I became a fan of Yale theologian Miroslaf Volf when my good friend and colleague Barry Blackburn gave me a copy of Volf’s book, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World. It was one of those books where I tend to read a chapter and put it down to think for a while as I read something else. But when I finished, I knew I had found another resource to sharpen my own thinking about the gospel, about life, about theology, and ultimately, what following Jesus should look like.
Back in 2019, Volf, along with a colleague at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, Michael Croasmun, published a fantastic book titled For the Life of the World: Theology That Makes a Difference. The title itself caught my attention, because I have spent a lifetime saying, “Unless theology intersects and engages your life, it isn’t real theology.”
I like the idea of Yale scholars affirming what I’ve been saying!
One of my favorite statements from this wonderful little book is the concluding sentence of chapter one. Here’s what it says: “Theology is in crisis, largely because it has lost its nerve and forgotten its purpose to help discern, articulate, and commend compelling visions of flourishing life in light of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.” (page 34)
When I read that statement I’m drawn to remember another great book, this time by David Brooks, who among other things, is an outstanding columnist for The New York Times: The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life. At the heart of this book is the idea that what Volf and Croasmun call “the flourishing life” must be rooted in significance, not mere success. I have no idea if Brooks, Volf and Croasmun know each other, but there is a kind of helpful overlapping in the two books that is worth thinking about.
I love the phrase “in light of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.” It makes me think of Paul’s “think like Jesus thought” opening line to the great hymn in Philippians 2:5-11. It reminds me that if I think like Jesus, then the values of the kingdom of the world and the measures by which it judges “success,” won’t be the same as the values and economics of the kingdom of God and its insistence on fruitfulness over “success.”
A “flourishing life” grows out of fruitfulness in life, not success. Don’t misunderstand – I’m not anti-success. But I’m convinced that success – which in our culture is often determined by the accumulation of status, power, and wealth – is a poor substitute for fruitfulness. I’ve seen a variety of claims of late to the effect that it’s easy for anyone who manages his or her money well to become a millionaire these days. Ironically, the reason that is true is because a million dollars isn’t what it used to be. When we define success with the economic theories of the kingdom of the world, the thing we know for sure is that such success erodes more quickly than we can imagine.
Ironically, in many contexts, people who purport to be kingdom leaders associate “success” with health and wealth, power and status, and a more than healthy dose of self-importance. It strikes me as more than merely odd that Jesus would say of himself, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Luke 9:58/Matthew 8:20) and then turn out to be the health-and-wealth Messiah many make him out to be.
Equally ironic is that, in many contexts, people who purport to be kingdom leaders associate “success” with political theories that are rooted in a kind of rugged individualism that insists everyone “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.” They insist that their version of Christian nationalism is somehow rooted in the gospel, when that gospel claims that Messiah came because God “loves the world – the whole world.” (John 3:16, 1 John 2:2))
Even more disturbing is how many of us – who likely are not guilty of either of those faux understandings of what the gospel is all about – will turn around and say something like “Well, that’s bad theology, but there nothing I can do about it.”
I beg to differ.
I can do something, and that “something” may be what Volf and Croasmun describe as “discern, articulate, and commend compelling visions of flourishing life in light of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.” My first step in that direction – especially the “commending” part of that direction – may be that once I have discerned what the flourishing life in light of Jesus looks like, I should make sure that I don’t think that is for you and not me.
If I spend my life, my abilities, my time, my energy, my “everything” in accumulating and hoarding wealth, it is unlikely that I can articulate and compel a vision of what Jesus would consider the flourishing life. The issue isn’t, let me say again, that working hard and earning money is somehow of Satan. The issue is at least two-fold: first, how am I using that wealth? Second, I should not assume my wealth is a sign of my superiority over others who don’t have those kinds of dollars. That’s even more an issue when my wealth is, at least in part, due to what former Texas Governor Ann Richards once described as “being born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”
By the way, if you really want a good dose of conviction on this issue, go to one of the global wealth calculators and enter your 2020 earned income noted on your tax returns. Compared to the rest of the world, most citizens of the US were “born with a silver spoon in our mouth.”
How can I manage to do those three things in ways that draw people to Jesus and not push them away?
Discern. Articulate. Compelling Visions. How can I manage to do those three things in ways that draw people to Jesus and not push them away? That would need to start with an understanding of the real Jesus, whose life is discerned and articulated in a compelling way in the four gospels and other biblical texts. Let that Jesus replace the “civic Jesus,” who tends to tell us that the very things we already do are the very things he wants us to do.
When I allow that discernment to determine how I live, I can articulate that compelling vision simply by the testimony of my life. That testimony, alongside my willingness to boldly speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4), means that perhaps we can authentically present this compelling vision that leads to a flourishing life.
The easy thing to do would be to dismiss this compelling vision of Jesus as jealousy of people who have more money than I do, or to see this as some sort of diatribe against rich people – but you would be wrong. My paycheck at Point University is made possible, at least in part, by people who would be considered very rich compared to me, but who have generously invested in the kingdom and its outposts – like Point. They live “flourishing lives.”
Easter is upon us. What better time could there be to rethink our own “compelling visions of flourishing life”?
Wye Huxford 