Don't worry, be happy (or else)

From the November 2010 issue of Australian Vogue:

In the article “Happiness is overrated” writer Elizabeth Heathcote comments on positive thinking “My beef is less with the details of positive psychology and more with the way it functions. By lending academic credence to the idea that we can be better, shinier and happier if we just try, it has turned happiness into not only something we should expect, but yet another must-have commodity that you are failing if you don’t achieve”.

Happiness is a gift, a result of something good that has happened to us. We cannot manufacture it. It is pure gospel – something that is a result of something happening to us. When we try to turn it into law – something we must do, “don’t worry, be happy”, then we miss out on it.

Can I hear an Ephesians 2:8-10 out there people?

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”