Is happiness really all that? It depends on how you define it.

The business writers at 24/7 Wall St. have modified a new "Better Life" index, with its multiple measures including "life satisfaction," and added their own economic and political measures. The result is a Top 10 happy countries list that doesn't include the USA.

Given our current malaise about the economy, and our long-standing sense of rampant individualism, is it any surprise that an index that gives high scores for the cultural concept of a social safety net leaves the USA out of the top ranking?

Among the top findings, folks doing the happiness dance live in places where they...:

... Get loads of social services without having to work too hard. Having abundant natural resources, a thriving services sector and a fairly homogeneous population helps as well.

... support employment, education and make health care widely available.

... have a good balance of work and leisure time.

So that explains why you see No. 6 Sweden where folks don't seem to break a sweat, but not the workaholic folks of Japan and South Korea. Economics and instability rule out Latin America, southern and eastern Europe, Asia and much of the Middle East. The out-lier here is Israel, weighing in at No. 9 on the strength of its score for "household wealth" despite some fairly low life satisfaction scores.

So who's happiest?

The Ten Countries With The Happiest People, "most of which have bought and paid for prosperity because their economies have allowed them to do so," begins with No. 1 Denmark and continues in order of rank to Canada, Norway, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Israel and Austria.

The Danish are always topping such lists despite not having the highest scores in many areas. However, they note, this is a country where folks all think someone's got their back:

Danes have one of the strongest senses of friendship and community, with 97 percent reporting they had someone other than a family member that they could rely on. Danish culture and government policy is one of the most leisure-friendly. Denmark's citizens spend more than 16 hours each week on leisure time, the second-highest rate in the OECD. The government also subsidizes a full year of maternity leave.

Note -- no mention of religion or spirituality here. Does God or faith or spirituality have an influence on happiness?

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Please click HERE to access the complete article

And for a thumbnail look at Urantia Book teachings on happiness, click HERE

USA (MNN) ? A study published this week in the journal American Sociological Review hints that church is a social club after all.

Rather than satisfaction in an interpersonal relationship with God, the researchers think that the happy people they found in church congregations may be finding their fulfillment from closer ties to earthly neighbors.

The report said that personal happiness couldn't be attributed to individual prayer, strength of belief, or an understanding of God's love and presence. Instead, researchers found empirical survey data showing that the happier a person reported themselves to be, the more close friends they had in their religious congregations.

Evangelist Sammy Tippit summarized the findings from the article this way: "People who have 10 more friends in church are happier than people who have 10 or more friends in the secular world, but it doesn't have anything to do with God. "

He also notes that the researchers don't make a distinction between faith as a way of "being" and religion as a way of "acting." Or perhaps they made too clear a distinction and compartmentalized friendships from the ethos that governs the motivation behind how people live their values.   

Tippit says, "The people who have 10 or more close friends in church are the people who are the more involved, the people who have been walking with Christ the longest. The people who have the strongest faith are the ones who are the most involved. So how do you separate their faith from their friendships? "

It's more than the social ties that create this bond being explained by the report. "The tie that binds us is the Spirit that dwells within us. The study has taken some tangible things, made some great observations, and then drawn conclusions about the INtangible. They got out of the realm of science and into the realm of personal bias."

How does a believer explain that bond found in a church halfway across the world in sweet worship? How can you quantify a relationship created by instant closeness? The Gospel calls it Love, as in, "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

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Please click on "external source" (below) for the complete article.

Perhaps the sense of society, friendship and belonging that one finds in a religious group is nothing more nor less than the experience of the Brotherhood of man. And contrary to what Mr Tippit has said in the above article, it really does have everything to do with God, in my opinion...

Please see our topical study on the Brotherhood HERE