Theology, Nihilism, and Self-Help or I'm a Sinner, It's Hopeless, Happiness is Possible

 

    I listened to the audiobook of Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners by Dane C. Ortlund. It is read by Dane C. Ortlund. He has a soothing voice even at 1.75x faster than normal. In Deeper, he addresses sin in the Christian life. For me, it can be a never-ending source of defeat and despair. Ortlund shines the love of Christ into the hopelessness of sin. He manages to comfort, challenge, and instruct. Reading theology stretches me mentally. Deeper increased my understanding of God's love and commitment. 

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    When I start a book, even if it turns out to be one I don't like, I usually finish it. I am a completist. About halfway through The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, I quit. Here are some reasons why: no plot, no hope, and no point. In a cynical frame of mind, I would say I wasn't smart enough to read this book. If I understood what McCarthy was trying to do, perhaps I would marvel and be amazed. His characters don't have dialogues. Instead, they talk to each other in soliloquies, beautiful soliloquies. Halfway through, the characters' hopelessness became overwhelmingly depressing, and I stopped reading. I realized I need forward movement to stay engaged in a book. 

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    My anecdote to The Passenger was to read the opposite. This morning I finished reading The Happiness Project Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin. It was a surprising book. One surprise was how much I liked it--quite a bit. Another surprise was its genuine hopefulness. I like self-help books or, personal growth, as they're now called when they are practical and applicable. Give me steps, not platitudes; research and reasoning, not guessing and good thoughts. Rubin trained as a lawyer and loves to think about an issue deeply. She wrote the book, not because she was unhappy, but because she wanted to be happier about all she had--think family, health, and necessities and not Mercedes-Benz and billions--and applied herself in a studied, focused way to achieve more happiness. It has the usual platitudes: be yourself, satisfaction starts with you, but how; what does that look like? I found it a worthwhile read. It has prompted self-examination around the area of happiness for myself and others. Rubin is also an aphorism machine. Here are some I liked.

"One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself." 

"What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while." 

"The days are long, but the years are short." 

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