What is Abundant Life?
“Life is a highway, I want to ride it all night long.”
If you listened to the radio at all in the 1990s you probably sang those words instead of read them. Even now you may be able to hear the electric guitar jamming away in the background. Tom Cochrane coined the lyrics, and youngsters across the world listened to the song with a renewed commitment to live life to the full. I was one of them.
We’ve been persuaded throughout the centuries to buy into this philosophy. The Roman poet, Horace (65-8 BC), captured this theme when he used the now familiar phrase, carpe diem (seize the day). He meant, “live it up.”
Since he first penned those words, the meaning of “day” has been reduced to a “moment.” We now understand that phrase to mean, “seize the moment” as in “be bold.” But Horace’s original motivation was to “live it up while you can.” He had pleasures in mind, not heroic accomplishments.
Modern philosophers are still echoing his words. One of those appeared on the big screen in 1986. In the John Hughes’ movie, Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, Ferris wittingly says, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around you could miss it.” This phrase gave teenagers like myself license to skip as much high school as we could. But more than that, it once again gave us permission to add another layer of gluttony to our already all consuming pleasure-cake. Why settle for a lick of the spoon, when we can drown ourselves in the batter? Rock groups like Nirvana, whose name says it all, helped to smooth the way. We went from tapping our feet to the rhythm of the music to diving head first into the drums.
In some ways those mottos make sense. After all, aren’t we supposed to desire the abundant life? (John 10:10)
But then a verse springs to mind, and I’m left wondering if what the philosophers have taught us has any merit at all?
“Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world” (1 Corinthians 1:20)?
This week I simply ask you to consider how wise is the wisdom of the world. It offers us many opinions about what abundant life looks like. How do you know it can be trusted? God says it can’t. Who do you believe?