How Good is Your Life?

Joel Osteen’s name became widely famous with his cleverly titled book “Your Best Life Now.” I personally have not read the book, but from the title and it being a #1 New York Times Bestseller, I can pretty much get the gist. It seems very natural to want the best life, especially we Americans. It’s as if we expect it. We have a sense of entitlement that is not present in every culture. The “American Dream” is still something that we strive for and think is the ultimate goal. If we can just get the big house and the nice cars and the vacation home and the blonde-haired blue-eyed 2.3 children then we will have arrived. Tragically, we are hearing stories far too often of Americans taking their own lives because this economy has taken this “American Dream” from them.

I think this proves that America has been tricked for a countless number of years. The problem is that we’ve been spoon-fed this “best” life that is not necessarily the best at all. It is good, yes, but only the best for very few. We’ve been duped. Robbed. We humans are too easily complacent. We spend so much time and energy pursuing this good life, that we miss out on the best life. The problem is simply as the old adage goes, “Good is the enemy of best.” I think many of us don’t even know what this best is for ourselves. For so long we’ve thought of best as what was really only good.

It’s comparable to what Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24) For far too long this has made people think and even preach that rich people are evil and poor people are holy. I don’t believe that is what it means at all. It is not that the being rich in and of itself is bad, but rather that the rich man wants for little, so he will not seek more. His good, or even great life is enemy of and keeping him hostage from his best life. A life of relationship with the Creator of the universe, just as He created him for, us for. Romans 12:1-2