Don't Go Looking for Happiness

Or, Be Not of Good Cheer, a WSJ review of Perpetual Euphoria. The point about Christianity sowing the seeds of its own destruction seems a bit simplistic and wrong or at least very unnuanced. How about this, from a layman: Did anyone in the ancient world go around promising to make lots of people happy as a means of gaining empowerment? Pharaohs, Assyrian kings, Viking warrior chiefs, and other barbarians? What did Christianity bring into the world? Yes, a Way to blessedness and life everlasting, but not in this life, as the article notes. After the success of Christianity in winning converts, did other men looking for empowerment say to themselves, Hey, if Jesus could promise blessings in the afterlife, we'll make a better offer: blessings in this life in the here and now. Before Jesus, no one thought they could get away with making such promises, or at least no one thought they needed to do that. So, yes, it's hard to have a false messianism with having a Messiah. But didn't the Lord many would come after him claiming to be the messiah, who will save the world? The culture of the therapeutic--remedies for anything you can name so as to achieve a feeling of happiness--is simply the world mimicking the Great Physician?