How Flourishing Became My Metric
From Ideology to Fruit
Once I let go of party loyalty, I needed a new way to orient myself.
Not a vibe.
Not a tribe.
Not a set of slogans.
A metric.
For years, my political instincts had been trained to ask questions like:
- Is this fiscally restrained?
- Is government staying out of the way?
- Is the market free?
But those questions assume something deeper—that if a system is efficient enough, people will flourish automatically.
What I learned—first through policy, then through crisis, then through Scripture—is that this simply isn’t true.
So I began asking a different question:
What does it actually mean for humans to flourish?
And just as importantly:
How would we know if it’s happening?
What Flourishing Is—and Is Not
Flourishing is not comfort.
It is not luxury.
It is not everyone becoming wealthy.
Biblically, flourishing is closer to shalom—a word that carries the sense of:
- wholeness
- sufficiency
- safety
- belonging
- peace born from conditions that support life
A flourishing person is not someone who has everything,
but someone who has enough to live, grow, contribute, and hope.
Flourishing includes:
- a body that can receive care when it breaks,
- a mind that can learn without crushing fear,
- work that is meaningful—or at least survivable,
- relationships not constantly under economic strain,
- and a future that feels possible.
This is why Scripture doesn’t limit itself to personal morality.
It speaks of fields, wages, debt, rest, and care for the vulnerable.
Leviticus 19:9–10, Exodus 23:10–11
God is and always has been deeply concerned with the conditions under which human lives unfold. We are part of his beloved creation.
Flourishing is not an abstract virtue.
It is a material, social, and spiritual reality.
Flourishing is also not:
- rugged individualism,
- survival-of-the-fittest economics,
- or the belief that suffering is primarily a personal failure.
Those ideas belong more to Empire than to Kingdom.
Empire says:
If you didn’t make it, you must not have tried hard enough.
The Kingdom asks:
What conditions made this life harder than it needed to be?
If Flourishing Is Real, It Must Be Measurable
This was the turning point for me.
For years, I had been told that policies aimed at helping the poor were naïve, wasteful, or economically dangerous. But once I stopped listening to rhetoric and started looking at outcomes, a different story emerged.
If flourishing matters, then we should be able to ask:
- Are people living longer, healthier lives?
- Are mothers and children surviving childbirth and early infancy?
- Are fewer people living in true poverty?
- Are fewer children growing up poor?
- Are fewer families one crisis away from collapse?
- Is social mobility increasing or declining?
- Do people have real access to education, healthcare, and work?
These are not soft questions.
They are empirical ones.
Lifespans can be tracked across human history.
And additional data gathered across— nations, states, and cities—
shows certain patterns appear again and again:
When societies invest in human capacity, societies grow stronger.
Healthcare access improves workforce participation and stability.
Early childhood education reduces crime and increases lifetime earnings.
Housing stability reduces emergency spending, incarceration, and trauma.
Safety nets increase entrepreneurship because failure isn’t fatal.
Sidebar: A Note on Human Flourishing
In recent years, a growing body of interdisciplinary research has begun to study human flourishing directly—asking not just how economies grow, but how people actually fare in their lives.
One prominent example is the Global Flourishing Study, a joint effort of Harvard University and Baylor University. Drawing on long-term, global data across psychology, sociology, economics, and public health, the study consistently points to a demanding insight:
People flourish most where meaning, relationships, health, responsibility, and material sufficiency are held together—especially within strong social and civic frameworks.
This is not ideology.
It is observable reality.
The Torah called it leaving the edges of the field.
Modern economics calls it return on investment.
Different language.
Same truth.
A New Scorecard
So I stopped asking:
- Is this program “big” or “small”?
- Is this government or market?
- Is this left or right?
And I started asking:
- Does this increase human flourishing?
- Does it increase lifespans?
- For whom?
- At what scale?
- With what long-term fruit?
Some programs pass that test.
Some don’t.
Some need reform, not removal.
But the test stays the same.
If a policy consistently leaves people with shorter lives—sicker, poorer, more anxious, and more trapped—it is failing, no matter how elegant the theory behind it is.
Why This Changed Everything for Me
Once flourishing became the metric, my politics became both simpler and harder.
Simpler—because I no longer had to defend a team.
Harder—because I had to follow the evidence, even when it challenged my instincts.
It also reshaped my faith.
I no longer see economic policy as separate from discipleship.
How we structure society says something about what—and who—we worship.
Flourishing is not the only value.
But it is a non-negotiable one.
Scripture is unambiguous about this:
God’s Kingdom is revealed wherever life is protected, dignity is preserved, and people are given room to grow.
Anything less may still function.
It may even prosper for some.
But it is not the Kingdom.
Looking Ahead
Once flourishing became my metric, one final question remained:
What does it cost—and what does it save—to build a society like this?
Empire always claims compassion is too expensive.
And the Kingdom keeps replying:
“Compared to what?”
That’s where the journey goes next.
SeePhas 