Bible, there’s Thanksgiving everywhere in the Bible and, and of course, you know, in the ethical teaching of the New Testament, gratitude is one of the most happiness inducing things you can have for me to say thank you to you or for you. You know, when that opening introduction you said Andrew’s one of the happiest people I know the weird thing about it, obviously it makes me feel nice and blow inside, but it actually makes you feel nice because to commend and to honor and to pray. This is again, I know you’re a Lewis, a CS Lewis man, but Lewis has always done this that actually the act of praise does something for me.

0:31:06 – (Andrew Wilson): I can’t fully experience the joy I want to in something until I praise it, until I give thanks to it or for it or whatever. As there’s so many examples like this that humility is one of the most happiness inducing habits you can form because as you regard yourself as lower, what you think you deserve goes down. And obviously when we think we deserve less than what we have, the gap between what we think we deserve and what we think we have is joy or gratitude or happiness, Thanksgiving. Whereas if we are proud and we think we deserve a lot and then we’re going to start going oh no, I haven’t got as much as I think I’m entitled to.

0:31:43 – (Andrew Wilson): That gap is grumbling or misery or whatever, self pity or whatever. And so generally again in so many ways the, the ethical invitations or summons of the New Testament talk loads in the book about these, you know, compassion and kindness and then ultimately of course, love, that actually in the end love is what really causes people to be happy. And it’s at the heart of the ethical teaching of the Bible. In fact, if it weren’t for the Bible, love would seem like a slightly peripheral, might even be regarded as a virtue at all. I don’t know. The ancient writers didn’t tend to center love in the way that we do or the way that certainly the way the scripture does.

0:32:18 – (Andrew Wilson): So I think in all of those cases, God has designed human beings and the world in such a way that there is a degree of virtue is its own reward. I don’t want to push that too far into a sort of, you know, mechanistic, fatalistic way. But that virtue, the virtues do make people happy. And I think that’s because God created us in his image. And as God is like that, and he’s made us, to some measure, like that as well.

0:32:41 – (Andrew Wilson): So which is quite exciting because it means that to tell someone, again as a pastor or preacher, commending the Christian life, commending Christian virtue to people is actually pointing them in the direction of their own greater happiness.

0:32:53 – (Collin Hansen): Is this related, Andrew, to why compassion makes us happier than empathy does?

0:32:58 – (Andrew Wilson): Well, I think it is because I think I know that there’s a slight degree of sort of again, there’s lots of rabbit holes here because of the way in which that discussion’s gone in the last few years. But I think the idea, certainly the idea that you can retain your distance from an individual emotionally, you can see what is happening to a person and then choose to suffer with them, which is compassion is a is better for us, is better for our mental health, is better for our sense of and this is again, I’m talking sociologically here, not theologically than it is to empathize, that is to so enter into their pain and so on, that you sort of experience it without necessarily being able to help them with the external agency you need.

0:33:36 – (Andrew Wilson): And so empathy on its own, without what the Christian obviously vision is that of compassion, which is I can see this person, I’m going to enter into their suffering, but retain the distance that is needed both from the pain and from the circumstances to be able to help you help carry them through it. That actually the agency I have in that moment of being able to assist this person is what really brings the joy rather than disappearing into the sorrow with them. But not being able to help them carry them through it, that actually doesn’t. That ends up wearing people out very quickly for obvious reasons, because we’ve got pains of our own and you start entering into too many other peoples and you quickly get sunk by it. So, yes, I think it is connected.

0:34:15 – (Collin Hansen): One more question, Andrew, on happiness. And again, we’ve been talking here with Andrew Wilson about happiness, what it is, where to find it, how to make it last forever. His new book with crossway when you’re feeling gloomy, Andrew, where do you find happiness? And related to this, you have a great concept in the book. How do you turn your delights into disciplines?

0:34:35 – (Andrew Wilson): Yeah. So this is a great piece of Advice I heard 20, 25 years ago from a guy who said, find out what helps you get happy in God and then make a discipline out of it. And I have found that so beneficial as an idea. So I think so in my case, let’s say in my Just take devotional life would be what an example is probably for me one of the most important examples. But I know that there are certain habits that if I, you know, for me, early in the day, just after I showered, you know, this is George Mueller. My first juicy every morning is to have my soul happy in the Lord. I found that to be true.

0:35:11 – (Andrew Wilson): And so I okay, I need to rejoice in the Lord. And I’m. I’m going to do that better if I practice in this way. If I have a book, a pen, probably a Bible, a commentary on the Bible or book that is bringing out the meaning of the Bible has always helped me for as long as I can remember, a pen and a cup of coffee and a chair that’s comfortable enough to sit in. And then when I’m as when I pray, I might do that when I’m moving because I find that really useful. I sing quite a lot. Again, charismatic, but we sing a lot in our kind of spirituality, piety.

0:35:41 – (Andrew Wilson): And so I think those sorts of disciplines again, even just in attending church, like what. How do. What do I do in church? I tend to find if I’m sitting at the front where I feel like I can just be more exuberant and I can participate more. I don’t like seeing disengaged people, worshipers ahead of me. So I find that just, I don’t know, it kind of bums me out really sometimes. So I kind of like singing also.

0:36:03 – (Andrew Wilson): Some of these sound very silly, but actually these norms about I just enjoy God more when I’ve got a pen and a Bible. I’m one of these people who writes in everything than I do if I just read a Bible. It sounds weird, but I just found that that kind of thing that brings me closer to God in the long run. And so I have learned to make disciplines out of those sorts of things. I think there’d be many other examples of just daily habits that can help, some of which are obviously spiritual, as I’ve just described, and some of which are more practical. But I do think in the grand scheme of things, some of the things we’ve touched on already, I as a general rule, trees, wide open spaces, children, hugs make you much happier than screens, money, budget, you know, things which, there are things which in themselves present them. So you have to deal with them, you have to interact with. We’re talking on the screen now. You have to think about mine. Of course we do.

0:36:55 – (Andrew Wilson): But the, but the things that you’re often drawn to do and the things that actually make you happier are often not the same. And I think learning what they are and then making habits out of it is really fruitful.

0:37:06 – (Collin Hansen): Just close on a few questions with Andrew about Remaking the world, how 1776 created the post Christian West. I often say to Andrew and everybody else, there are many books that I’m glad that I’ve read. There are a few books that I wish I had written. That was one of them. It’s been three years now since he wrote Remaking the World. How, Andrew, are you celebrating the 250th anniversary of these United States?

0:37:29 – (Andrew Wilson): Well, occasionally trolling Americans with, with pictures of my book would be one way, I guess. Do you know what? I was actually, I was in the. With you. I was in the States a couple of weeks ago and I, I asked people, how do you think the 250th will be marked as distinct from the others? And basically everyone said, I don’t think it will. I think we’ll do a 4th of July thing like we normally do and that’ll be that. Because.

0:37:52 – (Andrew Wilson): And you know what? So I mean, this is one of my, one of my favorite, like my peak American experiences. I was on the male in Washington, D.C. for a Fourth of July firework display in 2006. And it was a 230th anniversary, which is not quite so big. But I’ve never experienced anything. I mean, you guys do. We do pageantry better than you, I think with the royal family, the pomp and circumstance bit. But there is nothing like an American firework display. Barbie. I mean, it really is. You guys are out your. But even a baseball game is like, it is just next level. That’s you guys are contributing to the world in that way.

0:38:27 – (Andrew Wilson): So I’m afraid I’ll probably just be celebrating it vicariously and occasionally delighting in the fact that one day the American tax rebels will come home or something.

0:38:36 – (Collin Hansen): One day. I think part of what’s confusing Andrew is that we’re hosting the World cup at the same Time.

0:38:41 – (Andrew Wilson): Well, I know and of course that’s what’s confusing on the islands I live on is going to be a much, much bigger deal. And the 250 is there, presumably. Are there games actually on the 4th of July? I presume there aren’t, but I don’t.

0:38:52 – (Collin Hansen): I have, I haven’t looked but, but it would be pretty surprising.

0:38:56 – (Andrew Wilson): I’ve actually got my, my annual theological conference which I host. I have. Peter Williams and me are going to do Luke’s Gospel together in the. A three day run about two or three days after the 4th of July and we have all these pastors and, and interested theologians coming and. But we often put on the football the World cup when it’s a World cup match every four years we then put that on in the evening after we finished it on the big screen and it’s. Oh, it’s an absolute delight.

0:39:22 – (Andrew Wilson): Unless England’s playing, in which case it’s terrifying.

0:39:25 – (Collin Hansen): Two round of 16 games will be played on July 4th. Really looked it up.

0:39:31 – (Andrew Wilson): England might even be playing. Wow.

0:39:33 – (Collin Hansen): Possibly, possibly. Hopefully in somewhere as lovely as my beloved Kansas City. Hopefully you’ll get lucky to do that. All right. So have you learned anything since the book about 1776?

0:39:48 – (Andrew Wilson): Yes, and I’m gonna forget what it was. I had a really. I, I, some. This sometimes happens when you read something after you’ve published anything. Oh, I wish I’d read that story but now I can’t remember what it is. I definitely did. This is a. Because it’s caught me on the hop. I don’t have a factoid, but I remember reading a. Something probably about a nation that it was not Britain, France, Germany or America, which is where most.

0:40:12 – (Collin Hansen): Just another thing that happened.

0:40:13 – (Andrew Wilson): Yeah, that’s such a good story and that would have really weaved in, but I just can’t remember what it was. Oh, so that’.

0:40:20 – (Collin Hansen): No, it’s all good. All good. Somebody asked me this question recently and I think Americans are the worst to be able to answer it, but I bet you could. What makes the United States unique?

0:40:35 – (Andrew Wilson): Well, your firework displays in your baseball games are one. No, I, so I, I think, I do think that embedded in your national story, for all of its complexities and its problems which we wouldn’t go into now and you would know much more about than me. I think there is a very attractive vision and optimism and a sense that hasn’t quite been eroded by the last actually since we were talking about it earlier the years since sort of the chaos of the 60s and so on and Vietnam that hasn’t quite been lost. There is a.

0:41:13 – (Andrew Wilson): We can be. I mean it’s so difficult, so politically complicated because as you might expect, I’m. I’m not at all a sort of a right wing Republican American in my. Just, I’m just, I’m British. That’s not how we think. But, but there is something of a kind of a greatness or a contribution to the world which at its best has got that there’s. You almost have to have a little bit of naivety to the potential downsides of something to be able to do really innovative, exciting things. I think sometimes you need people to step out and say, you know what, we’re not going to be blinded by the possible downsides here or the cynicism, whatever. We’re just going to do something and hope that it works.

0:41:55 – (Andrew Wilson): And there is a lot of that in your country. Not only in the sort of, the big companies which obviously create a lot of the sort of wealth and new technology, some good, some bad, not just in your political ecosystem which sometimes leads to chaos, but sometimes leads to great results and not just in your sort of moral progress, but actually just in the sort of ordinary places you go in North America where I just find I’m so often interacting with people who just think that there’s something really great about where they live. And I think that, that as a. I mean I, I do too by the way, about Britain, but there is a. There’s a lot more in Europe, there’s a lot more sort of, sometimes people a bit more jaundiced and a bit more feel like tired and so on. And I do feel like that there’s a sort of a youthful.

0:42:36 – (Andrew Wilson): I know it sounds crazy because the country is so much older than many others, but it does still feel like there’s a sort of a youthful positivity and optimism which I think hasn’t quite gone away. And I think if it hasn’t gone away now, with all that’s gone on in the last 15 or 20 years, I, it. Maybe it won’t. Maybe it’s just there to stay. Maybe it’s just baked into the kind of people the founding fathers were and the kind of history you have with all of its problems. We know.

0:43:03 – (Andrew Wilson): And I love it. And I just find America infectiously, every time I go to America, I love this place. I really, it’s just a. And I’ve been to a lot of different parts of the country, but that is something that seems to be common to all of them, even whether it’s New York or it’s the middle of nowhere in Missouri, or, you know, it’s just fascinating. I don’t know. I don’t know quite why it’s there. Texas, you know, there’s something that they have in common. You’re sitting, having, sitting in a diner in any of those three places, you, you pick up the same vibes of a kind of can do optimism, which I really love. And I think it is at the moment your greatest asset.

0:43:36 – (Collin Hansen): I hadn’t really thought about it this way, Andrew, and that’s why I asked you the question. But I think if you asked Americans are the United States best days ahead? I think they’d probably say yes. Now, there are different nostalgic streams and essentially American politics is the conflict between two nostalgias, the 50s versus the 60s. But underneath there’s still this general sense that with some new technological innovation or some new recovery of founding principles or a religious revival, that our best days are still ahead.

0:44:15 – (Collin Hansen): I’m guessing that not many British people would answer the same way.

0:44:19 – (Andrew Wilson): Yeah, I think that’s true. And I think some of that is superpower thinking, because I think, objectively considered, someone from outside analyzing your country would say, I cannot see in the foreseeable future, in the lifetime even of my children or maybe even their children, America being displaced as the world’s most influential, powerful nation, which is clearly, clearly not true of mine. I think the challenge, of course, that all nations have is that when they do get knocked off top spot, what they then do to discover. And this is the famous line of your. I think he was Secretary of State at the time in the, in the 60s when he said Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.

0:44:59 – (Andrew Wilson): And we. That weighs heavily on a lot of British people who know that line or thinking about that period. But to some degree, I think that happens for everybody when their empire fades. And what you do then, I think Britain then reinvented itself as a producer of pop culture and of, of, of drama and television and music and pop art and that sort of thing. And that in a way has become. That’s our thing. And if you watch our Olympic, you know, display opening ceremony, that’s what we lean into, with a bit of royal family thrown in.

0:45:32 – (Andrew Wilson): What America will do in 2200 when it isn’t the most powerful nation in the world anymore. And how, whether that optimism will still be there then, I don’t know. But there’s a long way before then. And I feel like the optimism is infectious.

0:45:45 – (Collin Hansen): Well, I think one day it wouldn’t be a surprise if historians, our descendants, looked back and said, oh, America was all downhill from June 6, 1944, the Normandy landings, or America was all downhill from August 6, 1945, which was the Hiroshima bombing. Oh, yeah, that was the peak of their power. That was the peak of their influence. But it’s not lived and experienced that way.

0:46:11 – (Andrew Wilson): No.

0:46:12 – (Collin Hansen): In part because of our limited perspective, but also probably in part because of something that’s embedded in the national character, which you put it so well, the naivete to believe that you can still change the world or remake the world. It said right there the unique character of having been those people who, one way or another, were the people who settled, colonized, conquered the New World, one of the most amazing and shocking achievements and discoveries of obviously all time.

0:46:45 – (Collin Hansen): So sometimes when you’re close to it, you don’t see it, you just take it for granted. But how true is that of so many different things? And I think what, what links these together, Andrew, is this perspective that when we can gain perspective, especially divine perspective on our lives, it infuses us with so much gratefulness and ultimately that is the fuel of so much happiness as well.

0:47:08 – (Andrew Wilson): Yeah. Well, if I may just an integrating final comment from me. I talk in the book at one point about the difference in and this goes right back to the very opening comments you made about temperament, that there is a, that psychologists talk about, you know, or some psychologists use the language of discovery mode and defense mode that we, we have to have both. We have to defend ourselves against possible predators and we have to discover possible food sources.

0:47:34 – (Andrew Wilson): And as a result, those two things are in conflict within us. But some of us lean more to discovery, some of us lean more to defense. And generally those who lean more to discovery are temperamentally more upbeat and happier, but they also more likely to die in car crashes or have I make terrible misjudgments or be on the Darwin Awards. And that’s me. I stub my toe an awful lot, but I also smile a lot.

0:47:55 – (Andrew Wilson): And those of us who are more prone to defense, which is again, at least half of us, are more likely to make sometimes better judgments about possible risks and assess those. But they might probably also more likely to feel sad or to not be as optimistic about the future. And I think to map that onto the national conversation we’ve just been having, I think you clearly America has to defend itself and does and all those sorts of things. But I think the word discovery still chimes in America. I think you still, when people make billions of pounds, billions of dollars in America. They go, let’s send some rockets, you know, let’s go fly around the moon again. Let’s go to Mars. And that’s obviously I’m a bit West Wing, I suppose, in this there’s a sort of heroism of it. But I do think that the desire to discover, and some of that is simply the sheer size of the continent you’re on. But there is discovery is built into what America is, and I think that is one of the reasons it’s a positive place. So and one of the reasons why discovery is good for happiness, which is why you should read this book.

0:48:55 – (Collin Hansen): There you go. The book is Happiness, what it Is, where to Find it, how to Make It Last Forever by Andrew Wilson. That’s new from Crossway, but again from three years ago, remaking the world, how 1776 created the post Christian West. If you know, grab the book, take in a baseball game, bring it to the baseball game. Even you know the fireworks are at the end, when it’s dark at the baseball game. So read the book if you don’t like baseball and then enjoy the fireworks. And thank Andrew Wilson for his work.

0:49:23 – (Collin Hansen): And thanks, Andrew, for taking time here on Gospelbound. I’m so much happier having talked with you today. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this episode of Gospel Bound. For more interviews and to sign up for my newsletter, head over to tgc.org gospelbound Rate and review Gospelbound on your favorite podcast platform so others can join the conversation. Until next time, Remember, when we’re bound to the gospel, we abound in hope.