A person who is living large splurges and is able to afford expensive and frequent vacations to the hot spots, expensive homes in exclusive neighborhoods, lavish parties, big cars, maids, and servants.
Our picture of the good life usually doesn’t include taxes, unemployment, sickness, divorce, lawsuits, layoffs, thefts, discrimination, plant closures, failing stocks, false imprisonment, and disease. Neither does it include living daily with the threat of having our utilities disconnected, being evicted, visits to probation officers, or being investigated by child protection workers. Every picture we can imagine of the good life excludes –problems!
In America, our ability to live “The Life of Riley” is often described by our class. Paul Fussell in his book “Class:A Guide through the American Status System” describes the constant struggle of America’s poorest to live the life of its richest. Fussell notes that the super rich have no idea what it is to be very poor and the very poor don’t have the faintest idea of what it means to be really rich. Fussell said only the very poor live in houses that can be seen from the street, near railroad tracks, with plastic on their furniture, pictures of the relatives on the walls and carpet on their floors. Only the middle class wears Brooks Brothers Suits, wears clothing with a designer’s name written them, flies first class, or works in high-paying jobs as professionals or business owners. The poor or the middle class, according to Fussell, can't even imagine living in the world of the super-rich where no one works, drives their own car, has art on his wall that cost less than $1 million, flies in anything other than his own jet, watches weekly television programs or carries cash money in his pockets. These worlds, according to Fussell are far apart and those who try to move from one life to the other would become virtual “Beverly Hillbillies.”- out of place and uncomfortable.
What does God have to say about all of this? What constitutes the good life for a believer? Obviously, living well has nothing to do with money. It’s possible to live a bad life, one that is not pleasing to God, while living in the “Deluxe Apartment in the sky.” Living well may have a lot do with living a life that pleases God and is according to his purpose. Sometimes that life comes attached with money, sometimes it does not; but no one lives well before God who lives outside of his will.
As believers, our goal in life is to not just to live well, but to live well before God. We want to do His will and to live our life’s purpose. Then and only then can we say we are “living well.”