THE COST OF A MEANINGLESS LIFE

Most seem to acknowledge the fact that if there is no Law-Giver, there cannot be any objective moral law in a lawless and un-designed world, apart from those moral principles that we create for ourselves.

Likewise, in a meaningless world, there can be no objective or higher meaning apart from what we arbitrarily create for ourselves. However, non-theists also tend to claim that this isn’t a problem.

However, does our self-created meaning give us what we psychologically and emotionally need to live a full life? Does it provide for us an adequate purpose for living. Evidently not:

• A UK wide survey reveals the extent to which the younger generation feel disillusioned, with the majority (89 percent) of 16-29 year olds, claiming their life lacks purpose or meaning. (sun.co.uk; August 1, 2019)

It is not surprising that they cannot find meaning if they don’t believe that meaning even exists. Secularism has closed the door on them by ignoring or denying God. Promising them freedom, it has deprived them of a meaningful freedom in which their choices truly matter. Instead, secularism has condemned them to live in a flat, two-dimensional world where freedom is only a matter of choosing from meaningless choices about how they can fulfill themselves.

Besides, it seems that the youth are unable to perceive how they have been deprived of meaning. Even though they deny its existence, they still feel that intrinsic meaning is available through giving to others:

• 83 percent feel they would achieve greater purpose if they could contribute more to their local community.

While the idea of giving is wholesome - and I heartily commend it – are they merely giving in order to get? Without giving out of gratefulness to the God who loves us and gave His life for us, giving has been denigrated into a form of self-help. However, self-help is not virtue. Although people give out of gratefulness to parents and friends, it doesn’t seem to be enough:

• According to the study, the average Brit spends over half an hour (34 minutes) a day dreaming of a better, more fulfilled life.

While they can dream about it, they have no idea where to find it. They are understandably hungry but have rejected the wholesome food, which can lift them out of their self-obsessions. They are trapped by the self-centered pursuit offered by secularism and cannot find the way out.

I am not saying that secularists do not generously offer their services. However, as moral relativists, they lack any objective rationale to act virtuously apart from what comforts them. What then happens when they no longer derive comfort from volunteerism, which can become very tedious? Instead, we need to know that our giving is in service fundamentally to the Truth and not to ourselves. Therefore, Jesus taught that giving was first a matter of serving God:

·       “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:40)

Ultimately, the servant of Jesus doesn’t give to get but to serve the One who loves us and had given His life for us. We do it in gratitude. Admittedly, we are blessed by serving, but serving for the blessing becomes secondary to gratitude.

Even worse, when giving is not accompanied by wisdom, it can hurt those it seeks to help. Let me try to explain. When altruism is driven by the need to fulfill ourselves, careful consideration of what others need becomes a casualty. As a result, the giver gives because it makes them feel good about themselves. Consequently, they might want to exonerate violent abusers, create sanctuary cities for criminals, and entirely reject any concept of the tough love practiced by Jesus. Meanwhile, the necessity to protect the innocent, abstract principles of justice, and concerns for a safe society tend to take a back-seat, because they might not provide the sought-after ego-boast.

For example, Walter E. Williams, professor of economics, George Mason University, does not think that the problems that the black community are now experiencing are a product of slavery, Jim Crow, or even systemic racism, but of welfare programs:

• A major part of the solution should be the elimination of public and private policy that rewards inferiority and irresponsibility. Chief among the policies that reward inferiority and irresponsibility is the welfare state. When some people know that they can have children out of wedlock, drop out of school and refuse employment and suffer little consequence, one should not be surprised to see the growth of such behavior. The poverty rate among blacks is about 30 percent. It’s seen as politically correct to blame today’s poverty on racial discrimination, but that’s nonsense. Why? The poverty rate among black intact husband-and-wife families has been in the single digits for more than two decades.

According to Williams, “social justice” has even undermined largely black schools:

• Education is one of the ways out of poverty, but stupid political correctness stands in the way for many blacks. For example, a few years ago, a white Charleston, South Carolina, teacher frequently complained of black students calling her a white b—-, white m—–f—–, white c— and white ho. School officials told her that racially charged profanity was simply part of the students’ culture and that if she couldn’t handle it, she was in the wrong school.

Failing to hold students accountable for anti-social behavior corrupts the school and diminishes the possibility of obtaining a good education.

According to Williams, over-indulgent “social justice” policies have de-motivated blacks by holding them to lower standards:

• Many whites are ashamed and saddened by our history of slavery, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination. As a result, they often hold blacks accountable to standards and conduct they would never accept from whites. A recent example is black students at colleges such as NYU, UC Berkeley, UCLA and Oberlin demanding racially segregated housing. Spineless college administrators have caved to their demands. These administrators would never even listen to a group of white students demanding white-only housing accommodations. These administrators and other guilt-ridden whites have one standard of conduct for whites and a lower standard for blacks.

Different standards according to race and sexuality divide and breed cynicism. White guilt and idealism hold blacks to a lower standard, approving their racial prejudices while penalizing whites for the same. This can only serve to further exclude blacks from white society.

Williams claims liberal policies have also made academic excellence more unattainable:

• Black people can be thankful that racist forms of double standards and public and private policies rewarding inferiority and irresponsibility were not broadly accepted during the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. There would not have been the kind of intellectual excellence and spiritual courage that created the world’s most successful civil rights movement.

It breaks my heart to see the psychological bondage brought about by the media’s commitment to a narrative of blame, bitterness, victimization, white privilege, and systemic racism. Instead, there is an answer for their aimless lives in a God who loves them so much that He died for them even while they hated Him (Romans 5:8-10)! I think that I can understand the passion of Jesus as He cried for His people:

• “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”(Matthew 23:37)

Even now so many are unwilling. They claim that even if there is a truth, there is no way of knowing it. In contrast, Jesus claimed that if they really wanted to know, they would know:

• “If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.” (John 7:17-18)

We need a transcendent purpose for our lives. The late theologian Abraham Heschel, asserted this very thing:

·       “It’s not enough for me to be able to say ‘I am’; I want to know who I am and in relation to whom I live. It is not enough for me to ask questions; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?” (Os Guinness, The Journey,  39)

Our reason-for-being and the way we live our lives hinges on these answers. However, not any understanding will do the trick. We have to understand that we’re more than just an accident, a mere product of nature and nurture. The maverick psychologist, James Hillman, concurs:

·       “We dull our lives by the way we conceive then…By accepting the idea that I am the effect of…hereditary and social forces, I reduce myself to a result. The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn’t do, and by my early years now long past, the more my biography is the story of a victim. I am living a plot written by my genetic code, ancestral heredity, traumatic occasions, parental unconsciousness, societal accidents.” (James Hillman, The Soul’s Code (New York, Random House, 1996), 5-6)

If we fail to see ourselves as part of a higher narrative, there is a great danger of falling into depression. When we recognize that our lives have meaning, we can endure the trials and frustrations. Even the atheist and Christianity-despising Frederick Nietzsche wrote that “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how!’”

But from where does this “why” or rationale come? Not from secular materialism, which denies all spiritual realities! In this regard, psychologist Arthur Deikman writes:

·       Human beings need meaning. Without it they suffer…Western Psychotherapy is hard put to meet human beings’ need for meaning, for it attempts to understand clinical phenomena in a framework based on scientific materialism in which meaning is arbitrary and purpose nonexistent. (Arthur J. Deikman, The Observing Self: Mysticism and Psychotherapy (Boston, Beacon Press, 1982), 4-5)

However, materialism does offer us one road to finding meaning — a self-created meaning. The brilliant atheist mathematician, Bertrand Russell, was confident he could create his own meaning and purpose. In Why I am Not a Christian, he wrote of cherishing “the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of fate [of the rest of mankind], to worship at the shrines that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance.” (Guinness, 105)

Yes, Russell could erect his own shrines. However, could self-constructed shrines of meaning suffice to give us the meaning we so crave? To suggest that we can merely dream up our own meaning is like imagining our own wife and kids in place of the real thing. Could such imaginations satisfy?

Instead, we need to know that we are somehow connected to Someone greater. Russell’s self-created meaning failed to hold back the “coward terrors.” Later he admitted, “I wrote with passion and force because I really thought I had a gospel. Now I am cynical about the gospel because it won’t stand the test of life.” (Ibid, 106)

Jesus promised that we can know whether or not there is meaning and a Truth worthy of our devotion (John 8:31-32). We simply need to want it more than our own lifestyles and immediate comforts.

We were made for a love relationship with our Creator. When we reject it, we also reject any hope that our lives will be imbued with meaning and purpose we so desperately need.