Less Than Eternal (Old post #9)

What propels you through adversity? It has been said that we can endure many a "what" about life if we could only answer the "why". A Professor of Tulane University said after a funeral, "With meaning, many things are bearable." So that leads me to ask the question what gives life meaning, or as some might say "What is the meaning of life?"

As I have been preparing for my next coffee shop talk, I have thought about all the answers I have heard to this question over the years. I have heard things like, "family", "kids", "procreation", "nothing", "community", etc... that for one reason or another just did not fully answer the question for me. You can observe in others, while they might not verbalize it, that their meaning is their job, status, or wealth. While I think I might be safe to say that some of these answers are more noble than others, I feel that all of these answers fall short of answering the question, "What is the meaning of Life?"

For those that say that your meaning is what you make it, what happens when your meaning is taken away from you? Is your answer to the question, "What is the meaning of life?" less than eternal? If your answer is anything less than eternal, what happens when whatever gives your life meaning is gone? I see so many people who base the meaning of their life on their job, or their family. You can see in our media those that make it wealth or status. The obvious problem occurs when what you have built your life around is not eternal. With the loss of a job, the loss of a family member, or the turn of bad health, the foundation on which some have laid the meaning of their life is shaken to the core. Of course, without this shaking everything is fine, and we can go on pretending. When what you build your life on is less than eternal, I can guarantee that you will be continually redefining what makes life meaningful for you.

This does not even begin to cover the fact that what may bring meaning to life for some might bring suffering in life for others. Who is to say which meaning is credible and which is not? Who judges between two meanings in conflict and how is that judged? The problem with an answer to the meaning of life that is anything less than eternal is that it is necessarily self-centered, and leaves us pitted as mini kingdoms in conflict. For those that say "We're here to die, just live and die"(nihilism), I would tell you there is little comfort in that answer. If life is nothing, and death the end of it all, then death is what in reality ends suffering. Death it seems would be a more logical choice than life if it truly did offer a release from suffering. However, as a prominent apologist once said, "the  resigned posture that deems life to be completely devoid of ultimate purpose and bereft of meaning can hardly be touted as rationally comforting dogma." The idea that we are here for nothing cannot be lived out, and if it is to be lived out, it is not what most would consider a good way to live. Bertrand Russell's, an atheistic philosopher, summation was "that the only sensible posture of life was one of unyielding despair and that any attitude other than despair was merely a seduction of the mind." I have no interest in living a life bereft of meaning.

What is an eternal answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" To "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and Love your neighbor as yourself." This meaning is eternal. This is a meaning that no matter what comes your way, cannot be taken away. This is a meaning that holds promise for both the present life and the life to come. It also reminds me of a story my friend told me about her dad. I do not fully remember all the parts of the story, so I hope that I do not butcher it too bad. As I remember, while her dad was in surgery, his house burnt to the ground, and not a scrap was saved. When he woke up from his hours long surgery, his family regretfully informed him that he had lost everything in the house fire. He simply stated, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord." That my friends is what it looks like to have an eternal answer to the question of "What is the meaning of life?" When adversity took everything away from him, he did not lose his meaning.

​On a personal note, I would submit that I settle for less than eternal more often than I would like to admit. This post has been probably one of the most challenging I have worked on to date. It has been a challenge because while I know that my answer to the meaning of life is eternal, I can see how in other areas I settle for less than eternal. That time that God called me to feed the homeless man, and I stubbornly chose not to. God made sure that I knew He could do it without me as the non-religious guy in our group ensured the homeless guy had something to eat. There are other times when I choose to follow my will as opposed to following what God has clearly given me direction to do. I do not know about why most people settle for less than eternal, but I do know that I generally settle for less than eternal due to selfishness. I choose what I want, and make it so. This perhaps sums up the problem with making meaning whatever you want. It makes life self-centered. It makes life about what I say it is. It makes life about something less than eternal.