Writing for Busted Halo: An Online Magazine for Spiritual Seekers, Helen Lee, a theology student at Fordham University, claims that Lady Gaga is spreading the gospel in her music. She says that Gaga’s new single, “Born This Way,” is “an anthem for the different. The song offers words of encouragement for everyone on the margins of society, including gay people, members of racial minorities, and even the ‘broke.’ She insists that ‘God makes no mistakes.'”
I confess: I only initially cared about the United Nation's International Day of Happiness—coming up on Thursday of this week—because the UN picked a pit bull as the "face" of the day for their commemorative stamps and brochure.
Any person, day, or global organization that recognizes that, to paraphrase Charles Schultz, happiness is indeed a warm pit bull gets not only my attention, but gets me up and applauding. I'm now super into this Happiness Day.
I confess that though I've long been an advocate for pit bulls, I've never been much of an advocate for happiness. I've actually spent much of the past decade or so fighting against the notion that happiness has any real value, that it offers anything useful beyond the immediate high. I've rebelled against the very American idea that its pursuit is worth paying any real heed. (Sorry, Founding Fathers.)
For instance, I've blamed happiness for my own sloth, saying that though I worked hard during my 20s, climbing magazine editorial ranks, I wrote very little in that decade because I was too darned happy to come up with anything meaningful. Life was swell! Who wants to write (or read) about that?
As a Christian, I've worried that pursuits of happiness take us straight away from pursuits of living as Jesus would have us live. In this world, we'll have trouble, Jesus tell us, not swell times. Focusing on that line alone, I've been a champion of sorrow and heartbreak—claiming they can do what happiness never could. Certainly, it took the ick and grit of my 30s, of hard relational and financial knocks to rework my soul, to deepen my faith and ultimately to rouse my angsty muse.
And I believe that 100 percent. Still.
So why now am I on board with the UN's happiness campaign? With its mission to recognize happiness as a "fundamental human goal" and seek "a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes… happiness and well-being of all peoples"?
At first, I figured the UN got the word wrong. I assumed what they were really celebrating was joy not happiness (a distinction we Christians love to make). After all, the campaign's poster dog, Macy, came out of a who-knows-what kind of hard-knock life, deemed "unadoptable," and relegated to "death row" at a shelter, before an angel of dog-mercy found her, fostered her, and then adopted her. Those kinds of stories—and the serene smile on Macy's face—are the kind of deep joy, not flitty, flighty happiness, as my friend Jennifer Grant would say. Macy's face reflects the joy that comes from a soul wandering through deserts and facing down death rows and coming through—battered but bettered. Blessed.
But then I looked back on my own desert days, the times I too thought all was lost—financially, at least. The days that battered me, then bettered me. The days that ultimately blessed me. And I noticed all the moments of happiness that saw me through. There were flits and flights, blips and specks in the snapshots on my mind that weave into the longings, the hurt, the desperation and knitted the joy I now feel.
Those fleeting times of sunshine-happy (one of them: watching my son throw strike after strike on that warm summer evening while his brother and sister run and scream in the fields behind the bleachers) during otherwise dark days (how would we pay those bills? When would more work come?) sustained me—like the whiff of spring in a gloomy February. Those bits of happy offered hope, that gloom wouldn't last forever, wouldn't win.
I still claim it isn't the happy times that make us who we are and who we are meant to be, but happiness itself—the licks of promise, the whiffs of hope it leaves in our lives—is worth celebrating. Certainly for a world that knows so little happiness, let alone joy. Certainly for a world that knows so little of the love of Jesus, the good graces of God, that I believe are behind each and every one of those speckles and sparkles of happy I felt even in my most desperate times.
The United Nations—and the Action for Happiness project they've partnered with—obviously makes no connection between spreading happiness and spreading Jesus. Nor do I think they should.
And yet, their list of ways to seek and spread cheer positively drips with our Savior. We see these among the action steps: Do kind things for others, thank the people you're grateful to, find three good things each day, look for the good in those around you, find your strengths and focus on using them, get help if you're struggling, volunteer your time…
Other action points are a bit more humanistic, but still. The World Day of Happiness promotes loving ourselves and loving our neighbors. Two ideals high on Jesus' list of commands. And while not everyone who pledges to pass the happy will have this on their minds, it's made me rethink my own mind.
God certainly uses times of trouble to teach us, but if living out two of Christ's commands to love ourselves (or, love God as we love ourselves) and love our neighbors bring bits of happiness—that we can feel, that we can share—are gifts of God. Even if happiness itself is as fleeting as the warm puppy happiness of Charles Schultz's motto, seems it is something worth marking, cheering, celebrating—perhaps by doing a good deed, clapping along, or writing about.
Lee goes on: “Gaga is spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, whether intentionally or not. Her views on celibacy, personal strength and individuality are certainly laudable; and far more compelling is what she has to say about human nature and human suffering.”
And this: “Because Lady Gaga is able to embrace the ugly, and in so doing embrace the beautiful, she has a sensitivity and appreciation for inevitable human suffering. She acknowledges that people struggle constantly with their fallen nature . . . From her attention to human suffering, I’m reminded of the Christian theme of uniting your sufferings with Christ’s suffering. Gaga is demanding that the marginalized be seen as the valuable, beautiful, Christ-like people they are.
“Lady Gaga is eccentric for sure. She can be grotesque. She can be vulgar. But she is a role model of Christian virtue precisely because it seems unlikely that she would be. She has the potential to introduce God to so many people precisely because it doesn’t seem like she is doing so. Lady Gaga is telling a huge, devoted audience that God loves them.”
I would agree that, at least in this song, Gaga is communicating some biblical truths. But to call her a “role model of Christian virtue”? A self-professed bisexual who shows off more of her body than almost any entertainer in history, who says she stays in shape on the “drunk diet,” who walked into the Yankees’ locker room after a game last summer while swilling whiskey and groping her own breasts, who believes she has two souls, who gave the finger to Mets fans, who . . .
Point made. If she’s singing Christian truths, fantastic. But “role model of Christian virtue” doesn’t exactly fit the situation.
