What is “the good life”?

What is “the good life”? What makes human existence meaningful?

In his book, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, Miroslav Volf – Director of the Yale Center for Faith & Ethics – offers this account of the Apostle Peter’s experience.

Before he became known as the first pope, Simon was an ordinary man. He lived in a small house in a small town by a small lake in a small fiefdom at the edge of a very large empire. He had married a woman from the same town and lived near his in-laws.

Like many of his neighbors, he made his living as a fisherman. He spent many of his nights out on the lake with his brother, Andrew, plying their trade, looking for a catch. On the seventh days of the week, as the law of God commanded, he rested and attended services at the local synagogue.

A stable trade, a family, a community. Not a flashy life, but a respectable one filled with ordinary goodness. Until two words turned the whole thing upside down.

Follow Me

“Follow me.” Jesus, the new teacher from Nazareth, stood on the shore and called to Simon and Andrew. Ordinarily, this would be crazy talk. Who walks up to two guys at work and tells them to drop everything and follow him around?

But Jesus spoke with surprising authority. Word around town was that his preaching rang true, that his words carried power, that amazing things happened when he was there.

For some unknown reason, Simon followed. For three years, he listened and tried to understand. Awestruck, he watched miracle after miracle. He learned to call this man not merely “teacher,” but “Lord.” And this lord, in turn, gave him a new name: Peter, which means “rock.”

But time and again, Peter failed to live up to his name. He misunderstood, he got overzealous, and when it counted most, he lost his nerve: when the authorities arrested Jesus, Peter denied even knowing him. He watched helplessly as imperial soldiers crucified his Lord. Everything would have been lost, all of his following come to nothing.

Raised From The Dead

Except that on the third day, astonishingly, he encountered his Lord, raised from the dead.

From then on, Peter’s whole life was devoted to living as Jesus directed and spreading the good news about him.

Simon Peter: a wrecked life or a real life? What makes life worth living?