ch.206 human flourishing

What Is Human Flourishing?

One biblical index of human flourishing appears in the prophets and recurs in Revelation. In trying to help people understand his promises of blessing to them, God sketches a picture of a city with the sound of musicians heard in the streets, artisans busy at craft and trade, the economic engine of the millstone turning, the domestic miracle of a lamp in a window and the voices of bride and groom rejoicing (Rev. 18:22-23; see for example Jer. 7, 16, 25, and especially 33). When either our hearts or our societies cease to flourish, these sounds fall silent. But these are sounds God loves to hear, for our good and his delight.

These outward signs of flourishing might well be supplemented by the inward signs of Christian virtues or the fruits of the Spirit. Are we bearing the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? If so, then we are flourishing.

Contributing to Flourishing

Sadly, it must be said that many people are not doing well. They’re sick, they’re poor, their leaders oppress them, their relationships are shallow, their hopes are unrealized, or they have no hopes left at all. Christians looking about them at the world are sensitive to many forms of human suffering and human failing, and we’re right to remain sensitive to all of these — whether economic or emotional, political or intellectual, international or intergenerational, physical or spiritual. People in every sphere are right to ask, “Is this any way to live?”

One reason we can be sensitive to human suffering and failing is that we, following Christ, remain committed to human flourishing. In the fallen world, such flourishing will be hard-won. But we can get beyond a mere catalog of the disasters around us and rise up to challenge suffering’s sources and symptoms alike, because knowing God has given us a taste for what his world is supposed to be like.

As Christians we join in the work of Jesus, who (by his own testimony) came that we might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). This life is multi-dimensional: spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, and social. As Jesus’ followers, we are called to nurture life within ourselves, in our communities, and around the world. Abundant life is a quality of the Kingdom of God, and from this root grows our commitment to human flourishing.

All people can contribute to human flourishing, if only in the humblest acts of care for others. But those of us in the universities and professions have been given a precious gift. We can contribute in extraordinary, even unique, ways to human well-being: the obstetrician who delivers a baby alive who would otherwise die, the teacher who guides students to understanding and academic success, the judge who shepherds a case to justice. Such examples can and should be multiplied and the stories told. Such principles should be advanced in every discipline and profession. Imagine what Christians might accomplish in our culture if we conceived of our academic and professional work as making a godly contribution to human flourishing?

What Human Flourishing Is Not

Let’s be clear about what human flourishing is not. Human flourishing is not the only way to frame our life as Christians in the university and professions. By focusing our attention on the topic for several days together, we do not intend to eclipse other important approaches to understanding God’s call to academics and professionals.

Nor is human flourishing to be cultivated at the expense of the non-human elements of God’s creation. In fact, God has always called us to be good “gardeners” in order to best live life. God made all of creation good and made its living inhabitants to be fruitful and multiply, and he charges us with responsibility — in accountable dominion — to help it flourish.

Human flourishing does not pit the individual against the community or the personal against the social. We want to consider the ways we can both model and multiply human flourishing. It rejects the selfishness (not to mention the inefficiency) of “looking out for number one.” At the same time, it does not submerge each individual within a smothering collective. God makes individual persons and he makes communities, and we believe he wants both to flourish.

Human flourishing is certainly not to be reduced to the acquisition of physical comforts and economic security (or security of any kind). We believe that God’s vision for human flourishing is broader and deeper than “the American dream,” a single-minded petition for “health and wealth,” or the facile appeal to an ethic of “survival of the fittest.” In the academy and professions, we often see the lack of flourishing manifested precisely in the pursuit of illusory forms of flourishing, through careerism, overweening ambition, vainglory, or the sacrifice of relationships to selfish goals. Human flourishing is not merely “success.”

The alleviation of physical and economic suffering is part of the picture, especially for those most affected, but we also know that there is a mystery in God’s economy: that often hardship brings blessings not found among the complacently comfortable. Jesus himself was a man of sorrows, and we learn to “suffer well” as we are conformed to his image. We particularly want to remain open to the role of sacrifice in human flourishing, without valorizing poverty or despising riches.

It turns out that human flourishing is not really very human at all: it is a divine gift. Its original design was given by the Maker and now he endows the spiritual gifts and provides all the resources to pursue it. Human flourishing is not an end in itself and cannot be fully realized without worship, apart from which we cannot apprehend the proper ordering of the world. As we worship, we are released from the naïve and arrogant egalitarianism in which we imagine we are like God. Human flourishing is never grounds for boasting, but always an occasion for prayer, praise, and gratitude.

In the end, the ultimate question is one of identity and vision: who did God make us to be? What would it have been like to live in God’s original garden, walking with him at our side as we practiced our calling? Or perhaps better — what will it be like to live in God’s New City amid his New Creation, dwelling in a divinely restored community, within a renewed environment, loving God with heart, soul, mind, and strength?