Meaning and Purpose – True Success and Significance

I have been recently studying, reflecting, and praying along two parallel streams of thought. First, I have approached the conclusion of a four-year study of the worldviews of the Western world. I have studied the writings of many of the great thinkers in the history of man. I have traced the course of western thinking from the Greeks and the Romans to the Renaissance of southern Europe to the Reformation of northern Europe to the founding of a nation on principles rooted in the absolute truths of Christianity to the rejection of those truths in favor of the arbitrary whims of naturalistic humanism. At the same time, in a second stream of thought, I have been reflecting on my calling, my purpose: how do I strive for significance in God’s eyes rather than success in man’s eyes? I believe that I am more than a collection of molecules driven by a complex, biochemical computer that is deterministically governed by fixed laws of nature; the entity I call myself is not limited to the material world that we can see, touch, and measure. I believe in the supernatural, including a good and active Creator who has created me in His image. Believing that God has a purpose for my life gives me a sense of meaning. Without that belief, I would descend into nihilism, a hopeless existence trapped by the conflict of a self-aware entity that exists by chance as the most advanced machine yet to exist in this part of the vast universe. To escape that nihilism, I would probably choose the drugs of the 21st century: fame and fortune. I would try to drown my feelings of meaningless in hyperactivity, running from one activity to the next, keeping so busy that I do not have time to ask why I am so busy. I would strive to earn more so I can buy more so I can distract myself more. In addition, I would avoid thinking about the future, because the future for that life ends with a mass of chemicals no longer driven by a complex, biochemical computer.

In light of these streams of thought, as my oldest child approaches the end of his high school career, I am reminded of the attitude I inherited from the culture of the 1980s: Why go to college? To earn a degree that will enable me to earn more money. Why earn more money? To enable my children to go to college. This circular reasoning, a significant factor in the guidance I received as a young person, is inherently flawed. While education itself is not a bad thing – it is a good thing – my personal meaning and purpose for existence can and should be so much more than striving for personal peace and affluence. The search for personal peace and affluence leads to pessimism for the thinking person or continuous entertainment and amusement for the person who chooses distraction over nihilism. What do I hope my children will answer if asked for their reason for attending college? Likewise, what drives me to continue to learn and grow and strive for something bigger than myself? “To fulfill my calling from God, a vocation in which I work because I love Him and I love others, a role wherein I feel God’s pleasure as I serve him and others using the particular gifts He has given to me.”

What is Love?

What is love? In recent years, wise men have said, “Love’s not a feeling.” However, can the love of a man for a woman or a woman for a man be love if it has no feeling? I think not. Emotions are a gift from God. Even before the Fall, Adam expressed strong emotions about Eve. When Adam first saw Eve, he said,

“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”

The NIV sets this text apart from the surrounding prose as if this is not just a sentence; these lines are presented as a poem. The ESV translates the first line of this poem, “This at last…” It seems that Adam was announcing, with an exclamation point and even a sense of both relief and excitement that, finally, God had provided a truly suitable partner. Because of God’s provision of Eve, Adam may have uttered the first love poem from a man to a woman. Clearly, God wired us to have passionate feelings about our spouses.

While passion is important, I believe that life includes various phases where God works in our hearts and lives in different ways, focusing on some aspects of our soul rather than others. Perhaps a season of passion in a husband-wife relationship may be followed by a season of intellectual growth, for example. Regardless, our love must follow Christ’s pattern, in which his love ultimately fulfilled the law (Rom. 13:10). Christ’s love led to giving his life out of love for his people. Likewise, the husband must in essence lay down his life for his wife, and vice-versa. How? Before he gave his life, Christ taught that the law can be boiled down to two commands: love God and love others. Clearly, such love is expressed in a multitude of ways, by various means, in a relationship. Effective love for others is positive, encouraging, and helpful: “…love builds up." (I Cor. 8:1)

The Apostle Paul also teaches, “Let love be genuine…” (Rom. 12:9) Our world is filled with illegitimate love. The media promotes love of an image rather than true love for a person. Adolescent infatuation and unashamed lust have been substituted for the selfless love of the Bible. These are not true love and are devices used by the kingdom of darkness to prevent and destroy God-centered marriages.