“Read your bible and follow Jesus”

Saturday, May 9, 2026

Some days ago I stumbled into a TED talk held by a 88 years old munk: Want to be happy? Be grateful | David Steindl-Rast. He says that many people believe that gratefulness is caused by happiness, but actually it’s the opposite: happiness is caused by gratefulness. I felt that this man speaks out what I deeply believe. Yes, this is also my recipe for happiness. Yes, I also believe that many people aren’t happy because they don’t cultivate gratefulness.

But I sent this link to Mari, Iiris and Ly in our family chat, and guess what? No reaction at all. Which means that they didn’t like it. They probably didn’t even click on it. If something would force them to comment on it, they would probably say that the topic simply didn’t sound appealing. I think that actually they have developed a strong allergy against words like “grateful” and “happy”, and my link triggered their allergic reaction. So of course they keep away. Maybe they are right. Who knows.

I sent that link also to a friend who discovered Jesus only recently and who currently follows lessons in a baptist congregation.

His answer: May I be honest? I have access to myself as a young person and what I would have thought of such a video. I can’t say that all young people today see things that way, but I think I give some perspective (and I watched a lot of Ted talks… eventually they all start to look the same.) I’m currently feeling addressed by apologists. Like Melissa Dougherty, Wes Huff, Remnant Radio has some interesting conversations. And Michael Heiser was cool because he taught that the spirit world is real. If people aren’t taught that hell exists, it’s easy to think that God doesn’t exist and everything is just psychological and material. I think young people need to see other young people talking about serious topics. There are a lot of cool and honest young people in the U.S. who talk about their lives with Jesus and the difficulties that can come with it in today’s fallen world. An elderly gentleman in ascetic clothing talking about being happy and grateful? I wouldn’t. I listened to many such figures (especially U.S. Buddhists and psychologists and researchers etc etc), but they didn’t bring peace of mind. They only put us deeper into an illusory sleep…

He added a link to The Internet, Protestantism, and the State of Christianity (With Wes Huff), Gavin Ortlund talking with Wes Huff.

I answered: I listened to the first 10 minutes and I’ll end our discussion here because this touches my burnout. I feel that there are two spirits (another friend called them “cultures”) who both call themselves “Christian” but who exclude each other. I can’t talk further from this point. If you are interested, here is a text that I wrote 5 years ago in my Estonian blog. Here is another one in English: Can biblicism lead to psychosis?. Although this is a painful subject for me, I thank you for this impulse! That is why Taizé, as a cross-confessional meeting place, is so important. You praise God in Oleviste kirik, I in the Dominican chapel, and thanks to the Taizé prayer group we can also meet and praise God together. This is also what I mean on the laudate.ee/welcome page with the sentence “There are all kinds of Christians in the world. The only thing that unites us, regardless of denomination, is our longing for Christ.”

My conclusion (so far): This friend is fascinated by the comminoristic interpretation of the Gospel: “You’ll get saved when you read your bible and follow Jesus.” Where “following Jesus” means things like “Resist to the temptation”, “Confess your faith and glorify his name in public”, “Don’t worship any other God” and such. For a comminorist, “love your neighbour” means mainly to warn their neighbour about hell so that he can acknowledge his sins and repent, so that he can also get saved. For me, comminorism is a quite clear symptom of this “other” spirit or culture. If being Christian means this, then I’m not a Christian.