Laughing At Jesus?

Last May, a syndicated newspaper newspaper column began with these words: Playing the lottery is bad enough, but winning’s even worse!

The columnist continued: Even though I am against the lottery, I play it twice a week. And I dream of winning and what I will buy with my winnings: an outrageous car, a tour of Europe on the Orient Express, an apartment in London, a long run of happiness. But now I am told that money doesn’t buy happiness.1

He was referring to an article published in the New York Times Magazine which was based on interviews with lottery winners. Money not only “doesn’t buy happiness,” the article concluded, it doesn’t even necessarily “buy a good time.” The interviews revealed that lottery winners, “after the initial flush wears off,” often are miserable. One winner (who won 1.3 million in 1985) threw a party for her friends. “Of all the people who came,” she told the interviewer ten years later,” not one of…