From time to time, filmmaker Anton Hecht sends me one of his short films with the request to share it with you. I’m always glad to do so, as he is reliably creative and produces superb and quite enjoyable films. This one – Happiness is a Harmonica – is part of a wellness initiative of a community inviting people to take five steps toward greater health, wellness, and happiness. I’m still not totally sure how playing the harmonica contributes :), although I think that the various people and folks playing it – actually, learning to play it – are engaged in one or more of the various steps. And all of them...

Ask most parents what they most hope for their child, and one of the immediate answers will be that we want our children to be happy. Sometimes that’s intensified, as in, “While I hope they find a good job and lead a good life, all I really want is for my child is happy.” That goal and desire, as Jennifer Senior explains, is so ingrained in current parenting culture that we don’t even question it. But maybe we should. Just as we were willing to ask whether happiness is a goal or a by-product, so also might we question what the primary role, responsibility and goal of parenting is. Because if you believe that...

Just a quick thought for the day. Or really a question: Do you think happiness is a worthy goal? Or is it rather a by-product of other things? Ever since Thomas Jefferson, at least, we have been taught to think happiness is something we should pursue. But, I wonder, what is happiness, exactly? When do we know we’ve found it? How do we go about it? Noting that we are notoriously bad at predicting what will make us happy, it occurs to me that perhaps that’s because happiness isn’t, finally, something you can pursue and catch and possess. Rather, perhaps happiness is the by-product of worthy activities. Perhaps happiness is...

The following video is a follow-up to the one I posted last Friday on Forgiveness and Happiness. What I found interesting – and initially almost kept me from posting it – is that it’s barely about forgiveness. In the video, Justin, the host of Soul Pancake’s Science of Happiness series, asks one of the participants if he wants to take the exercise from the experiment – delivering to a mirror the words of forgiveness he’d prepared for his sister – one step further by actually calling her. As he does, you’ll realize it’s not so much that she’s done something wrong, but that he feels bad for being far away and regrets...

Forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith, and this is never more apparent than during Lent. As we approach Good Friday and Easter, we necessarily reflect on the cross and its relationship to forgiveness. Jesus, we say, quoting Scripture, died for our sins, but exactly what that means can vary from tradition to tradition or, indeed, from Christian to Christian. When I was working on Making Sense of the Cross, I was struck by some of the contested views of the relationship between the cross and forgiveness. The substitutionary theory of atonement, for instance, suggests that the cross is the mechanism by which forgiveness is even...