Flourishing: A Life Well Lived
A message from the author: We hope you will join us July 18-19 at the Parnell Conference Centre for our conference, Flourish: The Good News of Science-Engaged Theology. The early bird rate of $90 lasts through 30 April and you can find out more information here.
I recently lectured on sin in an undergraduate course at Carey Baptist College. While we needed to discuss scriptural definitions of sin, the doctrine of original sin, theories of sin transmission, and how to think of Jesus’s human nature, it was also important to me to provide different ways of thinking about this theological topic. One of these was pulled from Kelly Kapic’s new book You’re Only Human as his description resonated with my own upbringing:
“Some traditions, like my own, place so much emphasis on our identity as ‘sinners’ that we leave no room for our deeper identity as the ones whom God designed in his own image to experience life in fellowship, or to experience his original delight in us ourselves, with our particular spunk, our personality, our difference.”
He encourages readers to keep their understanding of creation and redemption together. We need to maintain the importance of being made in the image of God (not to mention existing at all!), along with a recognition of our sinfulness and need of a Saviour. After going through this portion of the lecture, I put up a reflective slide with a simple question: “Do you think God likes you?”
We talk a lot about God’s love for us, but we often don’t think about whether God likes me—that God would want to spend time with me. I think some of this may be because we have separated (subconsciously though that may be) our doctrine of creation from our doctrine of redemption. We are made in the image of God, not just generically, but specifically and in our particularities. Moreover, while sin has affected every aspect of human existence, we remain in God’s image.* Further, within our doctrine of creation is also an understanding of consummation—that God has always intended for humanity to be in deep union with Godself. So, in talking about sin, it seems critical to me to hold together what was meant to be with what is. Furthermore, talking about what was meant to be, brings me to a theology of human flourishing.
Of course, the critical question is: what do you mean by flourishing? My own thinking in this area begins with a doctrine of God (who God is) which then informs my understanding of creation, consummation, and redemption. In summary, God epitomises the flourishing life within Godself. God creates the cosmos out of the sheer abundance of God’s goodness and plenitude, not because God needs to create, but in some sense, God wants to create. In creating, God orders the creation toward its full flourishing. For humankind, in addition to basic needs for food, water, air, shelter, etc. there is a need to be in a personal relationship with God. The triune God wants to be known by us and to draw us into the divine life, through Jesus, by the Spirit. Sin has disrupted the realisation of this flourishing—not only for humankind but also for the entire created order. Even so, this is an incredibly broad way of understanding flourishing and needs more nuance.
Consequently, I’ve found a helpful framework from Christian theologians Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasman. In their recent book, they identify different aspects of the flourishing life from across religions and philosophies. These are often broken down as the life “going well,” “led well,” and “feeling as it should.” The life going well is largely circumstantial and would apply to things such as one’s health, social standing, and living on uncontaminated land; led well is more agential including “right thought of the heart” and would include virtues and habits; and the life feeling as it should is the affective dimension with states of happiness, joy, empathy, and contentment. While this is a broad gloss of flourishing, Volf and Croasmun apply these aspects to a specific expression of flourishing while also relating this to their understanding of the theological task: “We believe the purpose of theology is to discern, articulate, and commend visions of flourishing life in light of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.”
When we look at the life of Jesus, life was not always going well. He lived as an oppressed person under Roman occupation. He was likely poor. He was not always held in high regard socially. And of course, he experiences intense suffering before and upon the cross. While life may have felt as it should for much of his life, we do know of Jesus’s cries of anguish, both in Gethsemane and at Golgotha. In a sin-conditioned context, life did not always go well or feel as it should have, even for Jesus. However, where I think we see the epitome of the flourishing life in Christ is in his life led well—even when it wasn’t going well or feeling as it should. Jesus consistently chooses to submit his will to the will of the Father by the Spirit and leads his life well regardless of circumstance or emotive states. I think this can even help us make sense of how Jesus could still be leading his life well and flourishing in this way when he is on the cross. He has volitionally chosen to submit himself unto death and provides the ultimate example of a life led well despite circumstances and intense feelings—even of despair and abandonment. Thus, he is not flourishing in every way possible, but in the main way necessary as the perfect human.
Such a paradigm for flourishing can provide a healthy corrective to defining flourishing as an outworking of the prosperity gospel (the idea that faith may lead to material and physical flourishing and lack of faith leads to poverty and suffering). Instead, due to living in a sin-conditioned world, we can recognise that life may not always go well or feel as it should. But given our hope in God one day making all things new, we can and should desire for life to go well and feel as it should, yet in the meantime, it can still be led well. Consequently, we recast the metric for flourishing. It is not based on my bank account, my physical health, my social status, or even my feelings of happiness or joyfulness. The metric is Jesus. Our own lives led well will thus look like greater intimacy with the Father and participation in the ministry of the Son, through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
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Dr Christa McKirland is lecturer in systematic theology at Carey Baptist College - Te Kareti Iriiri o Carey.
She is currently involved in hosting “Flourish: The Good News of Science-Engaged Theology,” a science-engaged theological conference being held from Monday 18 July to Tuesday 19 July at the Parnell Conference Centre, Tāmaki Makaurau. The conference is part of a Sir John Templeton research grant and hosted through Carey Baptist College. You can find out more here.
*This has been a theologically debated point for millenia with some thinkers holding to a destroyed or marred image of God. I find the view that we are still made in the image of God but hampered from becoming like the true image of God (Jesus) due to sin, a more compelling interpretation of the image of God and its relation to sinfulness. Such an account also draws together creation, eschatology, and redemption—we think in terms of God’s intentions at creation for consummation. Redemption becomes necessary for that ultimate end to be accomplished, however, redemption cannot tell the whole story of the gospel.