The Good Life

The Good Life. Life that feels complete, whole, satisfying. The good life. A phrase, a notion, that has power to stir our imagination. What comes to mind? Material goods, such as a beautiful home and a nice car? Or perhaps relationships: close friends, a spouse, children? Maybe it’s a meaningful job or activity that gives a sense of significance and self-worth? Various things can feed into the notion of the good life. What it looks like can be as different as the different people who imagine it. That there is a persistent human yearning for the good life is what drives much of the marketing of products and opportunities. If you have this car, or adventure, or set of friends, or job, you will be getting hold of the good life.

To want the good life, to be happy, is not ungodly in and of itself. God intends for his creatures to experience that which makes them feel whole, at peace, content. The problem we have is that we are too much affected by the results of the first unlawful effort at achieving the good life. Eve, and Adam after her, became persuaded that to realize her full potential, to experience the kind of flourishing she sensed was possible, she needed to eat of the “tree was good for food, and . . . a delight to the eyes, and . . . was to be desired to make one wise.” Her and Adam’s eating of the forbidden fruit was an attempt to achieve human flourishing apart from God and his will. A profoundly foolish decision, and one that gets repeated daily by their offspring. All the sins of humanity could be said to be similar attempts at realizing happiness without reference to God or his will.

I think it is often the case that when we think of how we can be happy it involves access to wealth. To have the dream house, exciting adventure, or pivotal opportunity requires resources. As a consequence, though we might not offer money as the first need for obtaining happiness, it’s the silent presupposition. The apostle understands and his directive to his young protégé offers a warning. Timothy is to instruct those who are rich to not be haughty or to trust in their riches. The power and access that wealth brings offers a false sense of importance and security. Instead of trusting in temporal wealth they are to store up eternal treasure by being rich in good works. In this way they will “take hold of that which is truly life.” 

For humans to flourish they need that which will allow them to live as they were created to live. This is why the psalmist likens the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night, to a “tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.” (Psalm 1:2-3) A tree, in the right environment, being fed with the right ingredients for its health, does what it’s designed to do — flourish! Unlike what our first parents thought, delighting in God and doing his will is what causes us to flourish, to “take hold of that which is truly life.” Being nourished by God and his word will cause us to produce the kind of fruit God desires, faith-filled lives that are “generous and ready to share.” (1 Timothy 6:18).