Book Review: Holy Unhappiness

Ever since the death of my mother, I wondered how I could be caught so unprepared.

Not by her death—that, we knew to expect—but by the suffering and grief that came with it.  The awfulness of the entire experience, the lack of closure, the suffering she experienced: I never anticipated the fullness of that or what it might mean.  Although my mother frequently joked that when the time came we’d all sit around the bed and sing Amazing Grace while she fall asleep, the experience of her death was so antithetical to that I found myself unmoored and adrift in a way I had never been prior.

In Holy Unhappiness, Amanda Held Opelt explores why this might be.

Seeking to plumb the depths of her own unhappiness and satisfaction despite a relatively privileged life, Opelt places the blame squarely on what she calls the emotional prosperity gospel and its prominence in evangelicalism.

Acknowledging that evangelicals decry the prosperity gospel itself—which claims that wealth and health serve as evidence of appropriate faith in God—Opelt points out that evangelicals nonetheless do subscribe to a spiritual version of it: that life with God will always feel good, that happiness and spiritual joy will emerge automatically when we do what God wants us to do. 

Opelt explores six major areas within this focus: work, marriage, parenthood, calling, community, and body.  With sound theology and reliance on Scripture, she explores some of our faulty assumptions in these areas, showing us that living a rich Christian life doesn’t always mean that we will feel untroubled, or be without suffering—indeed, that a blessed life is a complex one in which we acknowledge the brokenness of the world while recognizing the blessing within it.

Opelt won the day for me with her sections on work and calling.  Exploring what it means to work post-curse, she explores the ways in which our vocations—while often God-given and even God-honoring—can and always will provoke, frustrate, and irritate us.  She also pokes holes in the myths around “calling”: the sense that finding What God Has For Me will serve as a panacea for all our ills and struggles. 

In these sections, I found Opelt’s dive into evangelical truisms particularly relevant.  She acknowledges that she grew up in a very particular Christian milieu as an 80s-and-90s evangelical woman; so did I.  And so I was familiar with much of the phrasing she describes, like “let go, let God” and “it’s a relationship, not a religion.”  Pointing out that these phrases are themselves deeply reductive, Held traces out how some of these phrases and beliefs—popular at the time—let a generation of evangelicals into an individual, DIY spirituality: one in which a relationship with God that “felt good” trumped everything else, including church engagement, and which in which that relationship immediately collapsed when God seemed silent or inexplicable.

Most touching to me was Opelt’s study on the concept of God’s comfort.  Many people, she points out, believe that the comfort offered by God in Scripture is a removal or relief from pain.  Linguistically, she points out, this is not the case: that “comfort” in this context refers to “being strengthened.”  To receive the comfort of God, then, is to be strengthened in the necessary measure for what one must face, not that what we must face will magically become less painful or difficult. 

When I think back to my mother’s death, I can see this in action.  I kept wondering why it all felt so terrible and where God was at; in the years that have followed, even before this book, I began to see that He was the supporting strength that got me through the entire ordeal. But what a difference it might have made to me to be prepared for that: to know it would hurt, and that the awfulness of it was not due to some failure of mine or of God’s, but was simply what we must experience.  That God would give me what I needed to persevere through it, and that was where the blessing was.

Not all the sections of the book resonated with me so much.  The marriage section in particular left me cold.  To be clear, Opelt’s thoughts on marriage aren’t inaccurate here.  She does a fine job of pointing out that because of the emotional prosperity gospel, many Christians marry without an understanding of what marital love can provide and what it can’t and aren’t expecting anything less than storybook happiness as a result. 

But I’ll just be honest—I am a little weary of Christian women talking about how suffering through marriage is God’s great plan.  Certainly every marriage has growing pains; certainly couples go through trials and tests together.  But it seems like every single time I hear about Christian marriage I hear about what a grinding labor it is, what a Herculean effort, full of we-almost-divorced and I-hated-him-until-God-helped-me-love-him. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen or that Christians don’t experience conflict and difficulty in marriage, but I also think it’s possible for Christian marriages to be healthy and happy from the start—even when they contain growing pains and conflict.  (I would know; I’m in one). I’d be interested in seeing a different model presented, though I can hardly critique Opelt here for sharing her own experiences.

That’s just a quibble, though.  It’s a very good book.  If you’ve emerged from the evangelical milieu or if the emotional prosperity gospel dogs your steps, this book can be a great guide to reorienting yourself.  More than that, it’s a thoughtful treatise that looks honesty at a Christian life that integrates the reality of pain, suffering, sorrow, and failure—while still maintaining hope and even joy.