Can you have a good life without God? Oh and what is a good life?

What is a good life?

For awhile I lived in New York City, and sometimes I would walk around the city itself, just in such complete judgment of it. It was gross, it was stinky, it smelled like urine and beer, and other gross things. It had graffiti. Parts of it were dangerous but just so many parts of it were gross. I remember once talking to people that lived there - this was their home. They weren't waiting for something that I would love - the beautiful coasts of Hawaii, the scenic mountains - this and only this - the city that I called stinky and gross, was their favorite place. I think a lot about where we "go" when we die, and in many ways I think that we go to some version of the world that we live in. I would say if that's the case, there are millions of people who go to the stinky parts of New York City. I've seen them live in their heaven on earth, and somehow the concrete jungle in that moment transcends what you see on the surface the happy life that you first arrive. 

Which still doesn't define a good life...

Because it's hard to define what is a good life. I tend to believe that having a good life is just having enough resources to have enough food and housing for your family - but if you define it that way - jail would also be a good life.  Sometimes people define this life so vaguely and so far away that no one would really be able to have it. It's also easy to see that someone else has the good life that you want - when you see them living it. 

I met a girl once who said the happiest time that she ever had was being homeless in the summer in New York City. She would go back and do it again in a "heartbeat". She had no home and had inconsistent access to food and yet the life that she had there was her favorite life. It was her heaven on earth. To her it was the good life. 

So do you need God to have a good life?

Aaah the God question, always something that comes out in the theological blog. You could cite examples of plenty of people who never had God in their life and had a good life. By that ideal you could probably even find hundreds of people who had what most people would consider a great life, the best of everything, great food, resources, and friends. 

Even with the best of everything in your life without God, without some kind of spiritual basis, life could always be just a little bit better. Each person who lives good lives without God - or without a centered spiritual basis. Just to think of all the practices that are related to spirituality and God - including just taking centering breathes. If you are having the best life on earth, it could always be better some kind of spiritual practice. I am driven by this ideal the ideal that giving spiritual practices, even just being the person that is my own ministry, the ministry of my prescence, makes the people that I encounter and the world that I live in, a much better place.