What would you say makes for a successful life? In surveys, the most popular answers people give to that question are wealth and fame. But the evidence shows that they’re wrong.
In 1938 researchers in Harvard, USA started studying the lives of a group of teenagers from various social backgrounds.* By means of regular questionnaires, interviews and analysing medical records, the study tracked them throughout their lives, and now that most of them are dead it’s tracking their children. The results are clear.
Money is important. Your quality of life increases the more money you have, until you have sufficient to be comfortable —enough to eat, a place to live and a measure of security. After that, increasing wealth makes very little difference to your wellbeing. Fame seldom makes people happy, in fact it often brings stress. The Harvard Study decisively shows that the biggest factor that goes to make a good life is the quality of your human relationships.
Interestingly, good relationships make for more than just emotional wellbeing. People who have them are not only happier, more content and psychologically robust: their physical health is measurably better, and they live considerably longer than people who don’t have them.
The Bible Model
To most of us, these findings will not be a complete surprise. They confirm what we expect. Certainly, anyone who knows the Bible knows the value of relationships: ‘By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ (John 13:35).
According to the Bible, companionship is a basic human need. When God created the first man Adam, it wasn’t good for him to be alone so He created Eve to be his wife, and that was the beginning of marriage: ‘they shall become one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24). At the core of God’s design for the human race is a lifelong, thick and thin, sickness and health, man and woman companionship, which is the basis of a stable and loving family.
Let’s just pause here, because there’s a crucial point to make. Many people don’t find a life partner, and they may or may not be content like that. Some marriages don’t work out, families break up. These things happen. Many people find themselves isolated, for one reason or another. Loneliness is recognised as an epidemic of the 21st Century. We must not judge ourselves or anybody else for being isolated. But when we look into the Bible, we see not just an ideal but a practical route to obtaining a better life, whatever our situation may be.
It’s about family—God’s family. He is calling out from the world’s population ‘a people for his name’ (Acts 15:14). That includes you and me if we will come to Him and embrace His offer of salvation through His Son Jesus Christ (John 14:6). When we’re baptized, we become His children. ‘See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are’ (1 John 3:1). And with our new Father comes His family.
God’s Family
There’s an idea that religion is an individual and personal thing. Many people in the modern world have withdrawn from organised religion—perhaps because they don’t like the image of the churches and what happens there, perhaps because they don’t want to subscribe to defined beliefs, or maybe they just don’t want the hassle of attending. But what’s clear from the Bible is that God deals with communities.
He chose the faithful man Abraham and brought him and his family into Canaan (Genesis 12). Abraham’s family became the nation of Israel. God said to them, ‘If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples’ (Exodus 19:5). The Law which He gave Israel (in Exodus through to Deuteronomy) shows how their civil, cultural and religious life was to operate as a community.
The Bible’s New Testament shows how God extended to the whole world the invitation to come to Him (Galatians 3:8–9). The book of Acts and the letters show how the first Christians were organised in close-knit congregations, with the distinguishing characteristic of mutual love and care. ‘Be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us’ (Ephesians 5:1–2).
This is the character which Christadelphian congregations strive to possess. (Their success depends on the efforts which each of the members make to ‘be imitators of God’ and to ‘walk in love’.) Whatever an individual’s circumstances, when they come to Christ they join a family, and they acquire a host of brothers and sisters—with all the privileges and responsibilities that brings. ‘God settles the solitary in a home’ (Psalm 68:6).
The most important relationship a believer has, of course, is with God their Father and Jesus Christ His Son, their lord. ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’ is God’s promise (Hebrews 13:5). Through prayer and reading the Bible—talking and listening—a relationship develops which is deeper and more profound than any other, and which need never end: ‘This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’ (John 17:3).
* The Harvard Study of Adult Development—https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org
