What is it we're looking for? This drive to experience life, to build security, to pursue pleasure and fame and knowledge, all of these well up from a dilemma in our own hearts that we can't seem to pinpoint. Much of us strive to solve our dilemma without knowing there is a dilemma. Saint Augustine answered this question when he said that our hearts aren't at rest until they find themselves resting in God; he later added to this that our hearts aren't at rest until we find ourselves resting in God and in relationship with both other people and with creation. He's speaking, of course, of "the glory of God": mankind in the Garden, in a beautiful, functional, and good standing with God, one another, and creation. Human beings are created as God's image bearers, and since we've been kicked out of the Garden, deciding to bear our own image rather than God's, we're no longer at home, no longer where we're designed to be. We feel off because we are off. Something's not right, and the bible's clear about the dilemma: we've been ousted from the Garden.
What we've lost is God, but that's not all.
We lost the whole thing, the whole package: life in the Garden.
What we've lost, really, is our true selves and true names.
We're but shadows of what our Creator intended us to be.
The Greek philosophers sought to answer the question, "How do we find eudaimonia?" We tend to translate this Greek word as "happiness," and it makes sense to us, after all. What else do westerners pursue more than anything? We're all in the pursuit of happiness, especially here in America (it's written in our Declaration of Independence!). But eudaimonia is a richer, far more dynamic and full word, transcending some euphoric feeling of contentment to encompass a holistic scope of the human experience. It refers to a fully flourishing human existence, and that's what we're after.
Paul often uses philosophical language when talking about the Christian life. Well-schooled in Greek philosophy (he studied in Tarsus, after all), he knows what he's doing. That which the philosophers seek is found in Christ. The wisdom of the philosophers is subjugated to the foolishness of a cross. A fully flourishing life is found in Christ, not in cynicism, or epicureanism, or hedonism, or any of the other "isms".
The gospel is, after all, the story of redemption, of rescue and renewal. We have mankind in the Garden, glorying in God. We have mankind trying to put himself in God's place, and we have the curse of such rebellion: dehumanization. God isn't content to leave it at that, and launches a rescue operation culminating in Christ's death and resurrection. In Christ there's redemption, rescue and renewal; dehumanized human beings are rescued from their dehumanization and indwelt by God's own Spirit, a guarantee of our inheritance and future glorification, when we'll find ourselves in the Garden yet again. Salvation--being rescued from dehumanization and restored to our rightful, God-ordained place in the cosmos--is a two-part process. We're saved in the present with the promise of full salvation in the future.
Eudaimonia, a fully flourishing human life, is found only in Christ.
All other attempts, efforts, and experiences are but shadows.
In Christ, we can taste eudaimonia in the present, though not fully.
One day we'll experience full eudaimonia when we find ourselves replanted in the Garden.
I don't want to sound too crude, but the gospel really is the existentialist's wet dream.
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