My message Road of Intellect: Christmas Road Trip, part 3 was about affirming people who have been on an intellectual journey, asking questions about faith. God does not ask that you turn off your brain when you walk into the doors of the sanctuary. To the contrary, as the architect of our amazing intellect, God's desire is that we avail ourselves of the amazing capacity we have for reason and scientific inquiry.
Charles Wesley was a gifted poet and hymn writer. Some question whether the Methodist Revival in England in the 18th century would have gone anywhere without Charles' music. In the quote above he longs for the time when knowledge, the expanding field of human intellect, would join forces with a thriving piety, a people dedicated wholly to serving God's purposes. Basically, he wanted Christians to use their brains!
I don't want to rehash the issues raised in the message, you can go online and listen or download when it gets posted. What I want to do is explore another question. Questions are good. The first action the magi took upon observing the star must have been to ask a question: "What does this mean?" Questions sometimes lead to answers which often lead to more questions. The most fundamental of all questions is the existential one: Why do I exist?
Libraries are full of volumes dedicated to this question and even dedicated to the question of why we ask questions. Philosophy is one of those disciplines that continues to grow in volume and complexity with each passing generation. In our post-modern times, philosophy has become a kind of king of disciplines in which all questions lead back to fundamental questions philosophy is asking. But there is no more fundamental question than that of existence. Why am I here? What is the meaning of life if there is any meaning at all?
Immediately I am thinking of what the response of some of my good friends might be to this question. They might say something like, "Oh, boy, you ask too many questions." Or, "That's the problem with education, you get a little and then you're basically useless!" These are well-meaning friends, and at the end of the day, they may be right!
But it doesn't stop me from wondering.
For one who is committed to Jesus Christ as the Savior and Lord of the universe entire, this is an important question. For if God was willing to sacrifice his Son for human life, then human life must have meaning, a meaning that is far beyond simply existence as a random conglomeration of nucleic acids.
The authors of the Westminster Catechism gave a relatively simple answer to this most complex and confusing of questions: "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." I really like this, however, it is not a logical answer. The question reads: "What is the chief end of man?" The question assumes one answer. Their response, however, posits two answers: glorify God AND enjoy God. Now, it might very well be that to glorify God implies that I will enjoy God, or that enjoyment of God will ensue, but that wasn't the question. The question was about what the singular goal, end, or purpose of man (humanity) is.
I do not have the time to write, nor do you probably the time to read, a full blown argument about what I believe to be the meaning of life, but I do want to summarize my thoughts based on a bunch of the reading I have been doing for my dissertation, particularly, the theological reading.
The meaning of life is simple. It is, to say in one word, love. Humans were created to be loved and to love. Period. That sums up the entirety of the Old and New Testaments. It also is a very nice and neat restatement of all the theological reading I have ever done. God is love. This is what makes up God's very being and personhood. God is Trinity. The community of relations between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is being extended to include all of God's creatures and it is in this relating, to God and thus to one another, that life finds it's highest meaning.
Love. This is what gives life meaning. This is meaning. We are in relationship with God whether we realize it or not. The goal of evangelism ought to be to help people awaken to the reality of their true selves and to discover the joy and hope found in knowing they are loved.
Maybe John Lennon had it right after all, even if he didn't understand the implications: "All you need is love."
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