Hi Friend,

If you, as a Christian, get a little depressed seeing the world around you becoming increasingly corrupt, take heart. A study by two doctoral candidates at the University of Illinois in Champagne/Urbana says Christians are happier than atheists.

When you’re having a bad day just remember that it’s even worse for Richard Dawkins.

In an objective study that compared almost 2 million “tweets” from 16,000 users, the researchers concluded Christians were more positive about life and generally happier than atheists.  The tweets were sent to five prominent Christians and the same number of atheists.  The Christians were Pope Benedict XVI, Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Dinesh D’Souza and Joyce Meyer.

The atheists were Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Monica Salcedo and Michael Shermer.

Christians used words like “love,” “happy,” “great” and community words like “family,” “friend” and “team”.   By contrast atheists used words like “bad,” “awful” and community words like “reason,” “logic” and “question”.

This is not to suggest that reason, logic and question are bad words, rather that they convey a different emphasis on the community relationship.  The study concluded that an atheist approaches the relationship with more skepticism and a Christian with greater positive emotion.

Atheists have reviewed this study with typical skepticism.  “The take away,” wrote Richard Wade in the Friendly Atheist Blog, “for most lay people is that ‘Atheists are unhappy people.’ How do you quantify happiness?”

Ryan Ritter, a co-author of the study who describes himself as a happy atheist, responded, “This is not an assumption; this is the pattern we observed in the data.”

Without a doubt, Christians endure trials accompanied by normal human emotions that may result in periods of depression. The Apostle Paul encountered trials so severe that he “despaired even of life.”  (2 Cor. 1:8) The Psalms of David reveal emotions of deep despair. Yet he wrote “weeping may endure for a night but JOY comes in the morning.”  (Psalm 30:5)

One of the great gifts of the Holy Spirit is what Peter called “unspeakable joy” (1 Peter 1:8) even in the midst of trial.  A Christian comes to depend on this relationship to get through trials.  The skeptic who denies such a blessing misses happiness.

Until next time,

Jim O’Brien