The good life seems to be the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel we’re all seeking. You run and run, but it always seems to be just a bit further. Philosophers have been seeking to define the good life for millennia, yet, still, every culture has an answer of its own.
Aristotle claimed the good life was one filled with virtue and happiness through the work of reason. Plato highlighted the importance of morality as a path to the good life, and Socrates believed pursuing knowledge and personal growth through moral principles and virtue could result in finding the good life, especially if it includes asking questions, self-examination, and contemplation. Kant focused on seeking virtue in happiness but acknowledged those two are normally at war with one another because bodily desires are rarely in accordance with virtue.
The American good life and the highest good
Many of these views are centered on a virtuous and happy life, and American culture has not gone far from these in its search for the good life, either. While virtue has certainly taken a back seat, seeking happiness has become the utmost good for the American mind: Be whoever you want to be, do what makes you happy, and don’t let anyone or anything stand in your way. Set goals and figure out how to attain them, and then you’ll be happy and fulfilled, living the good life.
Often, this looks like striving for financial security, optimal health, achievements and success, or even the flourishing of our kids as we fill every empty second with activities so they may have the good life we may feel as though we missed out on as children. There’s no lack of self-help books to help you achieve this good life, promising to help you get there faster as if the good life is intended as a destination instead of the whole of the journey. The American dream is killing our souls.
How do we point our churches to not seek life transformation in the self-help frenzy but in the text that can truly transform? How do we equip our people to live with God as their highest good so the lesser goods of their lives don’t bankrupt their souls when they find they can slip away from them in a moment—in a diagnosis or a job loss or a failure—like a card house they’ve built that comes tumbling down? What if doing whatever feels good whenever we feel like it isn’t actually our highest good? How do we teach that in our churches?
1. Know the God we serve
There is a better good than doing whatever makes us feel happy in the moment, which can leave a path of chaos in our wake. When we find our satisfaction in the God of the Bible, we find rest, knowing God’s design for our lives is always better. A marriage might be destroyed by a moment of seeking what feels good, but a life of faithfulness is a step in the right direction toward the good life. However, we often don’t truly see the beauty and care of God, so we’re slow to believe He truly is our highest good. We’re quick to create God in our own image rather than acknowledging we are created in His. We might think He will ghost us if we frustrate Him, that He says He cares but is really out for His own gain.
To see God as our highest good, we must know good is not just what comes from His hands but that good is a Person. He is the prize because He is infinitely good, drawing not from a pool of resources but holding goodness as its source, with goodness that never runs dry. Cultivating virtue, reaching goals, and seeking happiness is absolutely exhausting—sure to crush even the most ambitious. But in the One who is good is rest and goodness that’s received rather than achieved.
2. Develop our tastes
What we consume each day develops our taste for what we assume is good. As a second grader, I wanted to taste my mom’s coffee and proceeded to spit it all over her just before we walked out the door to go to school. Yet today I’ve acquired a taste for it after years and years of multiple cups every day. Coffee is now one of my favorite parts of the day. You’re acquiring a taste for what you’re conditioning your mind and heart with, whether that be the truth of God’s Word or the twisted desires of a broken world.
So many of our church members are enjoying a diet of pornography, television that champions lifestyles of storing up treasure on earth, or a doom and gloom news cycle that drives hope in a candidate or policy rather than in an eternal God who’s sovereign over all of it. We must show our churches over and over again they can “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalms 34:8, CSB).
3. Rehearse the truth
We are a forgetful people. While we might find our highest good in God today, tomorrow is a new day full of its own challenges and temptations to place our hope for goodness in some earthly thing. This is not a “learn it once and you never struggle with it again” concept. We must continually preach the gospel to ourselves, reminding both ourselves and each other of the ultimate goodness we’ve been shown in Christ. There is no goodness outside of God, but He has invited us into the light, which illuminates all of life in the light of His goodness for those who have eyes to see. Developing eyes that see His goodness requires that we know and love the truth of His Word, rehearsing it daily.
Goodness is not having no car payment and a clean bill of health, because goodness cannot fade with a car-totaling accident or a difficult diagnosis. The good life is one that does not ebb and flow; it’s constant when it’s found in Christ alone. He is our highest good. He is our prize. There is none like Him.
