The Good Life

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The Good Life
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Proposition

• If we dont get a better picture of what the good
  life is meant to be, we (even, unfortunately,
  Christians) will often find ourselves seeking and
  building lives filled with stuff, with
  over-consumption, with self-centered
  thrill-seeking, with power luxury, with
  laziness ease, and/or sterile and frantic
  efforts at safety security which will
  inevitably turn out unjust, destructive, empty
  and lifeless.

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• Isa 598 You don't know how to live in peace
  (shalom) or to be fair with others. The roads you
  make are crooked your followers cannot find
  peace.

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• Psa 2911 GOD makes his people strong. GOD gives
  his people peace (shalom).

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Wendell Berrys 10 Commandments

• Beware the justice of Nature.
• Understand that there can be no successful human
  economy apart from Nature or in defiance of
  Nature.
• Understand that no amount of education can
  overcome the innate limits of human intelligence
  and responsibility. We are not smart enough or
  conscious enough or alert enough to work
  responsibly on a gigantic scale.
• In making things always bigger and more
  centralized, we make them both more vulnerable in
  themselves and more dangerous to everything else.
  Learn, therefore, to prefer small-scale elegance
  and generosity to large-scale greed, crudity, and
  glamour.

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• Make a home. Help to make a community. Be loyal
  to what you have made.
• Put the interest of the community first.
• Love your neighbors--not the neighbors you pick
  out, but the ones you have.
• Love this miraculous world that we did not make,
  that is a gift to us.
• As far as you are able make your lives dependent
  upon your local place, neighborhood, and
  household--which thrive by care and
  generosity--and independent of the industrial
  economy, which thrives by damage.
• Find work, if you can, that does no damage. Enjoy
  your work. Work well. (Futility of Global
  Thinking Bar Harbor, 1989)

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• Isa 6610-13 "Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who
  love her, celebrate! And all you who have shed
  tears over her, join in the happy singing. You
  newborns can satisfy yourselves at her nurturing
  breasts. Yes, delight yourselves and drink your
  fill at her ample bosom." GOD's Message "I'll
  pour robust well-being (shalom) into her like a
  river, the glory of nations like a river in
  flood. You'll nurse at her breasts, nestle in her
  bosom, and be bounced on her knees. As a mother
  comforts her child, so I'll comfort you. You will
  be comforted in Jerusalem."

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Micah 4.1-4

• In days to come   the mountain of the Lords
  houseshall be established as the highest of the
  mountains,   and shall be raised up above
  the hills.Peoples shall stream to it,  and
  many nations shall come and sayCome, let us go
  up to the mountain of the Lord,   to the house
  of the God of Jacobthat he may teach us his
  ways   and that we may walk in his paths.

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Micah 4.1-4

• For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,   and
  the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall
  judge between many peoples,   and shall
  arbitrate between strong nations far awaythey
  shall beat their swords into ploughshares,   and
  their spears into pruning-hooksnation shall not
  lift up sword against nation,   neither shall
  they learn war any more but they shall all sit
  under their own vines and under their own fig
  trees,   and no one shall make
  them afraid   for the mouth of the Lord of
  hosts has spoken.