Monday, February 25, 2013

Worldviews: Does Life Have a Purpose?

[A]ll things were created through him and for him. . . . [I]n him all things hold together. (Col. 1:16-17 ESV)
We were made to glorify God. Some skeptics say that there is no God and life is ultimately meaningless. But no healthy human being lives that way. So they say we must construct meaning for ourselves, claiming we can then be free to have more fun. As Albert Camus put it, maybe "the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart." Here's the problem. If life is ultimately meaningless, everything you experience will be meaningless too.
You may still, in the lowest sense, have a “good time”; but just in so far as it becomes very good, just in so far as it ever threatens to push you on from cold sensuality into real warmth and enthusiasm and joy, so afar you will be forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between your own emotions and the universe in which you really live.
-C.S. Lewis
Continuing to perform a meaningless act does not make it meaningful. Life is absurd unless there really is an eternal, all-powerful God who gives meaning.
[W]hoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. (Luke 9:24 ESV)
This verse reveals a paradoxical truth that is hard to surrender to. We love ourselves a lot! And freedom really is a good thing. But real freedom is not just freedom from. Genuine freedom is freedom for something. Consider the art we admire. No one sees Starry Night Over the Rhone and says, “Too bad Van Gogh imposed his will on that poor canvas.” What makes that canvas so amazing is that it reflects the will of an amazing artist. Similarly, when you submit your life to God, you can experience genuine freedom and fulfillment. If I live to glorify myself, concerned only with my selfish impulses and ambitions, I will shrink into despair and obscurity. But if I live to glorify Jesus, his word guarantees that I will be “raised in glory.” (1 Cr. 15:43).

1 comment:

Brenda Townsend Montgomery said...

preach nephew! great words of wisdom...