human flourishing or God's will?

What ought we seek above all, human flourishing or God's will?

During last Sunday's sermon, we considered this question, with the Gospel of John as a companion. I shared wisdom from Charles Taylor, who wrote,

Flourishing is good, nevertheless seeking it is not our ultimate goal. But even where we renounce it, we re-affirm it, because we follow God's will in being a channel for it to others, and utimately to all. ...Christ consents to a degrading death to follow his father's will. ...Unless living the full span were a good, Christ's giving of himself to death couldn't have the meaning it does. In this it is utterly different from Socrates' death, which the latter portrays as leaving this condition for a better one. Here we see the unbridgeable gulf between Christianity and Greek philosophy. God wills ordinary human flourishing, and a great part of what is reported in the Gospels consists in Christ making this possible for the people whose afflictions he heals. The call to renounce doesn't negate the value of flourishing; it is rather a call to centre everything on God, even if it be at the cost of forgoing this unsubstitutable good; and the fruit of this forgoing is that it become on one level the source of flourishing to others, and on another level, a collaboration with the restoration of a fuller flourishing by God. It is a mode of healing wounds and "reparing the world"...

In other words, life in this world is good and flourishing in this life is also good. If this were not true, Christ choosing the cross would a selfish act (escaping what is bad) rather than a loving act (giving what has value) and a faithful act (focusing on God above all). This tension plays out very personally for us, because Christ both rejoices when we flourish and calls us beyond flourishing and beyond life to center on God even above all that is good. In Christ, we receive the gift and become the gift for others. We invest ourselves in others, as Christ invested himself in us. We do not throw ourselves away. Such faithful love heals the world, truly and in a holy and powerful way.

Often though, we are in the habit of taking shortcuts and using flourishing as a shorthand for God's will. In many cases, maybe most, this is just fine. We know what we mean. What we do and say is faithful, loving, and healing. But other times, the shorthand leads us astray.

When we substitute "flourishing" for "God's will," we stop listening for Jesus's voice. Our listening muscles atrophy. We become captive to a smaller point of view, a human one not a divine one. We disconnect ourselves from the source of life, God.

For example, what is flourishing? What kind of good life is really good? We don't often ask and answer these questions. But our behavior reveals our core beliefs, and the answers we live are often warped. "Good for me, my family, people who look and act like me" replaces "good for all," or better, "God's good." We need God's perspective because our own and our culture's sense of the good and of flourishing can actually harm.

Let's get even more specific--rest. When do we rest, when so many are in need, when the work of love is never doen? When is our own good and flourishing not selfish but truly faithfulness, love, and healing? This is one way we often get it wrong. We work ourselves to death. We don't say no. We avoid setting and enforcing boundaries. We take whatever others give us, rather than what is right. We act alone, rather than in community. We ignore our own health and wellbeing. We need God's perspective here too. We need to stop to give God's Spirit and our own spirit loving attention. 

"Seek first the kingdom of God," Jesus said. Thank God.

Pastor Clark Olson-Smith