What does it mean to flourish? The Israelites in Babylon likely did not imagine that they would prosper in exile. Yet through the prophet Jeremiah, they were instructed to build houses, plant gardens, and seek the good of the city in which they lived, even knowing that the exile would outlast most of them. Flourishing, in that moment, did not mean immediate deliverance but learning to live faithfully within displacement. And yet God promises that he has plans “to prosper” them and not to harm them, to give them a future and a hope.
Today Jeremiah 29:11 is among the most frequently searched verses in Scripture.[1] In a culture inclined toward individual reassurance, it is easy to hear the promise “to prosper you” as a guarantee of personal success. Yet the promise was spoken to a displaced community, not isolated individuals. And the word translated “prosper” is the Hebrew word shalom—a far richer vision than material well-being.
Appearing more than two hundred times in the Old Testament, shalom usually signifies far more than the absence of conflict. It names the fullness of life as God intends it—personal and communal well-being, faithful relationships, justice, and communion with him. To seek shalom, therefore, is to seek the restoration of God’s intended order for creation.
Just as the Israelites wrestled with what it meant to flourish amid exile, so too have recent periods of cultural upheaval provoked renewed reflection on human wholeness. Since World War II, four major intellectual movements—represented by influential authors and widely read works—have explored different dimensions of this search for flourishing.
The most recent of these is Tyler VanderWeele’s A Theology of Health: Wholeness and Human Flourishing (Notre Dame University Press, 2024). VanderWeele offers an integrative account that draws together physical health, personal virtue, relational well-being, and social conditions within a theological vision of flourishing grounded in God’s purposes for creation. To appreciate the significance of his contribution, however, we must first trace how earlier postwar thinkers examined different aspects of flourishing or its absence in their own time.
It is no surprise that some of the most poignant reflections on the wholeness of humanity expressed in the notion of shalom emerged in the wake of World War II. The staggering loss of an estimated sixty million lives, including six million Jews and others murdered in German concentration camps, forced a reckoning with what it meant to remain human amid atrocity. Yet the postwar industrial boom introduced a different kind of crisis. Having survived the horrors of war, societies now confronted a subtler but no less existential question: what did it mean to be human in an age of prosperity, technological progress, moral disorientation, and, in some cases, totalitarian governments? What, in other words, was it all for?
In the Western world, no longer dominated by a shared Christian worldview and moral frameworks, the question of how a person might live a meaningful life as a responsible, inwardly-directed whole person was at the forefront of the minds of three well-known authors whose works continue to resonate with readers to this day.
The theme of life’s meaning is central to the work of Victor Frankl (1905–1997), a Viennese psychiatrist who spent three years in concentration camps, losing his parents, wife, and brother to their horrors. Soon after his release, he wrote a book in German about his experiences of finding personal meaning amidst the brutality of the camps. In 1959, an English translation of the book, now titled Man’s Search for Meaning, became an international bestseller. His main thesis was that finding meaning was the chief condition of survival. His experiences and his psychiatric practice led him to emphasize that it is not suffering alone that destroys the human condition but suffering without meaning. He argues that meaning cannot be found directly through the pursuit of happiness but only through personal responsibility, love toward others, and the motivation to bear suffering. In one of his most famous quotes, he writes, “Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment” (122).
If Frankl asks how a person remains human in the extremity of suffering, the existential psychologist Rollo May (1909–1994) asks how a person retains humanity in the subtler emptiness of modern prosperity. Where Frankl’s exploration of meaning in suffering can be traced to his experiences in concentration camps, May’s was the booming industrial postwar West—outwardly successful yet inwardly adrift.
May explored themes of loss of selfhood, inner direction, and powerlessness in his 1953 book, Man’s Search for Himself. May notes that in the absence of any sense of self, people are not only empty but also adrift from authentic relationships with others. To move beyond this emptiness, people must take responsibility for their lives and choices, gaining self-consciousness through perseverance and diligence toward a creative end. The yearning for self-knowledge cannot be achieved through introspection but is shaped by responsible action toward something greater than oneself. This responsibility may lead to anxiety, but May sees this as a normal state of being truly human that can be channeled toward creativity as people seek out their true hearts’ desires. He emphasizes that such a move requires courage to be authentic amid modern anxieties.
Frankl and May argued that human beings can endure suffering and emptiness by choosing responsibility and courage. Yet in both accounts, meaning is an open-ended concept to be willed, pursued, and acted upon—but not grounded in any ultimate reality. The courage to live authentically is affirmed, but they do not answer the question: courage toward what end? If flourishing is to be more than psychological stamina, it must rest on something deeper than personal resolve.
The postwar existential search for meaning sought to recover selfhood but did not pursue the deeper foundation that sustains not only the self but all reality. The German-American theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965) bridged the gap between existential selfhood and what he called the “ground of being.” Having served as a chaplain in the German army during World War I, he grappled with non-being, anxiety, and meaninglessness. He agreed with Frankl and May on the importance of courage, responsibility, and authenticity, yet insisted that such fortitude, relying only on personal resources, cannot overcome human guilt and estrangement. In his 1952 book, The Courage to Be, Tillich argues that the deepest threat to flourishing is the anxiety of meaninglessness when life lacks any unifying ultimate concern.
Rather than constructing meaning inwardly, Tillich turns to God as the source of ultimate concern. The courage to struggle for meaning in the face of finitude is grounded in belief in God, who is not a being among beings but the ground of being itself—the power of being in which all finite existence participates. God is thus both transcendent and intimately near, the source of courage against non-being.
For Tillich, the search for meaning is less about discovering a specific purpose than affirming one’s existence despite meaninglessness. A meaningful life involves being “ultimately concerned” with something so vital that one would risk one’s life for it. God does not remove anxiety but becomes the source of faith and grace amid mortality, guilt, and doubt. Grace gives the courage to affirm being—to accept oneself despite the “infinite gap between what we are and what we ought to be” (189). True courage acknowledges anxiety yet chooses to live and act in its presence.
Frankl, May, and Tillich illuminate different dimensions of the postwar search for meaning in a fractured world. Frankl shows how meaning can sustain human dignity even in the extremity of suffering. May explores the courage required to live authentically amid the quieter emptiness of modern life. Tillich grounds that courage in a reality beyond the self, locating hope in God as the “ground of being.” Together they reveal that flourishing cannot be reduced to comfort or success but involves the struggle to remain fully human amid anxiety, suffering, and moral uncertainty. Yet their focus on the interior life leaves a further question unresolved: if flourishing involves more than personal resilience, what kind of social and moral order is necessary for human beings to flourish together?
[1]. “The 100 Most Read Bible Verses at Bible Gateway in 2024,” Bible Gateway, December, 4, 2024, https://www.biblegateway.com/learn/bible-verses/most-read-bible-verses-2024/.
