The Meaning of Life

My best friend's dad was an atheist. He was extremely intelligent, and one of the most interesting personalities I ever met. He was anything but the typical father. One time, he commented that a co-worker had told him that he felt guilty about having done something, because he didn't think it was probably pleasing to God. He chuckled because this same man had tried to lead him to God, and that the notion of God existing was all in the man's head.

He said, "This guy wants to explain the existence of God to me, yet he can't even tell me what the tallest mountain in Peru is." I can't either. I would have to look it up. Even at that time, in my teen years, my response was, "What has one thing to do with the other?" I subscribe to the Henry Ford practice there. I can look that up if I want to know it.

I will be the first to admit that I was no intellectual match for my friend's dad. He was a bit of a genius in certain areas, but he was also a fool. Is that harsh sounding? Perhaps. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Psalm 14 and 53, verses 1. Some truths are harsh sounding. Even though I had heard this man say some of the most terrible things about the Lord that I have ever heard, I still grieved at his passing. He was my friend's father, and he had always been nice to me. What grieved me most, was that he had been so terribly deceived, and that he went to his grave an unbeliever. Whether that was through his own anger at God, (and he certainly was angry with Him) or through someone's influence on him, I couldn't say.

I have no real intellectual "prowess" of my own. This is not a self-deprecating statement, but just a recognition of the facts. In freely giving His grace to all who repent and trust in Him, intellect is no roadblock for the Lord. It isn't even a speed bump. One doesn't have to hold "letters" to get saved. The Bible tells us that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, so if even the greatest unsaved intellect rejects the cross as foolishness, what is gained by intellect?

Most of the questions that I've read, asked by Greek Philosophers, are about the general notion of divinity, and they tended to dwell around issues of morality. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle seem to have held to a notion a higher good, and in things spiritual. Plato and Aristotle for example, both mentioned the soul on occasion. Aristotle even said, “We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one." I think he and his teacher must have believed in some sort of life beyond this one.

Most philosophers question the existence of God at some point in their lives. He's above everyone and everything else. It's unavoidable. What philosopher could say he or she was intellectually honest if they said they had not considered Him? Confucius once wrote, "The object of the superior man is truth." This may be the most accurate statement he ever made. He just didn't know that God is the truth.

Augustine wrote, “I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.'' My friend's dad, brilliant though he was, missed this. He had no clue about what the meaning of life really is. Without God, there is no meaning. Every person's ultimate fate would be the same, death. We would all be born, live here and die, and that would be the end of it. Hopelessness.

I think often, this point is where a lot of unbelievers and believers tend to butt heads. The believer calls life without God a hopeless prospect. The unbeliever sees this as a betrayal of life. He wonders why the believer can't see the value in doing good things for the sake of other people, for the sake of the common good. Believers though, cannot answer the question of the meaning of life without God involved. For the believer, the answer to the question can't be found in material possessions or personal achievements. The answer can only come from the one who created us, and who transcends this material world. Without Him, all sense of purpose for mankind is lost. The answer can't come from human intelligence of reason.

However, because God exists, we do have a meaning, and a purpose for our lives. There is enormous significance to why we exist as well, and because of that, we can see through the moral relativism that is drowning the morality of the world today. We can turn to the character of God, trust in His Word, and in place of the world's relativism, rely on His absolute standard of right and wrong.

Because God is absolutely good and holy and just, our lives can serve to glorify Him, and the choices that we make each day are seen in the light of that significance. Our ability to choose whether to live by and through Him, or to try to live by our own moral value system is a gift from God. Because we are not automatons, He has given us the free will to follow Him or not. We can choose to see Him as the Creator of all things good, or we can reject Him, shaking our fists in denial of His existence.

I think any philosopher with math skills can boil it down to two choices. We can choose to live a life chasing after meaning, because without God there will never be an answer this side of the grave, or; we can trust in God and live a live with absolute, eternal significance.

When one asks the question, "What is the meaning of life?" one is either searching for an actual answer to the question, or one is seeking to fashion a false answer which brings some sort of satisfactory compliment to the sins which one does not want to give up. Evolution is a good example of one such answer for the question. We can believe that we are the height of some evolutionary process, and think that that gives us a place of superiority. We can also believe that we are the height of some evolutionary process, and think that we are just another kind of animal with no special place in the world. Either type of thinking deprives a life of anything beyond earthly hope.

I remember talking with my friend's dad one time. He knew full well that I was a Christian, and he was always trying in different ways to "reason" with me to take me away from God. One day, he showed me a book. I don't remember the title. He told me that he had read it and that the author had come up with a valid explanation for why God had stopped "talking to people."

He said that the author had written that somewhere after the time of Christ, mankind had reached a global and pivotal point of evolution, wherein the entire population of the planet underwent a physiological change in just a couple of generations. His theory was that up until that point, much of the earth's population was mildly schizophrenic, and God's voice to His prophets was just one side of man's brain, talking to the other. I was a very young Christian at the time, and I looked at him and asked, "Do you really believe that?" I was incredulous. He looked at me laughingly and said, "Yes! I really do!" He told me it made perfect sense. The explanation was clever enough, but stuff that comes from the pit usually is. It didn't make sense though, especially in the revelatory light of the whole of Scripture, and everything about his body language told me that he didn't really buy it either.

While a great intellect is no barrier for God to man, it can be a serious roadblock between a man and his God. Choosing to trust one's intellect and reason away from God is a matter of pride. We were meant to glorify God and enjoy Him. It is why He created us to be compatible for worship of Him and for fellowship with Him. The only thing that separates us from Him is our own prideful unwillingness to give up our sin.