This question is a little iconoclastic. For if religion is for unhappy people, it is something pejorative, bad, a means of pain relief, “opium for the people”, a cheap deception for the masses, an imaginary substitute for real, happy life.
And yet, there is a deep connection between religion, and here, we can base Christianity or, for example, Buddhism, on a state of human misfortune, on the pain that man suffers, on the pain he experiences. There are two reasons for this: functional and fundamental.
The functional one boils down to the statement that when a man is happy, fulfilled, healthy, rich, with a successful life, with wide and distant perspectives of growth, development, increasing the happiness and goodness he experiences, then such a man does not need a Christian (or even Buddhist) religion for anything. Simply.
The fundamental cause lies at the heart of religion. Well, the Buddha began his religious journey by stating that man is suffering and by looking for a way to remove suffering. This is where the foundation of Buddhism comes from – the noble four truths, each of which refers to suffering.
Christianity and the Old Testament are God who comes to help man, to save him, to liberate him.
Christianity in its foundation is therefore a consolation, a liberation, a joy, a sense of freedom from the direct relationship with God. If, however, one draws all these feelings and experiences from one’s position, from one’s relationships, from one’s assets, perspectives and possibilities, one does not need consolation and so on. He finds them in the “world”.
The Lord Jesus criticizes this attitude exactly, saying: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, and moreover cannot be my disciple. (Lk 14,26).” He cannot be a disciple of Jesus, because his relationships with his loved ones, among other things, are the source of all the feelings he needs. Therefore, he will not turn to God, “with all his strength, with all his heart, with all his mind”.
It is also worthwhile to go back to the East for a moment and remind ourselves that, according to Hindu yoga, for which the goal is enlightenment, the most favorable is… Despair experienced by man. It cuts man’s bonds with the world and allows him to follow the path of this – to some extent – religion.
Perhaps Christianity has evolved, instead of becoming a personal experience of the experience of liberation, derived from the experience of a relationship with a coming God, it has become an apologetic of misfortune for some and a religious experience of living one’s good position in the world for others.
Hence, perhaps to some extent, the glorification of misfortune, pain and suffering, leading to such an interpretation (Mt 5:4) that it is good that you are suffering, it is good that it hurts you, because it is suffering and pain that is the way to God, so the more that suffering, the better for you, and if it is already moderate, then enjoy it and abide in it, do not stop experiencing it, because you will be rewarded in Heaven. Such a reversal, instead of liberation from suffering, prolongs (fixes the state) of suffering.
Since the image of God as the coming love that liberates has been replaced by the image of God as the judge who passes judgment on man, Christianity as experience has begun to be replaced by Christianity as doctrine. Since, as a result of this practice, the experience – even if described in the “Confessions” by St. Augustine – was less and less, it was all the more strongly denied and somehow banished as a way of realizing religiousness, and the more so was the preaching, theorizing, doctrination and formalism that flourished.
Instead of liberating man, Christianity began to perpetuate him in his attitude to life and in his condition. Some in suffering and pain were presented to them as the desired norm. Others in a relatively comfortable setting in life, which was justified by numerous teachings and justifying the claims that Christianity was about fulfilling rituals, celebrating, observing religious regulations and, indeed, financing church institutions.
“Such faith as sacrifice,” I still remember the significant sermon from the parish church. The more, the better your Christianity is, apart from the fact that you are really attached to your life, a man who often despises others. He derives satisfaction both from living “in the world” and from the religious justification provided to him.
So is religion for unhappy people? Of course not. The lucky ones can, too, and the way is open for them. But first of all, it may be a little more difficult for them, because… It is known, and secondly, maybe everyone carries a grain of misery, pain, a pebble of suffering in their shoes. Maybe there is some kind of memory in us, some kind of knowledge, where would it come from? that it may be different, that happiness is written in us. This memory somehow makes us search for it.