As Simon Tugwell notes, “One of the surest ways to avoid being happy is to insist on being happy at all costs. The religion of cheerfulness, as Father Brown reminds us, is a cruel religion, and maybe the best way not to go mad is not to mind too much if you do go mad.”
Moralizing surges to the fore in this unbalanced spirituality. At the very outset, it presents a warped idea of the relationship between God and humans.