“Americans grow up convinced that they have a right to happiness. Most of the Third World would never make this claim. To them, survival is success. But for us, the good life is an inalienable right, and we pursue it with gusto. Should anyone thwart that happiness, we are quick to scream injustice. All types of actions are justified on the basis of not being happy. We leave marriages, we drop out of classes, we resign from jobs, we change churches, we transfer to another group. Confort is increasingly a norm we feel we are owed even though we joke about ‘no pain, no gain.’ And so we buy–to make us feel good–the latest, most updated, most powerful that will surely satisfy us (for the moment). It is how we construct who we are…
It was in the Garden that God declared ‘It is not good for Adam to be alone.’ God’s evaluation of the good life is relationship together, ‘the Body of Christ,’ the church relating to her God.”
Julie A. Gorman, Community That Is Christian
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