When I was in high school, I developed a unique scale for measuring my level of happiness. I called it the “4 Gs.” The Gs were grades, golf (I was on the school golf team), girls, and God (the Big G). I realized that if my life was running smoothly in each of these areas, I was happy, and less happy if one or more were faltering or unstable.
I’ve noticed that most of the young people I know these days have little if any faith. For them the Big G is running on empty. And from what I suspect, they are not as happy as I was when I was their age.
Half of my more elderly friends have little if any faith either. In my mid-twenties I lost my faith, so I know what it feels like to have none.
According to the Gallup Poll, the happiest Americans are what the Poll called “the saints among us.” These are spiritual, prayerful folk of deep faith who are confident of a happy destiny after death. They are more generous with their money, healthier, live longer, and are kinder than their less saintly peers.
Back to my young friends. Most don’t know what is expected of them in life. They have no sense that a Creator has bigger hopes for them than a good job, money, pleasure, and a network of friends. Becoming a compassionate, sensitive, thoughtful, generous, productive citizen is not on their radar scope. Virtues like these are promoted and often modeled in our city’s churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, and gurdwaras. But that’s not where our youth hang out. To most of them these places are as alien as the backside of the moon.
Not all places of worship and fellowship are equal, admittedly. Some religious people are too exclusive in their view of who can be saved. That faulty estimate often comes from the joy their faith gives them, a joy they remember was lacking in their lives before faith took root, and they wish they could pass it on to the ones they love. “All religions are overwhelmed by their own revelation and are blinded to the riches of others,” wrote Ewert Cousins, one of my wise mentors at Fordham University. Still, a narrow mind with faith is better than a broad one with none.
This blindness to the liberating, saving power of faith is one of the great tragedies being played out in our time. Not feeling that we are valued and loved by our Creator deprives us of a sense of wellbeing and ultimate meaning. That loss can lead to boredom, depression, reckless living, and suicide.
We all need strong incentives to do our best. People of faith, people getting help from their religion, people having a working relationship with the Big G have those incentives. Wise parents will skillfully cultivate them in their children, the earlier the better. One of the more important convictions coming from this kind of upbringing is a faith where good actions lead to good outcomes. As the Upanishad says, “According as a man acts, so does he become. A man of good acts becomes good; a man of bad acts becomes bad.”
This is a view, a philosophy of life, that gives meaning to all we do. It leads to the conviction that goodness is rewarded and badness punished. For the good man, “the day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.” So wrote the Roman Stoic Seneca. Contrast this to the following: “When the brain stops functioning, the person ceases to exist.” This is the view of Steven Pinker, an influential cognitive scientist and atheist.
Which view has a better chance of leading to a meaningful life here and now and a positive outcome in the next? Which is preferable for most of us as we look beyond death? A blank nothingness in a merciful extinction? Or the next great adventure?
Stafford Betty, Professor of Religious Studies, CSUB, (ret) is the author of When Did You Ever Become Less by Dying? and Heaven and Hell Unveiled. His novels include The Imprisoned Splendor, The Afterlife Therapist and Guardians of the Afterworld. His latest book, The Hell Dwellers: A Novel about the Dark Side of the Afterlife is coming in 2026. Stafford can be found at staffordbetty.com.
Stafford,
I think this post puts its finger on something real and urgent. A culture that no longer offers any serious horizon beyond career, pleasure, and social circulation will almost inevitably become spiritually thinner, morally less certain of itself, and more vulnerable to boredom, aimlessness, and despair.
What I would add is that faith is not most deeply valuable because it makes us happier, steadier, or more socially functional, though it may well do all of those things. Its deeper value is that it orients the soul toward what is highest and most real. Religion, understood in its perennial and transformative core, is therefore not merely a consoling set of beliefs, but a school of virtue and inward formation.
That matters because virtue itself becomes difficult to render fully intelligible within a modern secular-materialist frame. It may still be praised, of course, but too often only as utility, sentiment, social convenience, or inherited moral habit living on after its deeper roots have been cut away. The perennial religious vision is different. There virtue belongs to the real architecture of existence: it is not arbitrary rule-following, but part of the soul’s right ordering toward the Good, and therefore toward reality itself. Indeed, virtue is the soul’s own real good, and what one brings into the next life is above all this inward ordering or disordering of the self. That is why the moral life is not incidental to death, but continuous with it.
This is one of the reasons I have long found the better discarnate literature so suggestive. At its best, it appears not to undermine higher religion, but to stand in deep consonance with it, describing discarnate life itself as graded, moral, developmental, and ordered toward maturation, purification, and return to the Divine, the Origin and Return of all. It can also help where religious belief in the afterlife remains sincere but vague, by giving greater contour to continued existence and thereby informing the imagination, which in turn can strengthen orientation. In that sense, it can serve as a kind of cosmological adjunct to the deeper religious witness.
So I would put the matter this way: religion matters not simply because it consoles us, but because it forms the soul for reality. And to the extent that discarnate testimony strengthens faith in that deeper architecture of reality, it may also strengthen our seriousness about how we live now.
Best,
Paul
Beautifully stated, Paul. I could not agree more. All that you point out leads the soul to a higher happiness, a deeper contentment, true joy. I hope you are sending out your reflections elsewhere. If you are, let me–let us–know where to look.
Stafford, I don’t know many young people these days, so I can’t confirm what you’ve stated, but it makes sense. However, I continually see reports that the happiest people in the world are in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and yet those countries are among the lowest in religious affiliation. Any thoughts on that?
Mike, Scandinavian countries have relatively small populations, high productivity, low inequality, and healthcare that for the most part is free at the point of use. The Netherlands also usually ranks in the top five. They also have relatively low crime and homelessness, smaller prison populations, and emphasis is on mental health care and rehabilitation.
Most live in urban settings and have fewer children, well below fertility replacement rates. In other words, they live well run societies and for the most part, enjoy comfortable lives. And of course, the absence of religious affiliation doesn’t mean a lack of spirituality.
Israel also usually comes out in the top 10 of happiness surveys. It has high religious affiliation: high when it comes to practicing religious rituals, but unlike the USA, the majority doesn’t believe in life after death. It’s complicated!
I can only add to what you’ve written, Jon. Listen to how Copilot summarizes the difference between education in the US and Finland:
If the question is “Which system produces better overall educational outcomes?”
→ Finland’s system is stronger on nearly every measurable dimension: equity, teacher quality, student well‑being, and international performance.
If the question is “Which system offers more flexibility and diversity of options?” (End Copilot.)
In a nutshell, better education leads to a happier population. Finland and more generally Scandinavia beat us by a large margin.
Finland even describes reading as its “national pastime.” They don’t need religious consolations as much as frenzied Americans.
To come back to Michael’s question about those happy Scandinavians, My answer is that they find happiness in ways we Americans don’t. Spiritually evolved Americans –“the Saints among us”–are happier, or at least more fulfilled in the way Paul brings out, than Americans who seldom read anything that is spiritually nourishing (the majority?), chase little else than the dollar or the next pleasure, lack the conviction that anything we do or accomplish in life makes any difference, and see death as a final twitch into nothingness. Are they happier than atheist Finns? I suspect to. But are atheist Finns happier than the much more typical American? The polls make it clear they are.
Hi Stafford, I think the real problems is that there some obvious reasons why traditional Biblical faith has declined among the educated classes in Western countries today, but alternatively there is no viable substitute for the outdated Biblical fundamentalism which most people today (quite justifiably) reject, and so we are living in a kind of moral and spiritual vacuum which is being filled by nothing higher than consumerism and techno-gratifications. The whole concept of “faith” is rather nebulous and means different things to different people, so I think it is a rather meaningless and outdated concept, particularly if it simply means traditional patriarchal religion. I think philosophy is probably a more helpful concept, because it is not tied to an authoritarian deity and gives people a useful guidepost for living which is free of dogma. Seneca, who you quoted in this article, was a stoic philosopher, not a Christian, so “faith” would have been a meaningless concept for him. The fact that today, there seems to be no viable alternative to the exhausted Judeo-Christian tradition other than consumerist and career gratifications, explains the spiritual and moral emptiness of our contemporary societies, as well as the fact that most people now glibly (and wrongly) assume that faith in traditional religious doctrines is necessary for the existence of an afterlife, that the Abrahamic religions “own” the afterlife, and so having rejected traditional faith, they proceed from that assumption to believe that there is no afterlife, and so they focus purely on the shallow gratifications of our dumbed-down post-modern societies.
Rex, your views are very close to mine. In my futurist novel The Womanpriest, which tells the story of the first female pope, I describe a revised, undogmatic Catholicism that would appeal to educated, scientifically literate people and have a chance of turning back a fast-charging Islam that shows signs of taking over Europe’s fading Christian culture.
Stafford, there’s no question that European countries have become more secular in recent decades, but I see no evidence that, as Christianity fades, Islam is “taking over.” Of course, some cities have seen an influx of immigrants from Middle Eastern countries in recent decades; for instance, London’s population is currently around 15 percent Muslim, up from around 7–8 percent in 1990. But that doesn’t mean Christianity is being replaced by Islam in Europe. If Europe became 99 percent secular in the future and the remaining one percent consisted of religious groups, then those religions would, by definition, be the “dominant” ones.
I think you underestimate Islam’s influence on European (not American) society. Many Muslims (men, not women) strongly oppose the world’s Westernization and prove unassimilable. To take an example, Muslims typically don’t want to become like the French when they arrive from Algeria. Large numbers detest French (European) culture. You need only contrast the burqa to the miniskirt and their resistance to female equality. You write, “But that doesn’t mean Christianity is being replaced by Islam in Europe.” I hope you are right, but the figures about the UK that you quote incline me to say, “Give it time,” like perhaps a century.
Stafford, I appreciate yours is an American perspective. We can agree to disagree. The Muslim population in France is currently around 8–10 percent. There are tensions, of course, but you can find tensions anywhere if you go looking. We won’t be here in a century, but if we are hanging out in the “next world,” we can compare notes. 🙂
Thanks, Stafford and Jon, for your meaningful thoughts on this. This current system doesn’t let one know when there are responses, so I just came upon them. In my old age, I strive for “peace of mind,” not necessarily “happiness,” which can be defined in different ways by different people. To many, happiness is a matter of having “fun.”
Stafford,
If I may add one thought here: your earlier invocation of “the saints among us” seems to me exactly the right criterion to keep in view. If religion is to be judged in significant part by its power to generate sanctity, virtue, inward seriousness, and orientation toward God, then Islam cannot be spoken of adequately as though it were chiefly a demographic or civilizational threat. Whatever one’s theological differences, the historical record of Islamic sanctity is simply too deep, too wide, and too well attested for that. By their fruits you will know them; and judged by fruits, Islam has produced not a few saintly souls, but a great multitude of them.
For anyone who might wish to explore that point further, Annemarie Schimmel’s Mystical Dimensions of Islam remains a strong overview; Martin Lings’s A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century gives a remarkable encounter with a major modern figure of Islamic sanctity; and Ibn ‘Arabi’s Sufis of Andalusia is a deeply touching witness to the saintly figures who shaped his own formation. The evidence here is not difficult to find.
Best,
Paul
Last summer in Budapest while on a Viking cruise, I was aware that Hungary had fenced off all immigrants from entering the country. That policy stills stands even after the departure of Victor Orban. I enquired of a young man I happened to meet what was behind this attitude. It’s because Islam brings into our country problems we don’t know how to solve.”
Yesterday I came across a comment on an article distantly related to Islam. He wrote, “Islam as a whole follows the teaching that the entire human race should live under sharia law either as Muslims or by paying a religious tax and having, in practice, no legal rights when in dispute with a Muslim. This is incompatible with all other religions, philosophies and political ideas. The Koran glorifies Muslim violence against others and the benefits of both death in battle and the plunder of vanquished lands. At no point does it criticise these values (though it teaches love, loyalty and generosity to fellow Muslims.) When living as minorities with little power Muslims are frequently valued and valuable members of society; when in power Islam controls all and is merciless to opposition. All this is historical fact and there is no evidence this approach is softening.”
This is a little stronger than I would have put it, but after deep research on Islam in preparation for my book The War for Islam, I came to that conclusion. Its attitude to other religions may soften over the next few decades. I hope so.