What is the good life? What is a life well lived? How does our worldview shape and inform how we understand this question?
I believe we all seek to answer the question in someway—if not overtly, then through how we live, spend our time and money, hope and hate particular things, and how we consider a life well lived.
It is my understanding that an atheist or agnostic worldview is ultimately unlivable when it comes to the question. One can cannot consistently live out where an atheistic or agnostic worldview leads.
If there are no real, obligating, moral standards above human opinion (atheistic worldview) or those standards out of reach and unknowable (agnostic worldview), then what constitutes the ‘good life’ (a life well lived) is merely, and ultimately, only a matter of personal or collective subjective preference and opinion. Relativism rules: I can define the good life in one way and you can define it another way; but there is no real answer to what is the good life.
Problem: we don’t live this way. We live as though there is such a thing as “wasting your life,” and there are morally wrong ways to seek out and define the ‘good life.’
Deduction: a relativistic (purely human only subjectivistic [no reference to God who is transcendent of our reality]) approach to ‘what is the good life?’ is unlivable and untrue to reality. The way we live shows we don’t actually believe it; we live as though there are real and known moral standards and values that transcend human opinion and inform us as to what the good life is.
The Christian Worldview: God exists and is the ultimate source of goodness, beauty, and truth; He is light (1 John 1:5) and love (1 John 4:8); as God, He is the lawgiver and informs us on how we ought to live and how we ought to approach Him and others; He also reveals to us to truth about human longings (our hearts were ultimately made to live for God and nothing else can ultimately satisfy) and human living (we were made to live for God’s glory). The good life is the life lived in restored relationship with God—something Jesus makes possible—and for God’s glory while walking in God’s ways through the Holy Spirit.
