The only soil for human flourishing- I could save the researchers a ton of money.

I will nerd out on social science for part of this article. This article will be worth your time if you stick with me until the end. For all human history, scientists have been studying the meaning of life. There may be no subject studied more often in the past few hundred years than human happiness. If you put these two research areas together, the amount of time, money, and brain power is staggering.

Researchers are looking at life through the lens of what makes a person able to grow healthy and happy. Much of the flourishing research sounds to me like the same language used for evaluating plant life. All plants need several ingredients for them to be healthy and growing. How can big brain researchers study human life through the same lens through which we would research plant life? Isn't there something much deeper that defines human life than our ability to draw nutrients from the soil in which we live or the sun shining on our faces?

Doing meta-analysis research was a big step in the right direction. I applaud the idea that flourishing cannot be examined and isolated from all others. In 2016, the Harvard University Institute for Quantitative Social Science created the Human Flourishing Program to regularly study human flourishing. I love that Harvard is taking seriously this research discipline. However, I could save these researchers a ton of money. Humanity is far more complex than a plant. The combination of factors that lead to human flourishing is multifaceted, and It’s nearly impossible to account for all the variables.

This new academic discipline of human research is starting to step into an arena that belongs entirely to God. When we start to examine all aspects that influence human health and happiness, we play the role of God.

I applaud this new research discipline. I believe that we need to put much more time and energy into examining the conditions for human flourishing. However, we must be careful not to start trying to play the role of God. No one can account for all the variables in the human heart or our happiness. The great St. Augustine rightly identified human flourishing when he confessed that God has made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest [flourish] in him.

Perhaps one of the reasons why there's so much research on human flourishing is because it is an innate desire in all of humanity. No matter where you live, no matter what time frame you lived on planet Earth, all of us want to experience flourishing, as described in this new research.

I believe this universal desire for human flourishing comes from something that is part of our DNA. God created us to flourish back in the Garden of Eden. This paradise that God created was a perfect environment in which humans could dwell and a perfect environment inside the human heart.

Humans destroyed our own capacity for human flourishing when we violated God's commandments and were exiled from his paradise. Any attempt at human flourishing is a cheap substitute apart from God's original plan for our happiness.

If Harvard University really wants to examine human flourishing, we must go all the way back to the original source. We must go to the scriptures and their description of the paradise in which God created.

Like any good social scientist, if we want to point out what human flourishing might look like in the future, we need only look to the end of the scriptures. The Book of Revelation describes the new Jerusalem and God restoring all that was destroyed in the garden of Eden.

Let's give mad props to the researchers who are starting to examine human flourishing. However, true human flourishing will only be possible by following God's original plan. He has made a way for people to enter into a pure, innocent relationship with himself again. And one day, at the end of this age, he will recreate the perfect conditions for human flourishing. God’s is the only true human flourishing, and his flourishing lasts forever.