http://www.boundless.org/features/a0000973.html

Pursuing Happiness
by Roberto Rivera y Carlo




Last month, in “Destructive Myths: Love Onscreen,” I wrote that “the last place anyone should look for advice on love and marriage is on the screen, no matter what size it is.” What we see there rarely, if ever, conforms to real life. Yet the images, and the emotions they generate, are so seductive that even though we know better, we still wind up expecting some correspondence between the two.
The prominent Hollywood-fostered myths I wrote about were “hotness” — our unrealistic expectations regarding physical attractiveness — and “relationshipism” — the quest to be with another person without “exacting from the ego a price for being with other people.”

But there’s a third even more destructive and pervasive myth. It’s a myth we all fall for, even though we have ample reason to doubt the existence of this particular chimera. It’s probably the single biggest reason marriages fail and lovers part: happiness.

To most Americans, calling happiness a “destructive myth” sounds ridiculous — it’s the kind of thing that conjures up mental images of dour religious types dressed in black. After all, doesn’t the Declaration of Independence call the “pursuit of happiness” an “inalienable right” on par with life and liberty? Yes, it does. However, the right to pursue happiness isn’t the same thing as the right to be happy. What’s more, what Jefferson and company meant by “happiness” differs from our understanding of the word.

For us, the word “happiness” refers to a subjective emotional state more or less synonymous with “contentment,” with a dollop of euphoria thrown in for good measure. For instance, I spent the day after Thanksgiving with my family, many of whom had flown in from Puerto Rico for the occasion. We literally talked and laughed the day away. When I got home Friday night, I wished I could have bottled that day and made it last forever. That feeling is what we mean when we use the word “happiness.”

The problem is that these feelings are fleeting, not to mention subjective and even a bit egocentric. You can’t build an individual life, much less important institutions, around them. That’s why the Founders, harkening back to John Locke, St. Thomas Aquinas and, of course, Aristotle, understood happiness in more permanent (and more social) terms.

For Aristotle and those who followed him, happiness referred to “the quality of a whole human life — what makes it good as a whole, in spite of the fact that we are not having fun or a good time every minute of it.” Since our lives may contain “many pleasures, joys and successes” along with “many pains, griefs and troubles,” and can still be called “good,” happiness is neither increased nor diminished by our joys and sorrows.

While happiness requires things such as friendship, health, knowledge and, yes, material comforts, what matters most, according to Aristotle, is virtue. It’s virtue that enables us to make the right choices such as the “willingness to give up some immediate pleasures for the sake of obtaining a greater good later on.” As the philosopher Mortimer Adler, whom I’ve been quoting the past few paragraphs, wrote, the right pursuit of happiness consists in making the right choices. Make the wrong ones and while “we are likely to have some fun from day to day for a while,” in the long we will “ruin our lives.”

While Jefferson, Aristotle, et al., understood both happiness and its pursuit to be personal, our almost entirely subjective understanding of happiness would have been alien to them. Likewise, while they believed that happiness had a social and communal dimension, the idea that one person could determine whether we would be happy or not would have struck them as preposterous.

Nowhere is our flawed understanding of happiness more consistently on display than in the movies. Last summer’s “Before Sunset” picked up where the 1995 film “Before Sunrise” left off. In “Before Sunrise,” Joel (Ethan Hawke) an American, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a French student, spend 14 memorable hours together on an overnight train to Vienna. As they prepare to part, Joel, swept up in the moment, suggests that they meet again six months later there in Vienna.

“Before Sunset” picks up the story nine years later. Joel has written a critically acclaimed novel based on that night nine years ago. He’s in Paris on the last stop of his European book tour when he’s reunited with Celine. This time, they only have a few hours before Joel has to leave. We quickly learn that Joel did return to Vienna and that Celine would have but for the death of her grandmother. We also learn that Joel is married and has a son.

The getting re-acquainted and catching-up comes to a sudden stop with an outburst by Celine that reveals how much the failure to re-connect with Joel has effected her: a series of failed “relationships” that left her doubting if she’d ever know love. Celine wasn’t the only one hurt: Joel says that his marriage is an emotionally-barren sexless façade held together only by his love for his son. The film ends with them at Celine’s apartment. While doing an impression of Nina Simone, Celine seductively says to Joel “you’re going to miss your flight” to which he smiles and replies “I know.”

While “Before Sunset” is intellectually a cut above most movies, it still embraces the same destructive idea: happiness, both in love and life, is largely a matter of finding that one person with whom you share a special connection. Celine had become, as Joel said, an angry person, not because of some personal flaw but because she didn’t have Joel. Joel was unhappy, despite his professional success, not because his expectations were distorted but because Celine hadn’t come to Vienna. While we don’t know exactly what happens after the credits roll (there’s talk of a third film), we are certain that for Joel and Celine, the road to happiness leads away from their current lives and toward a future with each other.

“Before Sunset” may only be a movie but its expectations of love and life aren’t limited to the multiplex. Maggie Gallagher, the author of The Abolition of Marriage, among other books on the subject, has estimated that up to 80 percent of all divorces are unilateral decisions — that is, one party decides that she doesn’t wanted to be married to other person anymore. (I used the feminine pronoun because the person doing the deciding is more likely to be the woman.) At that point, all that’s left for the usually dumbstruck other party to do is to secure the most equitable settlement possible concerning the division of property and custody. The law can’t or won’t compel the person who wants out to rescind or even reconsider her decision.

This right to end your marriage because you are unhappy, without giving a reason beyond your feelings — what we euphemistically call “no-fault divorce” — is what Gallagher meant by the “abolition of marriage.” (People have long had the legal and moral right to seek divorce for cause: adultery, abandonment, abuse and cruelty.) Gallagher notes that people seeking a divorce under “no-fault” circumstances often grant themselves what she calls a “retroactive annulment”: they claim to have had doubts about the marriage from its inception. They’ve concluded that telling the other person “I should have never married you” is preferable to saying “you don’t make me happy.”

They’re probably right. Given the subjective and fleeting nature of what we call “happiness,” basing something as important as love and marriage on its presence or absence seems foolish, not to mention selfish. (Okay, I did mention it.) Yet millions of Americans do, in large part because they’ve been taught to associate love and “happiness.” Like Joel, they go where they ought not to in pursuit of a feeling that, as sure as the sun rises and sets, will leave them all by their lonesome.



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Copyright © 2004 Roberto Rivera y Carlo. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

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CULTURE

What Makes the Incredibles Superheroic?
Heroism in Character, Not Abilities

By Alex Wainer

December 3, 2004

You may have thought the Presidential election’s decisive conclusion would see the media’s attention turn elsewhere. Instead of relief from all things political, we continue to see politics in all things. And that includes an animated film about a superheroic family that is said to be the “first Bush II film,” a sign of the growing strength of “Red State” America. Does the new Disney/Pixar film signify an incursion of a political ideology into popular culture?

The Ideologicals?
Several years in production, The Incredibles premiered the weekend after George Bush won a second term and had soon racked up a very impressive $70 million box office take. Audiences love the story: a family of superheroes is forced to live normal, i.e., non-superpowered lives, because of lawsuits resulting from the collateral damage of their do-gooding. Under a superhero relocation program, the family goes anonymous in Middle America and tensions arise out of the coerced repression of their special abilities. Dash, the grade school son with superspeed bridles under his mother’s pleas to just fit in, because “everyone is special,” to which Dash retorts, “which is another way of saying nobody is.”

The superfamily finds that it does no one any good to hide one’s gifts under a suburban roof when an ungrateful humanity needs what they’ve got. The fun comes when we see the Incredibles confront threats only they can defeat. Election week saw many articles that the exit poll data seemed to indicate voters made their decisions based on “moral values.” Thus after the big opening weekend, several articles sought to draw a connection between the two events. Writing in the New York Observer, Suzy Hansen and Sheelah Kolhatkar strongly implied that the same values were being affirmed in both politics and popular culture: “The message of The Incredibles ’reported everywhere!’ was that the chosen few should have the right to exercise their powers over a wide, bland majority of fans and mediocrity-worshippers, and save the world from a bitter, deadly evil.”

The same article quoted Ted Rall, editorial cartoonist for United Press Syndicate who perceived clear political meaning in the blockbuster: “It’s kind of ironic that superheroes now have these fascist, right-wing connotations. The right has stolen the flag and our superheroes, too."

Both Hansen and Kolhatkar, and the New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott see a particular philosophy permeating the film, Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, which extols the imperative of gifted individuals being allowed to pursue happiness through the exercise of those abilities. “My philosophy,” she explained in the appendix to her novel, Atlas Shrugged, “in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” Scott remarks, “The intensity with which 'The Incredibles' advances its central idea -- it suggests a thorough, feverish immersion in both the history of American comic books and the philosophy of Ayn Rand -- is startling.”

These and other comments on the film suggest that writer/director Brad Bird and his team at Pixar were doing heavier lifting with ideas than Mr. Incredible did with train cars and giant robots. Is the film really an ideological soulmate of the Bush Administration? Does Mr. Incredible really drive a car with “Bush/Cheney ‘04” sticker on it? Does all this portend America moving toward Rand’s privileged super people and the U.S. as unrestrained Superpower?

Ubermensch and Superman
But let’s take a deeper look at what The Incredibles is actually saying . Consigned to a tiny cubicle at a giant insurance agency, the now incognito Mr. Incredible discovers the company’s practice of denying legitimate claims to it’s customers. He finds subtle ways to steer policyholders through the maze of corporate bureaucracy to make the company honor its commitments. We find that his heroism is more than muscle deep, that it’s in his character to rescue people and that his boss’s efforts to withhold making good on policies make him as venal as any supervillain. In other words, Mr. Incredible isn’t doing the hero thing as a form of self-expression, but because of his sense of justice and inner desire to do good.

According to an Objectivist web site, “ Rand rejected altruism, the traditional ethical view . . . that advocates self-sacrifice as a moral ideal.” She would have found the whole superhero ethic of putting oneself in harm’s way for the good of others to be the very self-giving attitude she abhorred. In fact her philosophy was informed by that of Frederich Nietzsche’s concept of the Ubermensch, or Superman, the figure that rejects the Christian values of self-denial and service in order to move “beyond good and evil” by finding his own values and continually evolving to a higher state. It was this concept that informed the creation of two Jewish teenagers, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster from Cleveland, when they wrote a story, “The Reign of the Superman”. Writing at the Jewish Virtual Library website, Blair Kramer says, “Inspired by the German philosopher Nietzsche, Siegel's first Superman was an evil mastermind with advanced mental powers.” Written in 1933, the same year that Hitler came to power in Germany, the two young men watched the Nazi application of the Superman concept expressed as Ayran superiority to horrifying measures against Jews and other minorities. They did a complete philosophical reversal on their character’s values, and, as Kramer explains, “they changed their Jewish-created Superman to a force for good.” Now, their character imbued with moral ideals, “Superman obeys the Talmudic injunction to do good for its own sake and heal the world where he can.” And of course the rest is comic book history: The first superhero that became the template for all that would follow him.

Superman has often been characterized as the ultimate immigrant to America. Kramer outlines the traits the Last Son of Krypton shares with so many others, including European Jews, who fled oppression and persecution and destruction. Rocketed from his doomed home planet, the Kryptonian infant is sent, like Moses in his small basket, toward a hopeful future. The space child is found by loving adoptive parents who raise him with the values of the American heartland.

It can be argued that not only is Superman demonstrably Jewish in moral character, but also Christian with his commitment to serving others rather than lording his power over lesser mortals. Indeed the superhero conceit of a secret identity, though indeniably a fantasy of power for many a daydreaming youth, also draws from Jesus’ admonition that whoever would lead must serve others in humility and love. One could see the very nature of the superhero’s secret identity as a symbolic form of literal self-effacement, the use of a mask a metaphor for the humbling of self that Jesus said would lead to exaltation. With variations, this has been the model for comic book superheroes ever since.

Thus to argue that the Incredibles embody a fascist, or Randian ethic of the heroic is to make a very superficial analysis. By the film’s end, the superfamily has found freedom by donning costumes and masks when society is threatened, in order to, once the threat is defeated, return to the anonymity of a normal life. This is anything but the celebration of power.

Intoxicated with Temporal Power?
However, liberal accusations of a conservative ideology that seeks power and domination can find expressions in the real world. No sooner was the election settled than several conservative Christian groups who had supported the Bush campaign read the President and the Republican party the riot act by warning them to put out for their cause or risk losing their support next time. Such immediate threatening of a political leader within days of his victory bespoke a willingness to wield the power of their bully pulpits beyond the boundary of merely bearing witness to their understanding of biblical truth.

Rather than encouraging their followers to support the candidate who comes closest to their positions, these leaders use threats and warnings to ensure their version of the kingdom is voted into power. Not something you’d expect from a real superhero who only uses his powers to stand up to evil and then modestly retreats until he is needed again.

The illusion of changing the culture through political power can be intoxicating. The ability to make moral persuasions is diminished the more readily we seek to pursue good ends through ungodly means. Observers on the left are rightly alarmed by such tactics, which are far more worrisome than imagining that a family of superheroes in red costumes are harbingers of fascism. Even wearing a cape that idea won’t fly.



Alex Wainer teaches communication and mass media at Palm Beach AtlanticUniversity. He can be reached at commdocalex@netscape.net

http://www.boundless.org/features/a0000980.html
Why Happiness Isn't a Feeling
by J.P. Moreland

Just after Jesus told his disciples who he was and what path lay before Him, He gave them — and us — the key to human prosperity.

If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it. For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matthew 16:24-26)
Christ invites us to follow Him, but warns that losing our lives is the first step. It’s an invitation to happiness. But what exactly is happiness, and how do we obtain it?

According to ancient thought, happiness is a life well lived, a life that manifests wisdom, kindness and goodness. For the ancients, the happy life — the life we should dream about — is a life of virtue and character. Not only did Plato, Aristotle, the Church Fathers and medieval theologians embrace this definition, but Moses, Solomon and (most importantly) Jesus did, too. Sadly their understanding is widely displaced by the contemporary understanding of happiness defined as pleasure and satisfaction, a subjective emotional state associated with fleeting, egocentric feelings.1

Consider the differences:

Contemporary Understanding:
Happiness is —
1. Pleasure and satisfaction
2. An intense feeling
3. Dependent on external circumstances
4. Transitory and fleeting
5. Addictive and enslaving
6. Irrelevant to one’s identity, doesn’t color the rest of life and creates false/empty self
7. Achieved by self-absorbed narcissism; success produces a celebrity

Classical Understanding:
Happiness is —
1. Virtue and character
2. A settled tone
3. Depends on internal state; springs from within
4. Fixed and stable
5. Empowering and liberating
6. Integrated with one’s identity, colors rest of life and creates true/fulfilled self
7. Achieved by self-denying apprenticeship to Jesus; success produces a hero

How can we be certain Jesus is inviting us to a classical understanding of happiness in Matthew 16:24-26? He isn’t talking about going to heaven rather than hell, nor is He telling his followers how to avoid premature death. Where Matthew writes, “what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul” (emphasis added), Luke clarifies Jesus’ teaching by replacing “his soul” with the word “himself” (Luke 9:25). The issue is finding one’s self vs. losing one’s self. More specifically, to find one’s self is to find out how life ought to look like and learn to live that way; it’s to become like Jesus, with character that manifests the fruit of the Spirit and the radical nature of Kingdom living; it’s to find out God’s purposes for one’s life and to fulfill those purposes in a Christ-honoring way.

Eternal life as defined in the New Testament isn’t primarily about living forever, it’s about having a new kind of life, a new quality of life so distinct that those without it can, in a real sense, be called dead. It’s life lived the way we were made to function, a life of virtue, character and well being lived for the Lord Jesus.

We were meant to live dramatic lives of goodness, truth and beauty. We’re called to be dramatic in the “little” details of our “ordinary” lives, for even little details and ordinary activities become big and extra-ordinary in the light of true happiness. Such a life makes the presence or absence of contemporary happiness simply beside the point and not worth worrying about.

Self-denial doesn’t mean living without money, goods, recognition or any of the things that bring pleasure and satisfaction, but it implies that these things can’t be your goal. Neither does self-denial require putting yourself down or disliking yourself. Jesus said, “Take up your cross.” Taking up your cross means refusing to be your own central concern. It means living for God’s Kingdom, finding your place in His unfolding plan and playing your role well. Taking up your cross means giving your life to others for Christ.

A Critical Choice
The classical and contemporary notions of happiness produce radically different kinds of people. It’s here that the difference between the two shakes us to the core and demands we make a lifestyle choice. This choice is as important as any we will ever make.

If we aim our lives at pleasure and satisfaction (see row one), we’ll spend all our time looking inside ourselves, constantly taking our happiness temperatures. Our activities and relationships will become means to our own feelings, ceasing to serve anything higher or other than ourselves. This sort of life leads to narcissism.

If, on the other hand, virtue and godly character are our goals, we will learn to see ourselves in light of a larger cause — the outworking of God’s plan in history. We’ll be preoccupied with finding our role in that cause and playing it well. We’ll passionately see life’s activities as occasions to draw near to God and become more like Him. We’ll hunger to become people who make life better for those around us. Our long-term focus will be on giving ourselves to others for Christ.

It’s critical that we understand the nature of Jesus’ assertion that we only gain our lives when we lose them for His sake. Jesus isn’t commanding us to do anything. He’s simply describing reality. He’s accurately characterizing the way we’re made, telling us how we prosper (or perish) as image-bearers of God. His assertion is like saying “If you want to be fit, you’ve got to exercise.” This isn’t a recommendation; exercise isn’t one among many ways to get in shape. This is an accurate description of fitness. Being rooted in reality, it describes the path you have to take if you want to be fit.

If you want to be a fit person, exercise isn’t optional; if you want to be a happy person, denying yourself for Christ isn’t optional. And this isn’t true simply for believers. It’s true for all of us, whether we believe it or not. As secular scholar Richard Gardner acknowledged, “Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.”3 If you want to flourish as a friend, you need to concentrate on others. You’ll be lonely if you spend all your time trying to convince people that you’re really cool, worthy of their focused attention. Similarly, if you want to flourish as a person, you must deny yourself for Christ’s sake. Only by taking this path — only by rejecting the contemporary notion of happiness — will you find true happiness.

1 For more on this, see Rivera y Carlo’s recent Boundless article “Pursuing Happiness.”
2Richard Gardner, Excellence, p. 149. Of course, Gardner is confused about to whom we owe our dedication, and he fails to note that one needs to give oneself to a true and important cause. A life aimed at being a good Nazi would, obviously, be a life wasted.


Copyright © 2004 J.P. Moreland. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

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The Generation That Won't Grow Up
1/24/2005
Albert Mohler


For several years, I have been warning audiences that America now faces a generation of young people unwilling to grow up, assume adult responsibility, marry, and start raising families. I have addressed this issue in various articles, public lectures, and church settings. My observations have been drawn from constant contact with young adults, including college students, and are backed up by a wealth of demographic and statistical information. Nevertheless, my warnings have often been met with incredulity, suspicion, and even outrage.

Now, TIME magazine has come out with a cover story that announces this new social phenomenon. It's about time.

According to TIME's January 24, 2005 cover story, the "twixters" are young adults who simply won't grow up. TIME's investigative report and analysis offer considerable insight and first-person accounts of this new social phenomenon. Beyond this, the article offers substantial confirmation of the basic issues at stake and what it would take to reverse this trend.

Lev Grossman, the main writer of TIME's article, explains that the "twixters" are "not kids anymore, but they're not adults either." He begins his article by introducing six young adults--all young Chicagoans in their twenties--who "go out three nights a week, sometimes more." They have each held several jobs since college (one is now on her 17th). These unsettled young adults don't own homes, change apartments almost as frequently as their wardrobe, and are, for all appearances, permanent adolescents.

Needless to say, none of them are married, and none have children. Grossman correctly observes, "Thirty years ago, people like Michele, Ellen, Nathan, Corinne, Marcus and Jennie didn't exist, statistically speaking." Just thirty years ago, the median age of marriage for American women was 21. Motherhood came only a year later, statistically speaking. Women now marry at a median age of 25--the same median age for first childbirth.

The phenomenon of delayed adulthood is already producing profound social consequences. Economists are concerned about the financial implications of young adults who return to live with their parents and put off major investments like the purchase of a home until well into their thirties. Social scientists are tracking the effects of delayed marriage and the social dislocation common to this age group. Like most demographic trends, this new pattern of life is not likely to be reversed anytime soon, at least in society at large.

Grossman provides interesting insights into this generational phenomenon as he focuses on several twenty-somethings who fit the pattern. Matt Swann, 27, took 6.5 years to graduate from the University of Georgia with a degree in "Cognitive Science." Like many in his generation, he chose his major based upon interest, with little attention to job prospects.

Swann's extended college experience is now the norm. According to data provided by colleges and universities, the average college student is now taking at least five years to finish a baccalaureate degree. Once the degree is in hand, these graduates do not necessarily move on to a stable job related to their academic pursuits. Many of these young people enter the job market in order to "find themselves" and follow their own personal interests.

Kate Galantha, 28, took a full seven years to complete her college degree, attending three different institutions. She finally graduated with an "undeclared" major in 2001 and began work as a nanny. She has moved six times since 1999 and is apparently unsure of her next move.

Zach Braff, 29, a film director and actor, explains his perception of the generational trend. "In the past, people got married and got a job and had kids, but now there's a new 10 years that people are using to try and find out what kind of life they want to lead. For a lot of people, the weight of all the possibility is overwhelming."

Grossman argues that this pattern of delayed adulthood is a permanent cultural shift. "In the past, people moved from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood, but today there is a new, intermediate phase along the way. The years from 18 until 25 and even beyond have become a distinct and separate life stage, a strange transitional never-never land between adolescence and adulthood in which people stall for a few extra years, putting off the iron cage of adult responsibility that constantly threatens to crash down on them. They're betwixt and between."

Social scientists debate the significance of this new phenomenon. Some see this trend towards delayed adulthood as a good thing. Advocates for the trend suggest that these young Americans are simply enjoying the benefits won by advocates of social liberation. Furthermore, they have grown up in a culture of affluence that has afforded them unprecedented options, creature comforts, and security. They simply do not want to enter the more insecure world of adult responsibility.

Jeffrey Arnett, who sees what he calls "emerging adulthood" as a positive trend, teaches developmental psychology at the University of Maryland. These unsettled young Americans are simply taking their time to focus on adult responsibility. "This is the one time of their lives when they're not responsible for anyone else or to anyone else," he argues. "So they have this wonderful freedom to really focus on their own lives and work on becoming the kind of person they want to be."

In other words, Arnett sees delayed adulthood as a new social phenomenon that allows self-centered Americans even more time to focus on themselves while "not responsible for anyone else or to anyone else." Of course, what Arnett celebrates, others see as the very heart of the problem.

After all, what are these young people doing during this stage of "emerging adulthood?" Well, they're having a lot of sex, for one thing. Obviously, social trends point to demographic generalities, not to every individual in this age cohort. Still, even TIME registered surprise at the sexual attitudes of these unmarried twenty and thirty-somethings.

The delay of marriage is the most significant statistical marker. The average age of first marriage for a white American male is now almost 28--a full six years later than just a few decades ago. This trend is not uniquely American. The average age for a man's first marriage in Canada is 28, in England 29.7. Germany and Italy come in with even higher ages, 30.3 and 30.5 respectively.

This delay in assuming marital commitment and responsibility does not mean a delay in sexual activity. As Grossman explains, "Marrying late also means that twixters tend to have more sexual partners than previous generations. The situation is analogous to the promiscuous job-hopping behavior."

The six twenty-somethings Grossman introduced in his opening paragraph all indicate an interest in marriage--but not anytime soon. "It's a long way down the road," said Marcus Jones. "I'm too self involved. I don't want to bring that into a relationship now." As he joked to Grossman, "My wife is currently a sophomore in high school."

In a similar vein, Jennie Jing, 26, commented, "I want to get married but not soon. I'm enjoying myself. There's a lot I want to do by myself still." Kate Galantha isn't sure about marriage at all: "I fantasize more about sharing a place with someone than about my wedding day. I haven't seen a lot of good marriages."

Economic factors are undoubtedly at play in this new social phenomenon. Economists argue that wages for young adults are simply not keeping pace with the larger economic context, and most young adults lack confidence that job prospects will sustain them through their adult years. So, they go back to live with their parents, returning to a state of extended adolescence that western cultures simply have never seen before.

Looking at this from a biblical perspective, the most tragic aspect of this development is the fact that these young people are refusing to enter into the adult experience and adult responsibilities that is their Christian calling. The delay of marriage will exact an undeniable social toll in terms of delayed parenthood, even smaller families, and more self-centered parents. The experiences of marriage and raising children are important parts of learning the adult experience and finding one's way into the deep responsibilities and incalculable rewards of genuine adulthood.

As TIME explains, many of these young people are so busy buying iPods, designer clothes, and new automobiles that they will find the necessary sacrifices of marital life and parenthood to be a rude shock. So long as they are living with parents, or grouping together in "emerging adult" enclaves, they continue to live like teenagers--only with even greater freedoms and privileges.

According to TIME, America should not linger in denial about this new social phenomenon, but should simply accept it as a new reality. That is simply not good enough for those who believe that God has something better in mind. At the same time, TIME's cover story is an important milestone that should not be missed.

The Good Life
by J. P. Moreland

Is the good life spent smoking pot on the couch, obsessing about money or serving the poor? Of the following, who was the best person: C.S. Lewis, Sigmund Freud or V.I. Lenin? To become a good person, would it be better to emulate Ward Churchill, Donald Trump or Billy Graham?
Your answers to questions like these will make a radical difference in how you live your life.

Questions like these raise an even more fundamental question, however, for they’re all based on the assumption that there is such a thing as the good life, that some people really are better — morally — than others, and that people really can make moral improvements in their lives. In other words, they’re based on the assumption that there’s a real difference between good and bad, right and wrong — one that transcends individuals and cultures — and the assumption that we have a choice in the matter. Let’s call these assumptions the moral point of view.1

The questions at the beginning of this article are versions of three more general questions: What’s the good life?, Who’s really a good person?, and How do I become a good person? We need strong answers to these questions if we want to have any sense of purpose or direction in life but, because they all presuppose the moral point of view, we can’t even ask these questions if we don’t first adopt the moral point of view. In order to give our lives a sense of direction and purpose, a worldview must provide a good answer the question Why should we adopt the moral point of view?

Currently, a three-way worldview struggle rages in our culture amongst scientific naturalism, postmodernism and Christianity. Since I have described and argued against scientific naturalism and postmodernism in previous Boundless articles,2 I will not do so here. Instead, I shall briefly characterize them and describe how they answer this fundamental question.

As I explained in the second article of this series, scientific naturalism has four major components: (1) the belief that scientific knowledge is the only kind of knowledge there is, (2) the belief that evolutionary theory explains every aspect of life, (3) the belief that non-physical things — such as God and the soul — don’t exist, and (4) the belief that the world’s existence has no purpose; that the cosmos and everything in it are the results of random, chance events.

Given these four components, it’s difficult to formulate a satisfying answer to the question Why should I adopt the moral point of view? Because it claims that we aren’t here for any purpose, and because good and bad, right and wrong aren’t the sorts of things we can study scientifically, the most fitting answer scientific naturalism can produce is an egoistic one, according to which you should adopt the moral point of view only insofar as it’s in your best interest to do so.3 But this answer is inadequate because it boils down to the claim that you should fake moral behavior and concerns when doing so pays off; otherwise, you should set morality aside altogether.

In regard to the three life-orienting questions mentioned above — What’s the good life?, Who’s really a good person?, and How do I become a good person? — the naturalist is pretty much at a loss, for he has an inadequate reason for accepting the moral point of view, and all of these questions presuppose an acceptance of the moral point of view. But still, in spite of this shaky foundation —in particular, in spite of their belief that the world doesn’t exist for any purpose — naturalists do their best to ask and answer them. According to most naturalists, the good life involves some form of material (as opposed to spiritual) success, most likely, financial, academic or artistic success; a good person is one who’s true to her own egoistic ideals (whatever they are); and one becomes a good person by becoming more and more accomplished at protecting her own interests.

The second worldview I mentioned above is postmodernism. Postmodernism contains a very complicated set of ideas and no short characterization of it could be entirely adequate.4 Still, we may safely summarize postmodernism as the rejection of six things: (1) the correspondence theory of truth, (2) objective reality, (3) the existence of universal standards for determining what counts as knowledge, (4) the existence of universal standards for determining something’s value, (5) the idea that an author’s intentions determine the meaning of a text and (6) the existence of any objectively real “self.” According to postmodernism, the difference between truth and falsehood, real and unreal, right and wrong, rational and irrational, good and bad are relative to different linguistic communities.5 What is true, real, and so forth for one community may not be so for another.

Obviously enough, it’s also difficult to give a satisfying answer to the question Why should we adopt the moral point of view? from the postmodern perspective and, once again, the most fitting answer seems to be an egoistic one. But as we have already seen, the egoistic answer boils down to the unacceptable claim that you should fake moral behavior and concerns so long as faking it pays off, and set morality aside when it doesn’t.

This means that the postmodern is stuck with weak answers to the life-orienting questions above just as the scientific naturalist is. The main difference is that postmodernism brings the idea of community to bear heavily on egoistic considerations, so that a community’s ideas about the good life and good person (whatever they may be) determine what will be in the best interest of its individual members. Moreover, the only advice postmodernism can give on how to become a good person is Submit to your community unless doing so isn’t in your best interest.

When the question How do I become a good person? is asked by someone looking for concrete advice — the kind of advice sought in the opening questions of this article — the kind of advice that would actually recommend one lifestyle over another — neither scientific naturalism nor postmodernism has much to say. Considering the fact that most cultural differences are rooted in different answers to this question, the fact that scientific naturalism and postmodernism can barely address it is remarkable.

In sharp contrast to the naturalistic and postmodern response to the question Why should we adopt the moral point of view?, the Christian response incorporates reference to the existence of God. For example, we ought to adopt the moral point of view because it is both true and rooted in the non-arbitrary commands of a perfect Creator. Or, for another example, we ought to adopt the moral point of view because adopting it is the way God designed us to function. We should adopt it for the same reason that a car should be driven on the road rather than on the bottom of the ocean: It was designed for the former and not for the latter. Likewise, we were designed to see the world from the moral point of view, and only in doing so will we serve the ends for which we were created.

Not only are naturalism and postmodernism false, but seen in light of these considerations, they are exposed as deeply inadequate for answering life’s most important questions. By contrast, the worldview of Jesus is not only true, it provides deep, satisfying answers to these questions. For Jesus — and I’m just scratching the surface here — ultimate reality is the Triune God and His Kingdom; the good life is lived in the Kingdom of God where it’s impervious to one’s material circumstances; the good person is one who’s pervaded with agape love and manifests the fruit of the Holy Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control); and to become a good person, one must enlist as an apprentice of Jesus and claim allegiance to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Within the Christian worldview, certain lifestyles are clearly commanded of us and others clearly forbidden. The Christian worldview can answer the questions What’s the good life?, Who’s really a good person?, and How do I become a good person? in detail and depth. Compared with scientific naturalism and postmodernism, it’s the only game in town.



1 To put things in more philosophical, academic terms, one views the world from the moral point of view when he (1) subscribes to normative judgments about actions, things and motives, (2) is willing to universalize these judgments, (3) seeks to form his moral views in an unbiased way and (4) seeks to promote the good. For more on the moral point of view, see pages 402 and 403 of my Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (InterVarsity. Downers Grove. 2003), which I co-authored with William Lane Craig.
2 See my What is Scientific Naturalism?, Postmodernism and the Christian Life: Part 1 and Postmodernism and the Christian Life: Part 2.
3 Egoism is the view that one is acting morally if and only if she is acting solely out of her own self-interest. For more on this, see my previous article, The Selfish Heart of Christianity?
4 For a more thorough characterization of postmodernism, see my Postmodernism and the Christian Life: Part 1.
5 What’s a linguistic community? A linguistic community is a group of people that share a narrative. What’s a narrative? A narrative is similar to a worldview. Roughly, a narrative is a perspective such as Marxism, atheism or Christianity which is embedded in a group or culture’s social and linguistic practices. (Note that calling one of these perspectives a narrative rather than a worldview emphasizes that one is not concerned with its truth. Rather, one is merely interested in whether it is “meaningful” or “relevant.”)