When I was a child, I would always ask my father - God bless him! - why?
Why was something like this, or that?
Why did this thing go or this other thing stop?
Why was that person this way?
Why was I here and now?
Why did the sky get dark at night, turn blue and light during the day, and why did rain sometimes fall from it?
My father is an intelligent man, no doubt! He had a reply to nearly all of my inquiries. However, there were occasionally the questions that couldn’t be answered.
Well, at thirty years old, I still ask those questions.
Inevitably, if you follow a question of “why” to it’s natural end, without God, there can be no answer. If you ask “why” about something, then follow up that question with a “why” about the answer, this is the due end.
I always wondered what was beyond the answer that couldn’t be answered. My dad would not lie to me and give me false answers, he would say that he didn’t know and would leave it at that.
Now, as a father, I am sure to run into the same predicament - Oh, how I will reap what I have sown!
In asking the “why” of life, I came to the answer - God.
Truly - I have come to see clear as day - that without God, there is no meaning to this life.
On Meaning #
Sure, we can attempt to “make our own purpose”, a “good life” (whatever that means!), “helping others”, “living for the moment”, but it all falls flat when we ask “why” we are doing it. If we even ask “why” having a “good” life is a goal, we run head first into the question of what “good” even means! The moment you ask questions of morality, you are on the playing field of metaphysics and the home of the greatest: God.
For those that live an atheist and secular life, there is no answer to what is “Good”. You will come to find that there “just is” - there “is no good or bad”. Or, worse, you get to define for yourself that which is your good and bad. And then we wonder why everyone is so anxious all of the time, they have to live in a world which is now of their own definition. I was not immune to this solipsistic view of the Universe.
The one truth that we can (hopefully) agree upon is that each of us are destined to die. No matter what you do in this life, this life comes to a close, and the sandcastles that you have built up shall wash away. The money you have made, the body you have built, the car you drove, the house you lived in, all meaningless!
For someone that makes these goals their entire life, that causes great stress and anxiety. Truly, for 20-some years of my life, I thought that was the answer.
Only the spiritual will remain - how you have glorified God in all that you have done will remain, how you have touched other people, what you have created to better the lives of other people, how you have loved. With Him - you are destined to live!
Without God, you exist for a fraction of a second in the grand scheme of the Universe. With Him, you exist forever. Without God, our lives are completely meaningless, there is no reason to get out of bed beyond that which you give for yourself. Some people are strong enough to define their own purpose, I am not.
With Him, all things have meaning, there is beauty, purpose, Truth - in everything.
If there is no God - everything you do will have no meaning because you simply are doing things that you want to do. The things that an animal would do - self interested survival mode in order for you to hopefully procreate and your genes to carry on when you meet the end.
But, with Him, there is so much more - an infinite progression of you toward Him. You put yourself last - and inevitably you come out first because if you give you will receive far more than you ever thought possible. You might not receive in this life, and that is something I have had to come to grips with as I leave the old me behind.
Existentialism as absurdism. #
There is a reason that existentialism gained traction in the 20th century and one reason only: we as human beings thought we no longer needed God. We had answers to all the questions that were sought by Nietzsche and Kirkegaard, but these answers were forgotten in place of the will of man over nature. Ironically, the inevitable end of the philosopher would find him at the start of a completely altered understanding of what all of this is. For none of us escape the love of God, whether we turn toward it or away from it is on us.
For life to have no meaning, value, or purpose, we inevitably fall into nihilism; where nothing ever could matter. If we escape this trap, then we may create our own meaning - which is where subjective truth comes from. Both of these worldviews concentrate on the absurdity of this existence, and how could it be anything but without God to tie it all together?
With God, we come to see that there is higher, objective truth. Absolute, universal Truth.
Don’t get me wrong, for much of my 20’s I idolized the existentialists, I read Thus Spoke Zarathurtra I studied philosophy and stoicism, I listened to days worth of podcasts in which the hosts and guests were evidently existentialists as 70% of the Western world’s population appears to be today (I made up that statistic). Even those that claim to be Christian seem to believe that they are the ones pulling the strings, their own will is the primary, then God comes into play only when the boat is sinking or the airplane falling from the sky.
The Advent of “Your Truth” #
Without God, there can be no morality. There is no governor of where we decide to draw the lines of Good and Evil - and we are self-deluded into believing that things just ’are’ instead of right and wrong, as I mentioned above. Interestingly enough, many atheists condemn atrocity - but their worldview is then challenged because there is no underlying reason to do so. They may feel like something is wrong - but where does that feeling come from???
It is as such that the buzzword of the culture today is “truth” - but not The Truth or God’s Truth but our own. In the political sphere (which I recommend you leave behind yesterday), it has become pervasive in which one side will be blind to the shortcomings of their own side yet cast stones at the other side with reckless abandon. For their guy can do no wrong and the other team can do no right! This exemplifies living one’s own truth in the face of all the evidence to the contrary.
It was as such that I saw that I could no longer live “my truth”, for I knew in my heart that it was no truth at all. Perhaps it is because I no longer choose to be the center of my life. My life revolves around God, and all that I am is all because of Him, not because of me.
God’s Truth is that which is universally applicable, a Truth that we are all going to see regardless of how we live this life or our inclination toward Him, for the Love of God is inescapable, and it will either illuminate our souls or it will burn us.
There is Hell - but it is not the firey depths where God is not. It is where God is, and we have turned away from His offer. For we will always have to live with that.
If your life doesn’t matter in a million years, it has no meaning today. And, it is all a choice if this is “your truth” or you turn to the Truth.
Purpose is now not of our own #
It can be too much for many people to accept that the life that they live is not of their own volition at all. When times are “good” it can seem that we were the ones that made that happen.
But if you look around you, your life is a culmination of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people. The food you eat, the car you drive, the home you live in, the screen on which you are reading this on. None of this is your doing, you simply paid the money to briefly experience it. When I saw this for the first time, I broke down into tears, for I had always thought that it was I who made the world go round.
Not so.
It is in the times of great pain that we see that we did not ask for the pain, but here we are nonetheless. Was it our choosing to get into the car accident or to fall and break our backs (in my case)?
No.
But it was His.
It was all meant to happen as it did. You are where you are meant to be right here and now not because of your own choosing. You are here because God “coincidentally (I cannot believe there is such a thing as ”coincidence“)” placed you here to find Him.
To live as He lived.
That bad thing that happened to you?
That was meant to save you.
To pull you out of your old ways into a new life.
A wake-up call.
It is on each and every one of us to answer that call.
Or to continue to sleep.