This year I’m writing a series of posts thinking about big questions that lots of us have about Christianity, Jesus and faith. Some of them are about how we can live well, some are doubts we often have but don’t know how to express.
I want to say at the outset that in preparing these posts I have extensively used a book that I want to recommend: Rebecca McLaughlin’s, “10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (And Answer) About Christianity”.
Rebecca and I were both studying at Cambridge at about the same time, although as far as I can remember we never met. That is one of my few regrets from those years because she is one of the most interesting and insightful Christian writers around and I would have loved to have got a headstart on hearing what she has to say.
Everything I’m saying, Rebecca said first and better. I want to urge you to get the book and read it, particularly if you are under 25 (but also if you’re older than that).
The Big Idea
I always try to give a summary of what I’m going to say in one or two sentences so it is easy to remember. Here is today’s:
If you want to live your best life, follow Jesus and go to church.
Readings
A lot of this post isn’t going to be me going through Bible passages. But there are some things that Jesus said that help us to think about this:
“[Jesus said], I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
“Then [Jesus] said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” (1 John 3:16)
“[St Paul taught] that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:35)
“[St Paul wrote] give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
The rest of this post is going to be hard and fast and fun.
In the Old Testament there’s a phrase about getting ready: “gird your loins” – it literally means, “put your big boy or girl pants on because it’s going to get real”.
So, here are 5 big reasons why living your best life means going to church and following Jesus.
- Going to Church Makes You Happier and Healthier
In the past there were people, very clever people, who have argued that people would be better off without religion. Lots of people like that argument – it can feel comfortable to be told that you’re better off without God.
Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for us, we now have loads of evidence that the opposite is true.
Tyler VanderWeele is the Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Harvard University. That basically means he is one of the elite guys working on public health in the world.
His research, together with 20 years of studies by others, shows that going to a religious service weekly gives you a significant chance of living longer, living more healthily, being less depressed, less prone to addiction, less likely to commit suicide, and generally more optimistic.
In case you were wondering if this applies to any regular group activity – like joining a football or golf club – it doesn’t. Studies show that doing something non-religous even with the same people every week doesn’t work the same way.
Professor VanderWeele describes going to church as “a miracle drug”.
This doesn’t mean Christian life is easy. Jesus himself suffered and said we would too at times. Globally 11 Christians are killed for their faith every day. But even with those trials, being in church is demonstrably the best way to live a healthy, happy and long life.
If you want to live your best life, follow Jesus and go to church.
- Love Adds Life
So being in church is good for you in every measurable way.
What about following what Jesus taught?
Christians believe that “God is love”. Jesus’ most famous command was that we should “love one another as I have loved you”.
That kind of love isn’t about feeling warm towards someone or being romantic with them. It means putting their interests above your own, even when it hurts. It means being willing to sacrifice for them.
We know what love is by looking at Jesus. That’s why we fill our halls and homes and necks and clothes with crosses. Because love adds life. And this is how we know what love is.
Again, we find that Jesus’s teaching was right and 2,000 years ahead of modern thought.
Scientists at Harvard University studied happiness for 75 years. People thought that happiness would come chiefly from success, fame, or wealth. But it wasn’t any of these things that really made a difference. The thing that makes the biggest difference is having good relationships with friends and family.
Love adds life.
One of the teachings most central to being a follower of Jesus is his promise that “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it”.
Again, Jesus said it 2 millennia ago. Now we have the data to show he is right. Scientists have shown that helping others is good for us. It might even be better for us than the person we help.1 Selfishness makes us miserable. Selflessness makes us happy.
But maybe you think that you don’t need to go to church to be unselfish. Obviously you’re right. But you are much, much more likely to be unselfish if you do. As Rebecca observes “in America, people who go to church every week give three-and-a-half times as much money to charity and volunteer twice as much as people who never go to church.”2
If you want to live your best life, follow Jesus and go to church.
We’re half way through now. Take a moment to pause, catch your breath and turn to the person next to you. Ask them : “Are you alright?”
- Gratitude and Forgiveness Are Good For You
So we’ve covered going to church and the big commandments. But what about the little stuff. Like the prayer we pray each week saying thank you to God for what we have, asking for forgiveness and offering it to others?
One of the defining things about Christians is that they say thank you. We thank God for the goodness of the world, the relationships we have in it, for Jesus being willing to give himself for us to bring us life.
But saying thank you doesn’t feel amazing.
I love Christmas. It’s great. But the worst part comes afterwards when someone responsible, I’m not going to name her, turns up with a box of notes and announces : “it’s time to write thank you cards”.
Saying thank you sounds like a chore. We have to remind young children (and sometimes adults) to do it.
But again, psychologists have found that choosing to be grateful – to say thank you – makes us happier and healthier.3
It’s the same with forgiveness.
Jesus was huge on forgiveness. Every week we pray “forgive us … as we forgive”. St Peter once asked if he should forgive seven times. Jesus said “no, seventy x seven”. He even forgave people as they executed him.
Forgiveness is hard because anger and hatred and bitterness feel good in the moment. But forgiving others makes you live longer, and feel better mentally and physically.4
If you want to live your best life, follow Jesus and go to church.
- Grit is Good
I love the Rocky movies. I watched them as a kid, introduced Heather to them when we started going out (it’s a true test of a girl’s commitment), and then watched them with my kids. One of my proudest moments was when, after a month of Rocky, my daughter Abi wrote in a year 4 essay that she didn’t like to see animals fight but liked watching men fight.
Rocky has what psychologists call grit. I can’t put it better than the great man himself .
What Rocky is describing is something psychologists call “grit”. It is the ability to keep going when times get tough, to persevere even in hard times. Psychologists have found that this quality makes more of a difference to success in the long term than intelligence, beauty or talent.
Grit is all over the New Testament. Jesus teaches us to follow him by walking a hard road, St Peter calls Christians to self-control and perseverance, the writer of Hebrews urges us to “run with endurance.”
And instead of just relying on our own grit, our own ability to get hit and keep moving forward, God gives Christians a Helper, the Holy Spirit, a kind of Divine support team who encourages us, empowers us and keeps us.
If you want to live your best life, follow Jesus and go to church.
- Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems
Finally, I want to quote a giant of 20th century theology, the Notoriouis B.I.G.,
I don’t know what they want from me
It’s like the more money we come across
The more problems we see5
I’ll keep this one short. Jesus says that “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
As St Timothy explained, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
Again, Jesus turns out to be right.
In fact, if you want a career in psychology it’s probably safer to just assume Jesus is right and start from there.
When this has been studied it turns out that choosing money over friends and family leads to unhappiness.6
By all means try to get money. It’s good to have money. If you’re going to use it to help others and serve God. Otherwise you’re going to end up miserable, broken and away from God and others.
If you want to live your best life, follow Jesus and go to church.
Application
What does this mean for us as we try to know hope, show hope and share hope:
- First, if you want to know hope, make coming to church and following Jesus a priority this year. If you want to be happier, healthier, stronger and more influential this year, come to church and follow Jesus.
- Second, if you want to share hope, find someone to help and show love to. It will make their life better and yours too.
- Finally, if you want to share hope, then invite someone else to come to church. It really can make a huge, measurable difference to their life not just in a mystical or spiritual sense but in every sense.
If you want to live your best life, follow Jesus and go to church.
- Caroline E. Jenkinson, et al., “Is Volunteering a Public Health Intervention? A Systematic Review and Metanalysis of the Health and Survival of Volunteers,” BMC Public Health 13 (2013): 773. For a study on caring for others being more beneficial for the carer than the cared for, see for example, Susan Brown, et al., “Providing Social Support May Be More Beneficial Than Receiving It: Results from a Prospective Study of Mortality,” Psychological Science 14, no. 4 (2003): 320–27. ↩︎
- She cites Arthur Brooks, Who Really Cares (New York: Basic Books, 2006), p.34. ↩︎
- Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough, “Counting Blessings versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84, no. 2 (February 2003): 377–89. ↩︎
- “Forgive to Live: Forgiveness, Health, and Longevity,” Journal of Behavioral Medicine 35, no. 4 (2012): 375–86; Loren L. Toussaint, Everett L. Worthington, and David R. Williams, eds., Forgiveness and Health: Scientific Evidence and Theories Relating Forgiveness to Better Health (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015). ↩︎
- Bernard Edwards / Christopher Wallace / J Phillips / Mason Betha / Nile Gregory Rodgers / Sean Combs / Steve Jordan – Mo Money Mo Problems lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc ↩︎
- for example, Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 88–89. ↩︎
Deep Church 
An excellent start to the day. Thank you Phil.
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