“Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Eph. 5.17)

I have a good sense of how a younger and greener version of myself would have interpreted these words from Paul about God’s will. The evangelical milieu of the 1990s in which I grew up felt like a more positive and imaginative time, one where doing great things for God was possible and one in which Christianity felt triumphant. I should admit that there are many valid and substantial critiques of that era. One is that growing up in the hope and optimism of a world in which Christian institutions were strong and Christianity seemed healthy allowed me to easily misinterpret a lot of passages. 

Which is why I would have put the pressure on myself to see this verse as law and not gospel, and as a demand to obtain esoteric knowledge about God’s mysterious will. I know this because I attempted it, often in the service of answering oddly specific questions. Most of my teenage and young adult years were vexed by questions like “is it God’s will that I should marry this person?” or “does God want me to do this for a career?” Often, the reply I received was either silence or the anxious imposition of my personal desires. This left those who cared for me scratching their heads at how such a bright student could make such silly decisions.

As I have grown into my Reformed faith, I think Paul’s admonition here is much simpler.

God is not asking us to discern His will to embark on an ill-defined journey to get some secret knowledge, like a spiritual Don Quixote. Rather, Paul is saying to us “hey, God has already revealed His will to you; it is clearly shown in Scripture and in Jesus Christ. So don’t be foolish and do it!” That’s why in the following verses Paul assigns us obvious tasks, like avoiding drunkenness, singing songs, and giving thanks.

All of which serves as a perhaps too long and personally embarrassing analogy for understanding happiness. I think we often approach happiness the same way I used to approach God’s will: it is this secret thing that’s hard to grasp and even harder to obtain. What even is happiness? And with the rising rates of depression, deaths of despair, and addiction in our society, is obtaining it even possible?

I think it is. And I think you will be surprised at the kinds of things that tend towards happiness.

To be clear, I’m talking about the conditions that research (and Scripture) bear out with regards to human flourishing. Certainly, there is a deeper happiness that we can access in Christ in any circumstance (Phil. 4.11-13). Here I’m talking about “Ecclesiastes” happiness—the kind of stuff that makes for the good life. What follows is  loosely organized around Arthur Brook’s exposition of Jung’s conditions of happiness (Brooks, 2024).

• Community and Stable Relationships. This is probably one of the more obvious but more elusive factors that impact human happiness. Obvious because everyone wants friends, romance, and family. Elusive because of all the things working against that: tech driven isolation, political polarization, high divorce rates, and so on. But the science is fascinating here: one study found that people with good relationships had a 50% better chance of being alive at the end of the study when compared to those without them (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010).  Medical researcher Robert Waldinger (2024) hypothesizes that consistent and stable relationships help mediate and regulate stress on a long-term basis (parents, read long- term…your kids will still stress you out in the short run!). But sociologist Brad Wilcox (2024) also notes that commitments to particular institutions (like marriage or raising a family) can create long term conditions of happiness across multiple fronts.

• Enough Financial Stability. Financial YouTuber Erin Talks Money (2026), citing a study by Empower Retirement, explored an interesting trend regarding how much money people think they need to be happy. For Americans in most income brackets, it’s only a little bit more. In fact, those in income brackets between $25,000 to $199,000 per year reported needing just $25,000 more to be happy and less stressed. Interestingly, those who make $200,000+ reported needing a whopping $150,000 more in annual salary to be happy.

What’s the rub? Well Erin believes that those under $200K are just looking for enough to live comfortably on. This is what our friends from Louisiana would call “lagniappe.” But those above $200K were not focused on comfortable living but with keeping up with the Jones’. The takeaway? Happiness with finances is more about having enough to make ends meet and a little bit to play with. It diminishes the more you start to compare what you don’t have with what others do.  As Arthur Brooks (2024) points out, money can only solve our physical and fiscal problems. Once we have that covered, it proves ineffective in dealing with the more abstract and spiritual problems of living (p. 81).

• Meaningful Work. I once saw a video about an automotive manufacturing plant. It briefly featured the last person on the assembly line, the one who put the manufacturer’s badge on the car when it is finished. When I saw this, I thought: what a wonderful job! No stress, no important decisions, just simplicity all day. The reality is we can have two kinds of valid reactions to that kind of work. The first is to bemoan how such work, in the age of automation and AI, dehumanizes us and leaves us devoid of meaning for 8 hours a day. If this is you, it might mean finding another job that allows you to leave more of a mark in the world is part of your happiness profile. But you also might require a reframe. Perhaps building widgets all day is your small part of a meaningful process that creates a useful product and provides for your family. This too is meaningful. Either way, Arthur Brooks (2026) encourages us to find work that allows us to live out our personal values if we seek happiness (p. 172).

• Faith/Transcendent Dimension. Did you know that happiness tends to increase with one’s frequency of religious attendance (Burge, 2025)? Though it might seem counterintuitive to some, religion itself is associated with a lot of personal benefits. Religion increases mental health (Brooks, 2024), is associated with keeping families intact (Wilcox, 2024), provides meaning and transcendence (Brooks, 2024), provides guidance on life’s toughest questions, and offers ready-made community in a digital age in which creating connections is so tough. Of course, Psalm 1 already told us most of this: “Blessed is the manwho walks not in the counsel of the wicked, He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers” (Psalm 1.1, 3, ESV).

All of this returns us to the metaphor of my experience of trying to discern God’s will.

In retrospect, God’s will was more obvious than it seemed. In the same way, at least the ingredients, if not the pathway, to living a happy life are obvious. Research bears them out, but so does Scripture. The Bible exhorts us to live in stable community (Heb. 10.25). It encourages diligent work, makes provision for those who cannot achieve this, and discourages the idolatry of money (Col. 3.23; Deut. 15.11; 1 Tim 6.10). Work is meant to have meaning (Gen 2. 15). And being in communion with Christ brings eternal transcendent impact (Col. 3.4).

Not that happiness is an immediate thing that comes about by working harder or becoming more religious. But the encouragement here is to examine yourself against the conditions listed above and see what changes you can make that are within your power. Some of it may be out of your control, but since true happiness is found in Christ, it is ultimately accessible to all.

References

Brooks, Arthur C. (2024). The happiness files. Harvard Business Review.

Brooks, Arthur C. (2026). The meaning of your life. Portfolio Penguin.

Burge, Ryan. (2025). Are religious people happier than the non-religious? ReligionUnplugged. https://religionunplugged.com/news/religious-people-happier-than-non-religious-people

Erin Talks Money. (2026, May 22). This is why you’ll never feel like you have enough money. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkzyeSFj9rM

Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB (2010). Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review. PLOS Medicine 7(7): e1000316. 

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316

Waldinger, R. (2024). How a happy relationship can help your health. Robert Waldinger. https://www.robertwaldinger.com/post/how-a-happy-relationship-can-help-your-health/

Wilcox, Brad. (2024). Get married. Broadside Books