26th October 2025
“Worldwide people in more countries are living better lives and expressing more hope for the future than they had in years.” This was the first line of some analysis from the polling company Gallup as explained on BBC’s ‘More or Less: Behind the Stats’ (4/10/25). Ok, I was interested – and learnt about the ‘global median for thriving’ which reports on people’s overall subjective well-being which has hit a record high (33%) from last year and is 10 points higher than 10 years ago. The poll is asking people to judge their own lives from the best it could possibly be to the worst it could possibly be now and in 5 years’ time. And globally (well, in 140+ countries) people report they are increasingly thriving however you look at the numbers. Globally people have more education and are living longer but places such as North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand are ‘bucking the trend’ because although they have many more people well off, the trend, the direction is that they are not as thriving as the rest of the world. I was intrigued.
What is being measured are people’s subjective views. A person used to hunger who won’t be hungry ever again I can imagine feeling ‘thriving’. Is it the same as growing up with few toys but wanting many more toys for your children? Is thriving ultimately about more and more – unending growth – irrespective of where you start? I wondered what the respondents in Ukraine said about their thriving?
Obviously we can and should talk about people’s living conditions – peace, security (including food and energy), housing, education, the rule of law, integrity in business and public office, etc – and since poverty is largely how we organise ourselves economically, it is easy to imagine money in the bank, food in the cupboard, and the number of people in bedrooms as indicators of ‘thriving’. All very important!
But there are also people’s perceptions and what they regard as important in life – what gives meaning and purpose – which contributes to people’s ‘thriving’. And here on this occasion of the Reformation I want to draw attention to religion – humans will always be searching for meaning and purpose beyond them – and all our versions of religion will have human beings finding their meaning and purpose – their ‘thriving’ – in engaging with the divine in some way and doing things for their thriving.
Christianity can easily seem like another human religion until you face the cross and Jesus on it and what is happening there and Jesus’ identity. Then people discover and encounter God who engages us, does things for us, gives a new life to us with meaning and purpose which seeks the thriving of the people around us. And the mystery here is that in God’s actions towards us and in our actions seeking the thriving of those around us, we thrive!
GS