Candace Cameron Bure called fake for being happy: What is real happiness?

I remember Candace Cameron as a child actress on the sitcom Full House back in the late 80s and early 90s. She was upbeat even then. Now she stars in a number of wholesome Hallmark Channel movies. 

But it seems that being upbeat and wholesome is not as appreciated as it once was. 

Bure says she is often criticized as being fake for appearing to be happy all the time. She appeared with her Full House “dad” in a podcast recently and asked him what he thought about the claims she is a fake. In Bure’s defense, Bob Saget said, “You’re the opposite of fake. And I’m sorry—you’re perky sometimes. What’s wrong with being perky?” 

Bure said she asked Saget for his opinion because he has known her for a long time. “I only ask that because sometimes you read comments, and most of them, they roll off my back. But when people are annoyed at me that I’m such a happy person . . . I was like, let someone speak into this that’s known me since I was nine years old.” 

So is it okay for a person to be genuinely happy in today’s world? 

Especially in Hollywood? 

Bure thinks so. 

“It is genuinely who I am”

In an interview with Fox News, Bure said, “I live by faith in everything, in everything that I do, and every aspect of my life. So it’s not just something that I rely on or is a crutch. I mean, it is genuinely who I am . . . it’s just a part of my being.” She said her Christian faith is foundational to her identity. 

She also believes the Bible is truth: “I can always go back to the word of God and find the hope, the encouragement, the positivity, the trust that I know I have in Jesus. And so it never fails, even when life doesn’t go the way I want it to or had planned it to. I know that God’s in control of everything.”

Does this mean that Christians have to smile all the time or “put on a happy face” even when their lives crumble around them? 

I don’t believe so. And, I don’t believe that’s what Bure intends to convey, either. If her child hurts, she will hurt. If someone attacks her family, the “mama bear” comes out.

But, there’s a hope and joy that transcends any pain and suffering. 

An attitude of joy

In her book The Sacrament of Happy, Lisa Harper says, “Real, God-imbued happiness is not the absence of sadness or badness. Rather it is hanging on to the truth of His sovereign goodness regardless of what’s going on within or around us.”

She quotes Lamentations 3:17–23: “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.’ Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

The Apostle Paul reminded the Christians in Philippi to “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4). And he even repeated his command, showing its importance. He called them to an attitude of joy which doesn’t depend on circumstances, but on their Lord. 

Paul followed that command with another: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (vv. 6–7). 

The apostle emphasized what Jesus taught his followers in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7). In his book, Blessed: Eight ways Christians Change Culture, Dr. Jim Denison says: “What Jesus offers us in the Beatitudes is a guide to the kinds of blessings only God can provide. It’s a blessedness that transcends our circumstances, a joy and peace that the world can neither give nor take.”

He further states: “We can momentarily satiate our desire for happiness and peace in any number of ways, many of which are neither wicked nor sinful. Yet, when this brief joy fades, the yearning for something more, for the kind of life Jesus describes in these verses, will always return. The only way to end this cycle is to devote our lives so completely to our Lord and his ways that every moment is saturated with his presence.”

The word for beatitude comes from a Latin word, beatus, meaning blessed or happy. I have often heard the Beatitudes referred to as the “be attitudes.” This is a type of happiness the world may consider fake because they don’t understand an attitude of joy that transcends circumstances, the attitude of happiness that comes when we “devote our lives so completely to our Lord and his ways that every moment is saturated with his presence.”

And that is the happiness I believe Candace Cameron Bure has. 

Is it the happiness you have?

NOTE: Candance Cameron Bure is a featured speaker at the upcoming Perfectly, Imperfect Christian Parenting online event, which occurs this Friday and Saturday, April 23–24, 2021. Bure was also a featured guest on this episode of the Pardon the Mess podcast.