I am all too aware that different people are drawn to Christ because for different reasons. For me, I suppose there are two key factors. First – let’s just admit it off the bat – I was brought up in a Christian family. That means I was to some degree socially and culturally primed for it. It _felt_ right to some degree because it _felt_ normal because for me, growing up in a Christian family, it was normal for me. The social and cultural barriers were minimal given I had been brought up in it. What social and cultural barriers there were tended not to be to accessing Christ, but why most people in the church operated one way and my family followed suit when we gathered together, but when we were home we operated a slightly different way. And, for that matter, why my middle class mates at school seemed to operate more like my church but my working class mates more like my family at home. But those weren’t barriers for me, they were more just curiosities that took many years to even recognise and then begin to understand to some degree.

The other factor for me was simply the belief that it is all true. I even went through a period in my teens – probably more out of a sense that my life would be easier and more comfortable if it were not true – of wishing it wasn’t. But I had professed faith long before then and could ultimately never shake the nagging sense that it _is_ really true. And if true, then kicking against it was even more uncomfortable than whatever issues I determined at the time would have made my life easier if I could just merrily go along with them. I find living as thought something I don’t believe is true, or pretending something I do believe is true isn’t in reality, far harder to cope with than the social awkwardness of not fitting in or whatever.

So, fundamentally, those are the two key factors (I think) that primed me to be a believer. I was culturally and socially primed for it, making it all _feel_ ultimately normal. There were no family barriers for me but, actually, being a Christian in my family was an evident benefit to me (pragmatically speaking). But I also couldn’t get around the fact that I really do believe God exists, always have and never doubted it. And that he exists, it is hard to escape the resurrection of Jesus Christ as one of the strongest and clearest evidences of his existence and of the truth of all the claims Jesus made. The rest, really, is all just details that necessarily follow.

The reason I share this is because my eventual happiness – or my present happiness – wasn’t really an ultimate factor. Not, at least, if you don’t count the general intellectual discomfort of denying what you fudamentally believe is true. I figured, if it is true, it is true. If key propositions are true, the details are far more likely to be true too. And if true, it doesn’t really matter what I feel about it – even though I was culturally and socially primed to find it more normal than many others – it is true. Which means I must recognise its implications and live in light of them. Which meant putting my faith in Christ, giving myself over to his Lordship and all that entails.

But I saw something recently from John Piper about why the world needs happy pastors. In truth, I agree with him. But I’m also conscious I probably don’t strike most people as one of them! For what it’s worth, I’m not unhappy. I’m generally – though like most people prone to the occasional downer – pretty content. At least, as I’m wriing this! I’m just not one of those ultra-smiley, effuse people who always have to tell you about it. I do have the joy of the Lord, but as the song goes, it is probably ‘way deep down in my heart’.

But the world does need happy pastors. It’s all very well my saying Christianity is true. It’s all very well me showing you its true. But not everybody has the same intellectual discomfort as I do with living in the cognitive dissonance of believing something is true whilst choosing to pretend otherwise. In fact, quite a lot of people are very happy to live in a world where they just don’t think too deeply about these things at all. Live is much more comfortable and tolerable that way. Others do all they can to block out any need to think about these things. Why ruin an otherwise nice time with talk of sin and judgement? Others still don’t want to face the reality of the harshness of their lives and block things out for altogether different – but frankly entirely understandable – reasons. But it all ends up in the same place – eat, drink and be merry (so far as you can) for tomorrow we die. Just don’t think too deeply about it and we can continue in blissful, or at least apparently prefereable, ignorance.

If simply saying ‘it is true’ isn’t enough for many, we need to _show_ it is true. I can talk about the joy of knowing Jesus all I like, but if nobody can actually see how that meaningfully works in practice it isn’t going to be very compelling to them. This is even worse for people who aren’t culturally and socially primed towards Christ already. If everything about Jesus and his Church is already weird and not normal, we have to go some way to convince them that these irregularities and differences are actually worthwhile. We need to show them that despite the oddities, knowing Christ really is better.

One small way we can do that is to actually be happy in Christ. If we really are happy and content in him, letting our faces show it doesn’t hurt, does it? Actually speaking about how Jesus has made us happy and content must be a good and sensible thing. That, I think is why the world needs happy pastors. And not just happy pastors, but happy Christians. Unless people see that Jesus does indeed make us happy, why would they think he’ll do anything for them?