A Dallas Pastor Had Everything and Still Wasn’t Happy — Then a Greek Word Changed His Life

15 Apr A Dallas Pastor Had Everything and Still Wasn’t Happy — Then a Greek Word Changed His Life

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Pastor Mike Hayes and Dr. Jeffrey Garner, co-authors of the bestselling book Real Happy, explain how centuries of biblical mistranslation obscured the one thing Jesus actually promised: happiness.

A Spring Day in Galilee

It is a spring day in northern Israel, and Pastor Mike Hayes stands on the Mount of Beatitudes with a hundred pilgrims behind him. Poppies bloom everywhere — red and vivid against the hillside. Hayes has taught this passage many times, but today he adds something new, a detail about John the Baptist that he has never shared publicly. When he finishes, people mill around, picking poppies to press into their Bibles.

Then Hayes feels what he describes as an inner directive: write a book about happiness. He had written books before, but never about this. "To be honest, I didn't think I was the guy to do it," he recalled. "I was pastoring a church here in Dallas. It was doing well. I had a great family. I had everything that should make you really happy. I wasn't really happy."

That admission — from a man whose congregation was thriving, whose life looked complete from the outside — became the seed of Real Happy, a book that took years, a ghostwriting arrangement, a personal reckoning, and a partnership with scholar Dr. Jeffrey Garner to bring into the world.

The Word That Started Everything

Hayes traced his unhappiness to something he could barely name. "I know what it feels like to be depressed and to be anxious and to not know why," he said, "and to kind of feel like the song — is this all there is? Then if it is, let's just keep dancing."

The breakthrough, he explained, was theological. "The greatest breakthrough in this book is that I thought that happiness was trite to God. I thought he was way too big and serious about problems. I didn't know he was really invested in and interested in us being happy, really happy." The Greek word translated as "blessed" in most English Bibles, Hayes and Garner argue, actually means "happy." That single mistranslation, compounded over two thousand years, had shaped an entire religious culture around seriousness and suffering — and away from joy.

A Ghost Writer Gets Unghostd

Dr. Jeffrey Garner's path to the book started at a pastoral conference on the West Coast. Hayes was using Garner's church building. Garner hung out in the back, watching. Afterward, Hayes approached him. "He just says, hey, can I pray for you?" Garner recalled. "So he prayed for me and he said, hey, I feel like you're supposed to be writing."

Garner knew it already. He had been writing constantly but never publishing. Hayes pressed the point: "No, you write all the time. I think you need to start publishing." Years later, around 2016, Hayes asked Garner to help him write the happiness book as a ghostwriter. The project stalled. Then in 2022, Hayes called again. "He says, I just feel like this is supposed to be something we're doing together," Garner said. "And I wanna unghost you."

The two became collaborators and, eventually, something closer to family. "This is the older brother that I never had and he claims that I'm the younger brother that he never had," Garner said. "I feel like God brought him in my life at a time when I was at just at the absolute bottom to speak life into me."

Consider the Poppy, Not the Lily

One of the book's central arguments hangs on a flower. The famous scripture in which Jesus says "consider the lily" is, according to Hayes and Garner's research, a mistranslation. "The word in the original language is not lily. It's poppy," Hayes explained. "Lilies weren't in Israel. Poppies were in Israel. It's the state flower."

The distinction matters because of what follows in the sermon. "The other side of that is Jesus on the other half of the sermon just attacks worry," Hayes said. "Can you add an inch to your stature by worry? Can you change one circumstance because you worry? Jesus just hammers worry." The conclusion, as Hayes put it plainly: "You cannot be in worry and be happy at the same time. It's not possible. So, you're gonna have to have one and give up the other."

Making Room Instead of Chasing

The book's first beatitude — traditionally rendered "Blessed are the poor in spirit" — has been used for centuries to build doctrines around poverty and self-denial. Hayes argued the original Greek tells a different story. "Happy, really happy are those who create a void," he said. "Happy are those who offer up an empty place that I can fill. It has nothing to do with money and wealth and the lack thereof. It is give me some room."

Garner built on the idea with an image that recurred throughout the interview. "If you wanna let the sun shine in, you go over, you open the drapes, and it floods in," he said. "You don't have to force the sun in. You just open up and make room for it. I think that's the nature of happiness." Gratitude, he added, is not the mechanism — it is the response. "That breath, what did I do to deserve that breath? Did I earn that? It's a gift, and that breath keeps coming until the day that I'm taken from here."

Two Thousand Years of Telephone

Hayes used an analogy to explain how the original meaning got lost. If a tailor makes a suit from a pattern, it fits. But if the second suit is cut from the first, and the third from the second, by the tenth iteration it fits nobody. "Now, do that for two thousand years," he said, "and it's almost like that game we play at party games. You tell somebody something whispered around the room. By the time it gets back to you, it's not even close to what you originally said."

Garner pointed to a more systemic problem. "A lot of people miss it because we're living in a world where we're just force fed whatever somebody gets up and says," he explained. One of his seminary professors, who had also taught at Harvard, told him: "Within thirty minutes of listening to a preacher, I could absolutely diagnose his psychological problems. Because it just comes out." The cycle, both authors argued, perpetuates itself — unhealthy teachers producing unhealthy theology producing unhealthy congregations.

Happiness Through the Sorrow

Hayes referenced Harvard's eighty-year study on happiness, the one that began when John F. Kennedy was still a student. The finding, he said, could be reduced to a single sentence: "Those who had a strong family structure and good close friends tended to be the happiest." His response: "I wanted to say, duh. Could have saved you some money."

But the study, he noted, has nothing to offer the person whose family is broken and whose friendships are thin. "That's the magic of what Jesus taught," he said. Hayes then alluded to personal trials — family problems, health issues, marriage struggles — that he and Garner endured while writing a book about happiness. "The irony becomes you're not ever gonna get everything in your life and everybody's life you love just right in order for you to be happy," he said. "So, you better figure out how to be happy right along with whatever else life is dealing out to you."

Pull the Drapes Back

Garner's final words on the show circled back to that image of the open curtain. "Right where you are watching right now, you can just open up your heart, pull the drapes back and just let the flood of light come of God's presence come rushing into your heart," he said. No twelve-part course required — just a breath, a pause, and the willingness to stop earning what was always meant to be free.

Pastor Mike Hayes is the founder of Covenant Church in Dallas and leads Kingdom Builders Leaders Fellowship. Dr. Jeffrey Garner is a speaker and scholar specializing in spiritual formation. Their book Real Happy is available at imrealhappy.com. This story was produced from their appearance on The Jeff Crilley Show, recorded at the Real News Communications Network studios in Dallas.

Key Topics

  • the Beatitudes retranslated as "happy attitudes"
  • making room for happiness instead of chasing it
  • the poppy versus lily mistranslation
  • happiness as an inside job
  • gratitude and the three-minute morning reset
  • serving others to break the self-focus spiral
  • Harvard's 80-year happiness study
  • the co-authoring journey behind Real Happy

Episode Timestamps

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Episode Chapters

  • 00:00 – Introduction
  • 01:19 – Growing Up in the Seventies and the Search for Happiness
  • 02:12 – Pastor Mike's Journey to Writing Real Happy
  • 05:06 – How the Co-Authors Met and Collaborated
  • 07:50 – The Poppy, Not the Lily: Worry vs. Happiness
  • 09:40 – Happiness Is Not Pursued, It Ensues
  • 11:22 – The Power of Gratitude and Starting Your Day Right
  • 14:31 – Childhood Joy and the Trap of Wealth
  • 15:59 – The First Beatitude: Making Room for God
  • 17:38 – Joy in the Presence of Sorrow
  • 20:43 – Why So Many People Missed the Message
  • 23:37 – The Happiness of Giving Back and Serving Others
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