The Meaning of Life
Last term I was walking across the bridge between Vanbrugh and Goodricke while talking to a friend, who isn’t a Christian. As we neared the end of the bridge he asked me the question, “What is the meaning of life?”. I was thrown by this. My mind raced through possible responses. As I walked down the slope that leads to Goodricke, I could think of ways to answer another question; ways to twist the question into another question but no satisfying way to answer the question. The answer I gave him after a second or two: “I suppose we don’t really know.” While I would argue this is essentially correct, I know (and knew) it’s just a way of backing out of answering the question. That’s not good enough, though. Shouldn’t we know the answers?
This article is not a simple answer to that question. Even if such an answer existed for me, it would be different for everyone else. So where to begin?
The author of Ecclesiastes struggles with the question “What is the point of life?”. The author goes through various things: wisdom, pleasure, work, wealth. All these are argued to be meaningless without God. This seems an obvious conclusion to reach and one we could probably reach without this book. If we do not believe in God then we believe the world and our lives to be essentially meaningless. We believe that our lives serve no purpose and from that belief we must conclude that wisdom, pleasure, work and wealth are meaningless. Some people claim to accept these points and yet reach the conclusion that we should devote our lives to seeking pleasure. Surely under their own arguments that in itself is pointless? It is almost as if they in some way realise that their own ideas are wrong and that they reject them. They grasp the conclusion of a purpose in life but claim to reject it as they cannot understand where it comes from.
There are many purely intellectual reasons to object to this way of thinking. When we look at the world and ourselves we see disrupted order. A recent article in the New Statesman discussing scientific progress as a replacement for idealism (scientific progress is itself, according to the article, a replacement for religion) concludes that “The biblical story of the Fall is closer to the truth.” and that “a belief in science to, in some way, deliver you, is very dangerous”.
This belief in science can take many guises. From the obvious ‘immortality drug’ to the belief that things that we do not understand are just things science hasn’t explained yet, along with the implicit idea that once they have been everything will make sense, that we’ll have the answer to the question this article is about. The idea that science can actually explain the universe and everything in it is nonsensical. Science doesn’t really explain anything. Science is about building models and theories that approximate to real world examples. Nothing has ever been fully explained by science.
Does this not suggest the presence of something outside our normal rules? That there is a case for the supernatural? [1] Even the Laws of Physics hint at an ordered universe. That there are some apparent, created rules. Often the creation of the universe is used to attack Christianity, but physics doesn’t have all the answers. Stephen Hawking asked two questions, both of which remain unanswered without a belief in God: “Why does the universe bother to exist?” and “why is that something so beautiful and orderly?”. It seems to me to be an awful lot easier to attack a belief in science (which is, of course, no belief at all) this way.
On the subject of the theology as C S Lewis presented it in Mere Christianity, he suggested to adopt it if it was helpful, drop if it wasn’t. Essentially I feel he was saying that theology is just an abstraction, a tool for us to (perhaps) better understand something. One tool can be useful for one person, but useless for another. With that in mind I present my own feelings, or at least some of them, on creation.
I once asked a theology student “Who created God?”. His answer was not very helpful. Essentially he dodged the question mentioning the analogy of the chicken and the egg. I eventually had to come up with my own answer for this, as it was a question that I wanted an answer to [2]. My conclusion [3] was that God’s existence was totally different to ours, that the nature of His existence was fundamentally different to, but in some ways similar to the universe that we exist in. That He transcends [4] space and time: in fact He created space and time. In our universe things are created. We can ask when we see something “How was that created?” or “Where did it come from?” and expect that there is an answer. But I feel that this is not true of God. That question no longer makes sense. If we accept this, the question of possibility and reason for creation is answered (at least in part).
If God does exist, does this not imply some sort of “higher purpose”? That our lives actually mean something and that we should live accordingly. That is the conclusion of the author of Ecclesiastes and the obvious one to draw of our universe if we believe that it has been created by an intelligent, powerful and supernatural creator. So what is that purpose?
I write this article as much for myself as anyone else. This is an issue that I struggle with and one I am sure a lot of other people do too. How can you look at an infinitely complex universe, your life and from that answer the question posed by this article? I suppose the simple answer is you can’t. Not if you want a full answer anyway. Our limitations as humans mean that any belief system that claims to answer this question fully, in this life, is obviously flawed. However, I would argue an answer does exist, just not one we can know fully. Nevertheless, it is one we can know in part and continue to learn more of.
I can imagine at this point some of the readers are almost screaming out loud “To glorify God you idiot!” or some other phrase hopefully without ‘you idiot’ in it. Think for a minute what this actually means. What is meant by the word ‘glorify’? I concede that there are obvious things to insert here (praise being one) but this phrase really just places the question “What is the point of your life?” in a new context, that of relation to God and clearly implies the question “How can I glorify God?” which is essentially analogous to “What is the meaning of my life?” except for the fact the former has placed the question in the (I would argue) more correct context. However, the phrase seems to be of itself helpful in context but not very helpful in application. It is only through an interpretation of it that we can apply it [5].
I think at this point it would be helpful to consider our relationship to God, as it is only through this that a clearer purpose can be discerned. To quote from What’s so Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey:
There is nothing we can do to make God love us more.
There is nothing we can do to make God love us less.
There are parallels to be drawn with human relationships (Jesus often used these). Think of God as like a father that loves his son unconditionally. That even when the son rejects the father, he still loves his son the same. He loves his son so much that he will suffer and die for him. We are perhaps capturing in some way how God feels about us. The story of redemption of the world (through the death of Jesus) and our own personal stories (through the death of Jesus) are ones of grace. We do not deserve to be redeemed, but God loves us so much that even at a great cost (a cost that we cannot fully appreciate) he does it anyway. Grace means loving where love is not deserved. And this is what God offers us.
Love is the most important part of Christianity, a fact that many others (and myself) seem to forget at times. In his letter to the church at Corinth Paul writes:
…faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor 13:13)
In John’s gospel we read that “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, my italics). God’s loves us perfectly.
I feel that the purpose of our lives lies in how we respond to this love. So how do we respond to this love? Viggo Mortonsen (star of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy) praised J R R Tolkien: “despite being a Christian [he wrote] a story where good was his own reward”, with the clear implication that Christianity is about doing good in order to be rewarded. This is simply not true. It is not even possible. Christians have already been guaranteed reward through God’s forgiveness of our rejection of Him. We should respond to this forgiveness, this grace with love for God and other people. We should “offer [ourselves] as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God” (Romans 12:1). We should acknowledge that we are not perfect, but press on to take hold of that for which Jesus Christ took hold of us. We should forget what is behind and strain on towards that which is ahead, pressing on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Jesus Christ. [6]
“How exactly do I do that?” you ask. I feel completely unqualified to write on that subject as I am still answering that question myself. There is however a book that has lots of really useful stuff in it [7]. I’ll stop here. What I would give would only be my suggestions, things that have been helpful to me but may be useless to you.