Salt and Light: Flourishing
By Brent Davis, Campus Ministry Coordinator
The goal of ethics, spiritual formation, and even your health science courses is flourishing. Our culture tends to define flourishing in terms of ‘stuff,’ but stuff alone cannot bring flourishing past a very superficial level. “Take heed and beware of [a]covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses” (Luke 12: 15). True flourishing is to be like Christ: because of sin, our world is broken—needing healing and transformation, and our goal is to be “…united in spirit … mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ” (Ephesians 4: 3, 13).
closeup photo of purple petaled flowers
What is the complete standard of Christ, and how can we achieve it? These are the questions we should ask whenever we read and study the Word of God. As with any goal, we need to understand our starting and end points, the means to reach the goal, and the obstacles we will need to overcome. Implicit in this is the point that it all takes time. In his book Changes that Heal, Henry Cloud lists time as one of the crucial elements in healing. Healing is one of the first steps towards the standard of Christ. We start from a position of sin and brokenness. Some people believe we start from a position of unbridled agency, an idea that makes us feel good, but misplaced confidence will sadly lead to disappointment later. We need to view ourselves and our world realistically (Romans 12: 3; Ecclesiastes).
Some day we will be in a perfect world if we reach out to God in faith (Acts 13: 13-41). That perfect world will have no more death, pain, or sorrow (Revelation 21). It is the New Jerusalem, the fully realized Kingdom of God, the new Creation. Creation was a beautifully interacting set of elements in perfect harmony with the Creator (Genesis 1, 2), but sin and the resultant punishment (Genesis 3) damaged the elements and their interactions; there was no longer harmony with God. Creation became a dysfunctional system.
God has been working to restore Creation, first through His covenant with Israel, and then through the new covenant via Jesus Christ. Entering into the new covenant by putting our trust in Christ and His redemptive death on the cross, puts us back into harmony with God and begins the work of healing for ourselves, our relationships with others, and to a certain degree healing some of the dysfunction in Creation (Matthews; Hall). The Great Commission (Matthew 28: 16-20) commands us to make disciples by teaching them to do all that Christ commanded. Christ commanded His disciples to follow Him (Mark 1: 17); heal the sick and tell them the Kingdom of God is near (Luke 10: 9);
God does this by leading and enabling us with His Spirit (Galatians 5), transforming our minds by rejecting conformity to the broken culture around us and embracing the mind of Christ (Romans 8: 5, 6; 12: 2; Philippians 2: 5; 1 Corinthians 2: 16). With a new character based on the virtues of Christ, we can become united with other believers and use our gifts to build them up towards maturity (Romans 12; Ephesians 4). Individually and as the body of Christ we can build institutions such as schools, hospitals, and other community ministries to develop communities to bring about human flourishing approximating the New Jerusalem to the glory of God. We can also become part of existing social structures and work for their transformation to more effectively contribute to human flourishing.
Evidence and character-based decision-making. Here at AUHS, I teach ethics to nursing students. Ethics is the study of doing the right thing. Doing the right thing depends on knowing what the right thing to do is and being willing and able to do it. How do we know what the right thing to do is? We need some concept of rightness. Ethicists have offered several bases for the idea of rightness—divine commands, the greater good, what you would want everyone to do, etc. Recently, I’ve been reading a book that has a great theory of rightness, Divine Love Theory by Adam Lloyd Johnson. Hopefully, the importance of this question is clear. We want a firm basis for our decisions. We want evidence, and, truth be told, we need strong motivation to always do the right thing even when it is hard. That is where character comes in.
So then, as we pray, study God’s word, and discuss with others let us ask: what is my condition, what is the state of our fellowship, what is the state of my community, and what would God have me do to flourish and bring about flourishing? This may seem a daunting task, but we have God’s Spirit, and the fellowship of other believers (such as in Salt and Light), to share the burden and joy of healing and growth that achieves wholeness and flourishing. Thank God for His blessings that cause us to flourish!