Max Lucado on ‘How Happiness Happens’

My name is Max Lucado, and I wrote a book called How Happiness Happens. I’m a pastor in San Antonio, Texas.

I came across some research that prompted a desire to write a book on happiness, that revealed that only one in three of Americans are happy. I think I assumed that more people were happy than one in three, and I was troubled or disturbed by the idea that only one in three American could find enough joy to check the Yes on the happiness questionnaire. That got me interested in the whole theme of happiness.

I think my definition of happiness is a deeply rooted sense of contentment in life. The sense that there is a God and there is a good God, and this good God means us well and has great plans for us. It’s a sense of contentment that comes out of a relationship with God.

The research echos what Scripture has taught us all along that really the pathway to happiness is giving happiness to others. The happiness really happens when we make other people happy. Jesus said that, “It’s more blessed to give than receive.” It’s really counterintuitive, but the fact of the matter is, if I want to find happiness in my own life, the quickest way is to give that happiness to others.

Now, that’s a biblical concept, but what I determined, what I discovered, is that research is really bearing this out. My favorite little tidbit of research has to do with the scientist who attached a MRI scanner to people’s heads and had them imagine doing good things for other people. Just the thought of doing good things activated, turned the lights on like Christmas trees, in that part of the brain that we call “the pleasure center.” Just the thought, the intent to do good things, is enough to make us happy. Imagine what happens when we really do those things.

So, really happiness happens when we give it away. Well, the Bible has a series of verses that we’d like to call “One Another” verses. There’s 59 of them in all, things like: “Serve one another. Teach one another. Help one another. Encourage one another. Admonish one another. I mean, the list is pretty long, and I think that by taking these “One Another” verses and creating little, practical, go-to strategies for our day-to-day life is the quickest and surest way to find happiness.

Just greeting other people, for example, or listening to other people activates a sense of well-being in my own life, and it for sure does the same in theirs.

This whole idea of trying to fix people and accept people is not a easy one. Some of the “One Another” verses are somewhat easy to put into practice, like, greet one another. Some of them are pretty tough, like, accept one another. And the Scripture goes on to say, “Just as God in Christ has accepted you.”

It’s hard for me to accept people who are opposite of me, who have a different mindset than I do. Sometimes we have an opposite you. So what do we do with the opposite yous? It’s one thing to accept the people who are like you, but to accept the people who are opposite of you? Well, the surest way to unhappiness is to try to fix them, to try to make them like me. That never works, but we keep trying.

The better idea is to accept them. Now, that doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with them. Doesn’t mean that we appreciate their point of view, but it does mean we value them as human beings, that we see within them the image of God, and the potential to become even a better human being. That’s how God accepts us. He certainly doesn’t accept the things that I do, but he accepts the fact that I’m created in his image and that he’s changing me into a better person.