Here is how Smith describes the therapeutic in our culture:

"Moral Therapeutic Deism is, second, about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents. . . . what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people. . . . . It is thus no wonder that so many religious and nonreligious teenagers are so positive about religion, for the faith many of them have in mind effectively helps to achieve a primary life goal: to feel good and happy about oneself and one’s life. It is also no wonder that most teens are so religiously inarticulate. As long as one is happy, why bother with being able to talk about the belief content of one’s faith?" (162-3).

Now I'm all for feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. Yet to evaluate life in this terms, and to see this a life's true end, now and in the future, leads to all sorts of problems. First, there is a profound sense in that how I feel is utterly irrelevant. I can feel good for strictly extraneous or even, morally problematic, reasons (say, for instance, devouring a hot fudge sundae over chocolate ice cream with whip cream) or because the Dodgers or Yankees lose (I don't care who wins, as long as the Dodgers and Yankees both lose). Second, to live to have feeling good and happy as an end, I think, is a sure way to make sure that one does not receive the gift of true happiness.

To show the difference between Christian "happiness" and the therapeutic happiness that helps me advance within a capitalist society, I'd like to quote a dictation from Francis of Assissi, "True and Perfect Joy".

"The same [Brother Leonard] related in the same place that one day at Saint Mary's, blessed Francis called Brother Leo and said: 'Brother Leo, write.' He responded: 'Look, I'm ready!' "Write,' he said, 'what true joy is.'

'A messenger arrives and says that all the Masters of Paris have entered the Order. Write: this isn't true joy! Or, that all the prelates, archbishops and bishops beyond the mountains, as well as the King of France and the King of England [have entered the Order]. Write: this isn't true joy! Again, that my brothers have gone to the non-believers and converted all of them to the faith; again, that I have so much grace from God that I heal the sick and perform many miracles. I tell you true joy doesn't consist in any of these things.'

'Then what is true joy?'

'I return from Perugia and arrive here in the dead of night. It's winter time, muddy, and so cold that icicles have formed on the edges of my habit and keep striking my legs and blood flows from such wounds. Freezing, convered with mud and ice, I come to the gate and, after I've knocked and called for some time, a brother comes and asks: 'Who are you?' 'Brother Francis,' I answer. 'Go away!' he says. 'This is not a decent hour to be wandering about! You may not come in!' WHen I insist, he replies: 'Go away! You are simple and stupid! Don't come back to us again! There are man of us here like you -- we don't need you!' I stand again at the door and say: 'For the love of God, take me in tonight!' And he replies: 'I will not! Go to the Crosier's place and ask there!'

I tell you this: If I had patience and did not become upset, true joy, as well as true virtue and the salvation of my soul, would consist in this.'

Therapeutic in contemporary culture has been separated from the True, Good, and Beautiful -- that is, from God. Without understanding our divine "therapy" in terms of the image of God renewed in us as seen in Jesus Christ, the God-human, his life, his teachings, his kingdom, his presence in the Eucharist, the therapeutic becomes part of the evil of the fallen world, a distortion, a lack, sin. Being formed by this cultural expectation puts us into continual dramas and struggles with ourselves and others for our contentment, and thus, ensures that we never genuine experience contentment, but always sustain our status as victims. Always looking for the greener grass, we live unsettled in trying to achieve settledness. In this way, we are shaped to keep in the cycles of the consumption, if not of leisure provided by wealth, consumption of experiences, "worship experiences", "experiences of the other" whatever gives us the fleeting fix of happiness.

Again these subtle ways of (mal)formation arise out of the political context in which we live. As liberal polity begins with the autonomous individual seeking one's own self-fulfillment, defined in the terms of the individual, the state then takes over the regulation of the "public" sphere so that the individual can pursue "happiness". In so doing, we are wrestled out of our proper place beginninng and ending in God, and instead, become caught in our own self-pursuits.