Tuesday, November 6, 2007
What is the Purpose of Life?
Everyone may have their own idea of what the purpose of life is, but from a Christian's perspective, the meaning of life was given to us by God. Our purpose in life is to develop a personal relationship with God and to do his will in our own life, which is following the Word of God. Our time on earth is very short, so this is the time that we decide what path we will take; the path of death leading to eternal suffering, or the path of life, leading to heaven.
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Certainly, I have known a number of Christians who take this view. But it really doesn't answer the question: it says what we should do, but not what life's meaning may be.
As a Christian I will confess that I don't debate that God's will is centrally important. Christians should strive to make their own wills one with God's. But "following the Word of God" is, first of all, much harder to understand than your entry would make it seem, and surely much harder to do.
What, after all, is the "Word of God". Oh, you may say, "Why, it's the Bible", but that can't be right: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth", the prologue of John's Gospel asserts. In what way do you suppose did a group of books "become flesh"? Clearly there is a Mystery here.
But again, how does this define or describe "meaning"? And furthermore, is all life to follow God's Word, or only human life? If the latter, again, the question has not been wholly answered.
What would it mean for a tree to follow the path of death leading to eternal suffering? Yet a tree lives. Do bacteria suffer in Hell because they have not subscribed to the Gospel?
My goal here is not in the least to remove belief; what you present here is admirable in its way, but it is, I think, too limited in its view.
Through a Word all that is has come to be; nothing that is would be were it not for the Word. If I accede to this view (and I do), I must find some way to make sense of this, either to confess it as a Mystery beyond my capacity, or to forge from it an understanding of the world which is broader than mere humanity.
If the "Meaning of Life" flows from The Word, surely the meaning and the word are in some way one.
I must say, too, that I find the notion of eternal suffering extraordinarily hard to reconcile with the notion of a prodigally loving ultimate being. Our minds are most limited in their scope compared with omniscience. Often we do wrong simply because we do not understand, and, as you say, our lives here are short and unpredictable. I find it incredible, unbelievable, that a good God would allow eternal punishment in exchange for momentary ignorance. You can believe what you like, and it may well create what you will experience hereafter, but for me, I embrace a God of forgiveness, not of damnation. In my view, finally, all beings will be reconciled to God, out of their own free will. "That will take a long time," you may protest. But who has more time than God?
But this still doesn't resolve the problem of meaning.
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