OUTRAGEOUS, CONTAGIOUS JOY: Five Big Questions to Help You Discover One Great Life
by Ed Young
Berkley Praise. 342 pp. $19.95

Reviewed by “On Faith” panelist Donna Freitas

There has been a wave of books on happiness of late. In less than a year, Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness, Darrin McMahon’s Happiness: A History, and Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis all hit the bookshelves, satisfying not only the critics who praised them, but readers who want self-help only if accompanied by a serious intellectual edge.

Christian audiences will be pleased to know that Ed Young—head of Fellowship Church and one of the growing list of megapastors like Rick Warren (The Purpose-Driven Life) who turn pulpits into publishing profits—has decided to weigh in on the happiness factor. Sort of.

Forget happiness, Young implores. Seeking happiness is passé. It pales in comparison to what God really wants for humanity: unbounded joy. Happiness is based on chance and serendipity, while joy is sturdy and lasting. Joy is relational, but never fleeting, because the source of all joy comes from a relationship with Jesus Christ. In other words, for Young, joy and God are one and the same. Put all your trust in Jesus, and joy is sure to follow.

According to Young, our pursuit of earthly happiness is misguided because we seek it through buying things or climbing the professional ladder. None of these will ever lead to joy, and in fact, the very qualities required as we chase happiness turn out to be what Young calls “joy jammers” (“weapons” we use to fight the Holy Spirit, like selfishness, bitterness, and fear), and the very qualities we must steel ourselves against on the road to joy.

Unfortunately, there is nothing revolutionary in Young’s addition to the ever-burgeoning genre of Christian self-help manuals. Readers will find the same kinds of obvious worries addressed by Young—about the tendency to become a workaholic, dissatisfaction with financial and social status, the inability to prioritize relationships that count over those that shouldn’t—that are the bread and butter of most pop psychology today, but with that Biblical twist made famous by Rick Warren. Young turns to Abraham and the Covenant with God to provide marriage advice, Moses to discuss workaholism, and Exodus verses about the Sabbath to explain why “God commands leisure.” The author gives these time-worn topics a unique personal touch, but his format is typical of contemporary Christian literature. Perhaps Young’s only real innovation is his trade of happiness for “outrageous joy.”

And though he writes as if he’s sitting across the table, talking directly to you at all times, his prose too often alternates between black and white statements (“If given a choice, we would choose gladness over sadness”), simplistic proclamations (“The problem with life is that we all have problems” and “Our possessions start possessing us,” and obvious advice (“Get away for a weekend. If you’re married, make that weekend for just you and your spouse,”) with no attempt to capture readers in any revolutionary or profound way.

There is little doubt that books like The Purpose-Driven Life have been life-changing for countless readers. But whether Young will win a sizable share of this audience depends on whether fans of Christian self-help are hungry enough for a newer version of the same old story, one that does little else than switch out talk of how God wants you to be happy, for how God wants you to experience joy.

Donna Freitas is an assistant professor of religious studies at St. Michael's College and the author of ‘Sex and the Soul,’ forthcoming from Oxford University Press