The art of living (and loving) well

Success as the good life in God's eyes

excerpts from the article of the same title By Winn Collier

 The ways we typically judge success, efficiency and progress tend to trump love. Most often, we believe that pursuing success requires us to measure outcomes and count achievements. We believe we must possess a clear vision of our future and then chart the progress from here to there. Such things have their place. Yet, helpful as these actions may be, they don’t necessarily require love.

True success, however, has everything to do with love. To recalibrate this connection, we must reframe what we mean by the term. In our culture, the notion of success appears almost inextricably linked to accomplishments one can mark and measure: achievements, academic degrees, reputation, dollars. However, Scripture asks little about quantity but much about quality. In other words, using biblical language, the question is not so much “Is your life successful?” but “Is your life good?”

This is precisely the psalmist’s query: “Who among you desires to live good days?” (Ps. 34:12, ). In other words, “Do you want to live the good life?” We can hit all sorts of success markers without ever dealing honestly with the quality of our life along the way. We may live powerfully, or effectively, or quickly. But do we live well? Can we say that our life is deeply good?

The essential thing, as God sees it, is not to marshal our resources or maximize our potential but rather to live a life congruent with our identity as God’s people—inhabiting the good, new world God’s kingdom creates.

The psalmist offers several suggestions for the shape a good life might take, emphasizing that what we most need is not proper strategy or appropriate vision but righteous character (Ps. 34:8-15). One living the good life will be a truth-teller who treats all people with integrity. One living the good life will stiff-arm evil and pursue justice, all the while working for others’ flourishing and well-being. Above all, one living the good life will find his identity and desires nourished in the love of God.

Perusing these descriptions, we discover a recurring image: the good life is the one where our loving action is attentively directed toward God and toward others. This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It’s how Jesus described the greatest commandment—the thing most crucial to succeed at: love of God, and love of neighbor.

Another difficulty with living well—or as I like to think of it, loving well—in our culture is the fact that many of our visions of success keep us in constant motion, whether physically or emotionally. We are incessantly craning forward, looking to what’s ahead or what’s next, pushing for some future vision.

In this posture, it’s difficult to see the small graces that easily slip by unnoticed when we’re under pressure to get things done. For the psalmist, good life means receiving and giving mercy. It means watching for those subtle signals that God is prodding you to action, prodding you toward love.

One of the hard truths is this: Living the good life will actually, at times, work against our normal pictures of success. Obeying God will sometimes lead to fewer accolades and more suffering. Loving well may even mean that we encounter more disappointment, not more achievement. Jesus was the most successful human in history, and He died on a cross. Of course, death wasn’t the end of the story.

No matter how materially successful a person can become, life and love had the final word. They always do.