What is human flourishing in the context of America's "original greatness"?  This is the question I posed yesterday as I shared some of my experience at an Ayn Rand Institute event held in Chicago recently. I also mentioned that several days before I attended the ARI event, I attended a conference on biblical justice.  Given Rand's materialist starting point and perspective, I cannot think of a much greater contrast:  the one committed to the fact of this world and this world only; the other dedicated to the fact of this world and a larger, eternal one in which it is contained.  Ironically, both perspectives desire human flourishing; both positions wish for people to discover their full potential; and both viewpoints aim to liberate people from the various strictures--personal, societal, and political--binding them.
     So, as I asked yesterday, who's right?  The short answer is both.  The much longer answer is that, given their starting points, only one can be correct.  Either the metaphysical exists, or it does not.  Either God is there, or he is not.  There's no middle ground.
     If I may, I draw a page from an editorial in the newest issue of The Christian Century. Discussing the tension between faith and reason (the tension ultimately separating the ARI and biblical justice), this editorial notes, "Whereas reason's ability to grasp the workings of the world is astonishing and mysterious; and whereas all forms of reasoning are embedded in assumptions about the world that cannot be proved by reason; and whereas reason is understood by many religious traditions as a gift of God to be exercised in coordination with faith . . . "
     This, I think, captures the heart of the issue.  Though I respect some of what the ARI is doing, I'm also loathe to divorce human action from any sensibility of the metaphysical. As the editorial (and many scientists of the mind) point out, we still do not know why matter, raw neuronal tissue, speaks.  We still do not know why matter, chemically manufactured synapses and connections, can reason.  Not that I'm trying to invoke a so-called "God of the gaps" to fill in what I cannot yet explain, but I feel compelled to state that to advocate for human flourishing is to recognize that we are creatures of great and open mystery, creatures whose flourishing demands a willingness to grant the possibility of the metaphysical.  We cannot explain our spiritual and immaterial inclinations, much less our sense of purpose, broadly speaking, without it.
     To therefore return to my original question, I conclude that we will not achieve full human flourishing and "American greatness" unless we enable not just economic and political freedom, but spiritual freedom and liberation as well.  Both positions (ARI and biblical insight) can learn from each other, but both positions must acknowledge that they would not even exist apart from the larger mysteries that necessarily surround us all.
     Given who we are, we will never flourish fully apart from thinking about, in some way, God.  Whatever America's (and any nation's) so-called "original greatness" was, it cannot be solely reductionist and material.  That is just not who we are.  It's not about money, it's not about affluence, it's not about comfort.  It's about our soul.