What could be more rebellious, and more joyful, than experiencing the fullness of life? Picture a field of wildflowers in full bloom, or a little dog romping through campus on a summer Sunday (I have a dog, Albert, and he loves Sunday romps on campus). Or picture yourself, liberated from all that binds you—from the social pressures, anxieties, injustices, and struggles that keep joy at an unhappy distance. Picture yourself being you, your truest and most wonderful self, in a place that gives you joy. Now picture all of creation, every person and creature, becoming the fullness of what it is. Picture a world of flourishing.

For those in academia, whether students, staff, or faculty, summer offers a welcome break from the pressures of the academic year. Perhaps this dear reprieve, somehow always too short and too long, gives us space to shift our gaze away from the exigencies of the everyday. Perhaps summer gives us time to slow down, breathe, and reflect on who we really are. Not on jobs or grades or goals or projects or ambitions—we’re more than all those things—but on that person others too rarely see amid systems that tell us we can’t be that person, that the world can’t be a place of love, justice, and peace, that those ideas are “pie in the sky” that maybe we’ll experience in an afterlife or some such thing.

“No, thank you,” I say to those voices. It’s time for rebellion: a rebellion of flourishing, of the fullness of life!

As a theologian, I think of flourishing in the terms of the Christian tradition to which I belong: as the capacity to become the person that God has created us, and all creatures, to be. This idea may sound a bit saccharine—sugary sweet ‘til reality sets in—but I see it as a call, even a challenge, to rebel against every force that tells us that the way things are is the way they have to be (or, God forbid, that they’re the way God intends them to be!).

To my mind, if God really is love (and I do believe this), then God really loves the world and everything in it: you, me, palm trees, brown and black squirrels, rushing rivers, Half Dome—all of it. And God loves things as they really are—in their uniqueness, particularity, quirkiness. If that’s the case, then I also believe that God intends both for every creature to flourish in the fullness of whatever it is and for humans to create conditions on Earth so that God’s intentions can be realized. We are called to be agents, activists, working on behalf of the fullness of life.

This also means that God opposes, and calls us humans to oppose, any structure that stands in the way of flourishing. Far more than our big little lies and infidelities, I think those structures are where our gravest sin hides. I think of a wonderful passage from the writer Andre Dubus (not III but his father). In one story, Dubus depicts a character who almost had an affair reflecting on what stopped her. She says, “So it was God, grace; and I don't think of [God] with eyes, glancing away from all the horror and seeing what I was doing and stopping me before He turned away again to look aghast at the world. I don’t know how it happens.”

Without dismissing the idea of personal sin, here Dubus raises a more provocative question: What really horrifies God? If the fullness of life is God’s intention, what is it that breaks God’s heart? I think of the ways racism blocks the flourishing of people and communities of color, how homophobia and transphobia block the full realization of queer people’s beloved humanity, even to the point of causing their deaths, and how ecological degradation threatens the lives of myriad beautiful creatures, on whom we humans depend—whether we know it or want to accept it. (I’ve got news for you, honey: AI ain’t gonna keep us alive. Trees, clean air and water, and just and lifegiving social arrangements are.)

Now, a person doesn’t need to be a person of faith to get what I’m talking about here. I led with images of a flourishing creation and talk of our truest humanity, and that’s universal. I’d also add that (as the previous reference to Karen from Will and Grace might’ve implied, though I won’t explain it—#IYKYK) it’s precisely in living fully into the more unexpected aspects of our God-given and God-beloved uniqueness that the most joyous rebellion takes place. Can God create queer theologians, and call women priests? Can humans, working together, abolish unjust and oppressive systems and build a world of peace and justice? I think the answer to both these questions (and many others) is a hearty, laughter filled “YES.”

And I believe that YES might just spark a joyous rebellion.

CAH NOTE: To learn more about flourishing, check out Paul Schutz’s book, A Theology of Flourishing: The Fullness of Life for All Creation.