Description

Popular culture promotes happy mindfulness, academe considers happiness a serious topic of research, and theologies of Christian joy proliferate. The real and pervasive experience of discontentment is overlooked in both the secular and religious focus on contentment. Discontented Belief demonstrates that discontentment has a religious impact and theological significance. The book analyzes the variety and ubiquity of discontentment by using sources including the Bible, patristic writings, poetry and literature, psychoanalytic theory. Augustine experienced discontentment as a restless unmet desire that drew him to God. In Flannery O'Connor's fiction, it precedes a (sometimes violent) spiritual awakening. Discontentment spurs biblical female characters searching for religious belonging to courageous, even shocking, actions. Paul preached joy but voiced discontentment. The gospels narrate a Jesus vulnerable to discontentment, and God, traditionally understood, hovers outside of time and place.

Attending to the phenomenon of human discontentment challenges traditional ways of thinking theologically. This book's engagement with various manifestations of discontentment charts new perspectives on God, the incarnation, redemption, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Discontented Belief offers religious searchers a way of believing when joy seems a distant dream and happiness elusive.