The late Erma Bombeck relates an incident about being in church one Sunday. She was intent on watching "a small child who was turning around smiling at everyone." She reports that...

...he wasn't gurgling, spitting, humming, kicking, tearing the hymnal, or rummaging through his mother's handbag. He was just smiling. Finally, his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper that could be heard in a little theater off Broadway, said, "Stop that grinning! You're in church!" With that she gave him a belt on his hind side, and as the tears rolled down his cheeks she added, "That's better," and returned to her prayers.

Erma Bombeck continues:
Suddenly I was angry. I wanted to grab this child with the tear stained face close to me and tell him about God. The happy God. The smiling God. The God who had to have a sense of humor to have created the likes of us.... I wanted to tell the child I've taken a few lumps in my time for daring to smile at religion.... What a fool, I thought. Here was a woman sitting next to the only light left in our civilization, the only hope, our only miracle, our only promise of infinity. If a child couldn't smile in church, where was there left to go?
Religion that is Poisonous

I wonder whether some of you have had the experience of being berated for smiling in church? Many of you have grown up in a religious context where you were told so often that you are sinful wretches, that you’re rotten to the core from the day you are born, that it's not possible to feel good about yourself while sitting in church. What is the negative affect of being told for years that Jesus died because of your wretched sinful natures so that you wouldn't suffer forever in Hell?

How many of you have been poisoned by that type of religion? How many of you have spent years detoxifying your spirit from that type of poison? Many of us sit here today on that journey, that detoxification journey. Many of us are still trying to rid ourselves of that type of poisonous religion.

A group of 8 year-olds were asked to write an essay on God. One of them wrote this- “you should go to church every Sunday because it makes God happy. And if there's one person that you want to keep happy, it's God.”

How many of you have grown up in the type of context where you go to church to maintain the favor of the judging God, the God who is always watching to see when you make mistakes, the God who is waiting to place favor upon you, maybe, if you’re lucky, but more often than not, the God who is waiting to judge you and to take favor away from you? This type of religion is poison.

Can you be Happy WITH God?

I framed the question this morning as ‘Can you be happy without God?’ In the light of common negative religious experiences, we could just as easily turn that question right around and say, ‘Can you be happy WITH God?’ Can you be happy with the judging and angry God, with a poisonous religion, the religion that poisoned your soul, poison that you are still trying to purge from your soul? Can you be happy with that God?

There's been much conversation about whether religious people are happier than non-religious people. There are lots of different ways to approach that question, but I want to suggest that if religion is the dysfunctional co-dependent relationship that has been prevalent over the centuries, then I do not believe those people are happier than non-religious people.

I do believe that religious people can be happier than non-religious people if it is measured by community, and by the support structures that we get from being in a gathering such as this; from laughing and crying together and sharing our humanity. I believe religious people can be happier if it is measured according to the process by which meaning is discerned in life. But religion is not the only way to add these qualities to your life.

I was driving home from Chicago yesterday and was listening to Pink Floyd, The Final Cut, and these words jumped out at me:

By the cold and religious, we were taken in hand
Shown how to feel good, and told to feel bad

Doesn't that just capture so much of what religion has been about? If you are just good enough, God will shower “his” favor upon you. But this favor is elusive and transitory, and very conditional. Because you can never measure up to God’s standards of perfection, you should feel bad most of the time.

This community exists as part of the healing detoxification that we all need to go through to get religious poison out of our system. We exist in order to be alongside each other as a resource of support to rid and to purge our systems of this poison, and to craft a new way of living, to craft a religion that can lead to greater happiness.

Are religious people happier than non-religious people? Or, if I could rephrase that question, are people who believe certain things happier than skeptics?

George Bernard Shaw offers a bit of a clue about the answer to that question:

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point
than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one"

Stop and think about it. Beliefs don't last. If you get happiness from a particular belief it's going to be a transient happiness, because beliefs are always changing, always moving. That's the nature of beliefs.
If happiness is based on beliefs, it's no different than a person who, the morning after a night on the town, stands before the mirror, bleary eyed with a deep headache, and all he sees looking back at him is himself, in all his humanity. All the joy that he had the night before has vanished. All that is left is bleary eyes and a headache.

Beliefs are like that. We think we have something solid and lasting, and we begin to depend on the beliefs, only to find that they are a constantly moving target. So that type of religion which is dysfunctional and co-dependent because we’re depending on the favor of God for happiness, is poison. It's time for us to transcend that type of poison. It will not lead to happiness.

Paul and the Third Heaven

At the same time we want to craft a new religion together, and it is a religion that will take us to the “Seventh Heaven.”

Seventh Heaven is an expression that has a long history, and in essence captures an experience of euphoria. In the reading from 2 Corinthians 12
this morning, Paul described a person who had gone to the Third Heaven.

I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.

If you read the chapter in its context it's very clear that Paul is speaking about himself. Its the famous Damascus road conversion story.  Paul was traveling in the region of Syria, a region that is known for violent thunderstorms, and was most likely struck by lightning. Paul was struck by lightning, thrown to the ground, and left blind for three days. In the three days that Paul was blind he had a hallucination.  He described his hallucination as “Seeing the risen Lord.”

We know he didn’t literally see the real Lord. He could not have because he was blind. He was taken to a place deep within himself where he saw shadows. One of these shadows, Paul describes as his “thorn in the flesh.”

Different people have given their own interpretations about what his thorn in the flesh referred to. Bishop Spong suggests that it was his repressed sexuality. Others say it was a speech impediment, and he had to overcome that, as his great vision was to be a public speaker for Christ.

I've got a slightly different theory. My theory is that his thorn in the flesh was his darkest shadow, which was his religious bigotry. Paul believed that Jewish practice was the only true practice. Paul was a first century terrorist against Christians who dared to reform Jewish ritual.

In the three days when Paul apparently was blind and hallucinating, he began to peel back the layers of his own self, and by peeling back the layers, he embraced this dark shadow, and went through a transformation. On the other side of the transformation, he turned his religious bigotry into zeal for reconciliation, and Paul became the great apostle for universal love and religion. He became the apostle to the gentiles, and preached a message of unity.

That is part of the heritage for this community, where all people come together, no matter what their background, no matter what their religious or spiritual heritage, simple come together and be together in humanity.

Paul embraced his shadow and was able to transform it by peeling back the layers, and on the other side was this wonderful transformed life. This is what he means by finding strength in weakness; the strength of a transformed life comes through peeling back the layers of fear and loathing.

Corinth was a city marked by great displays of power, a city of athletics and competitive games. It was a place where the most powerful was the one who could display his physical strength most visibly. In that world, someone who got to the Third Heaven was a cause for great celebration and would be held up as a role model for all others. And yet Paul says this is no reason for boasting. In fact, he goes out of his way not to boast, by speaking about this as if it happened to someone else.

This is a fascinating text; he speaks about this as if it happened to someone else, so that no one could accuse him of boasting. He knows only too well his limitations. He spent three days in the deepest shadows. He spent three days feeling that thorn in his flesh. He knew only too well his humanity, his limitations, and despite his limitations, he was going to celebrate and embrace the shadow, transform it and become an agent for reconciliation and universal religion.

Paul went to the Third Heaven. And in that world, they believed that the higher you went, the closer you got to God. There were many different levels of heaven. One level was used to store rain. Another was used to store snow. Another was used to block the light at night. Each of the heavens had a purpose, and the higher up you went, the closer you came to God. This view of the heavens was pre-scientific and superstitious. It was a literal ladder to God. We now know more about the way the world works, so we can interpret the idea of the heavens metaphorically. What does it mean to rise up through the stages of heaven? It means to go deeper into your humanity, and peel back the layers of reality as you experience it.

So Paul made it to third base; this morning I want to go all the way with you. I want to take you all the way to the Seventh Heaven, to a full experience of bliss.

Let me talk you through 7 stages of happiness, and relate each one to a heaven, each one a deeper inner realization.

Seven Stages of Happiness

1. If something gives you pleasure, enjoy it.

You have permission, even from the Christian Bible. The Psalms say, “God only does what pleases God.” You have permission to enjoy life, as you have permission to experience the joy of pleasure. Just don't get too attached to the feeling because that feeling will change over time. If we hang on too tightly to the feeling of pleasure we run the risk of our pleasure turning to pain.

Enjoying the pleasures of life- the first heaven.

2. If something gives you displeasure, avoid it.

Don't focus on it. You have permission. There's no virtue in suffering in and of itself. There's no virtue in displeasure.

Jonathan Haidt, author of the book The Happiness Hypothesis, wrote a helpful section on the evolutionary value of feeling disgust:

We have, built into us, the ability to feel disgust without even always knowing why. It's a protection mechanism; a survival mechanism. It's what keeps us from eating certain things that make us sick. It stops us from doing things that will be unhealthy for us.

A similar “disgust” instinct works in our moral discernments also. This is why we abhor certain practices.

Follow your instincts. But remember that all things change. And this feeling of displeasure will change. Don't get too attached to this perspective of avoiding displeasure, as the time will come when facing displeasure head on will become a step to happiness in itself.

Avoiding displeasure- the second heaven!

3. If something gives you displeasure, and you can no longer avoid it, at the right time, change it.

That's exactly what Paul did. If you find something that gives you displeasure, whether it's from within or without, and you can’t avoid it because it looms like a great shadow in front of you, change it. Allow it to be transformed like the phoenix rising out of the ashes.

Making a change- the third heaven!

4. If something gives you displeasure, and you can’t avoid it and can't change it, accept it.

Accepted it as your teacher for now. The right time will come; it's obviously not that time now. So accept this displeasure as a teacher in the present moment. The lesson might be patience, or inner courage, and the experience will heighten the joy in another experience.

Finding acceptance- the fourth heaven!

5. The way to accept something you can’t change is to change your attitude towards it.

So often in life, we expect other people to change, or we expect circumstances to go in our favor, when what we really need to do is to change our attitude to the other person or the circumstance.

Change your attitude- the fifth heaven!

6. Change your attitude by becoming the observer of your various reactions.

Stand aside from the feeling of pleasure or the feeling of displeasure and watch it as if it is separate from you. When you watch your reactions like this you realize that they don't completely define who you are. You watch them come and go; they don't stick. When you realize that they don't stick you don't get so worked up by them and you don't take life so personally.

Be a witness to pleasure and displeasure- the sixth heaven!

7. The simple bliss of being.

Pleasure and displeasure are just labels we put on experiences. The simple bliss of being is beyond any emotion or perspective or language. Bliss can’t be rocked by choice or chance; it is a state that is not affected by the chances of life or by the various choices that you make.

When you're in this sacred space within, when you peel back the layers of pretense and the layers of poison, the layers that are the shadows, what you are left with is a sacred space, and you realize that all you're doing is temporarily labeling something as pleasure or displeasure.

This is the place beyond emotion and beyond any particular perspective. This is the place deep inside where nothing can rock you. Nothing can overcome this state. None of the chances or the choices of life can rock this state of pure bliss.

Deep being in the present moment. The Seventh heaven!

Meredith Krugel expresses that as “touching your bliss.” A song emerges when you touch that bliss, and it’s unconditional, it doesn't depend on condition or circumstance, and there is no prerequisite. It is to shine like the stars shine, and whether you see them or not they are still shining.

Dostoevsky suggests that we only get 5 or 6 seconds there.
Five, six seconds and no more: there you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony. You cannot bear it in your mortal body. You would need to form another superior body or die. It is a clear and unmistakable feeling. You seem to be in contact with the whole of nature and you say: ’Yes, this is right’....This is not emotion, this is pure happiness. You do not forgive, because there is nothing to forgive. You no longer love-- oh, this feeling is higher than love...... In these five seconds I live an entire human existence. For them I would give my entire life and would not have paid too much."

When Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12 that he didn’t know if the experience was in or out of the body, he was pointing to this state of non duality, beyond perspective and emotion.

It only happens occasionally. We get glimpses of seventh heaven and we know what it means. You can't ultimately be told about seventh heaven; you have to experience it yourself, and when you’ve been there you know. You know that feeling- being steady, being grounded, nothing can rock you. That is pure bliss.

A beautiful thing begins to happen. The seventh heaven becomes a quality through which all the other stages of happiness can be held. In other words, you can both enjoy pleasure in the moment and also be in the state of bliss that doesn’t depend on the feeling of pleasure lasting.

Seeing Life with Inner Eyes

Just as Paul needed to lose his vision, in order to gain the inner eyes of bliss, so it will be for you. In order to peel back the layers of self, you will see with inner eyes.

There is a story that captures this idea:

Two women, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One was allowed to sit up in her bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from her lungs. Her bed was next to the room's only window. The other woman had to spend all her time flat on her back. The women talked for hours on end. They spoke of their families, their homes, their jobs, their travels.
Every afternoon when the woman in the bed by the window could sit up, she would pass the time by describing to her roommate all the things she could see outside the window.
The woman in the other bed began to live for those one-hour periods where her world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.
As the woman by the window described the scenery in exquisite detail, the woman on the other side of the room would close her eyes and imagine the picturesque scene; a park with a lovely lake, ducks and swans playing on the water while children sailed their model boats, young lovers walking arm in arm amidst flowers of every color, the city skyline.
One warm afternoon the woman by the window described a parade passing by. Although the other woman couldn't hear the band - she could see it in her mind's eye.
Days and weeks passed.
One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the woman by the window, who had died peacefully in her sleep. She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.
As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other woman asked if she could be moved next to the window.
Slowly, painfully, she propped herself up on one elbow to take her first look at the real world outside. She strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed.
It faced a blank wall. She asked the nurse what could have compelled her deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.
The nurse responded that the woman was blind and could not even see the wall. She said, "Perhaps she just wanted to encourage you."

If you want to go to the seventh heaven, get to that place where you see with inner eyes. Peel back the layers of your humanity and be willing to see the looming shadows and the exquisite scenery alike.

Be willing to embrace the shadows and enjoy the stars. In the shadows will come the gold around which you will experience bliss. As you peel back the layers and embrace the shadows, be prepared for the state of pure joy that can never be changed, which doesn't alter according to circumstances, or perspectives or emotions, and can’t even be captured in language.

Be prepared to go to the seventh heaven and experience the pure bliss of being human.