What is the Point?: Discovering Life's Deeper Meaning and Purpose (2 page)

E
VERYBODY
D
IES

At the peak of my mountain of questions, the very point of the arrow, and the backbone of all that I was seeking was, “What is the purpose of life?” I believe this is the question all of us have or will have at some point in our lives, because how you answer it determines everything about you. Some people do not face this question until they are staring death in the eye. Often when someone we love dies or when we ourselves are faced with death, then we ponder the meaning of our lives. King Solomon wrote that eternity is written on the heart of man (Eccles. 3:11). I believe on the heart of every human being, no matter what religion they claim or even if they think that they are atheist, at the core of their being, thoughts of death and eternity press in on them and they wonder what the point of life is.

I heard a program on the radio talking about the fear of death. They were talking of how pervasive and powerful this fear is, and they were giving statistics saying the fear of death is the primary fear most people have. On this program they interviewed several people from all different walks of life. Those being interviewed told their stories about how petrified they were to die. Some of them would wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night. Some could not sleep for fear that they would not wake up. Others turned to substances to try to dull the fear, and still others became depressed or irrational in their fear of death.

This program struck a chord in my heart, because as a seeker of truth I know that truth has to be found in eternity, not only in this vapor of a life. In order to find the answer to the meaning of life, we have to peer into eternity and come to conclusions on what we believe about the afterlife. What we believe about our eternal future massively defines what we believe about our momentary life.

I could relate to what King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, saying that he would take his heart to the heights of humanity and imagine all that life could give him, and in the end he concluded that it’s all vanity. I too would do this exercise and imagine myself in the heights of affluence only to see myself dead in the end. Maybe it was pleasure I should pursue, but still, I die in the end. Maybe I would do great humanitarian deeds and help the poor and needy, yet still, I die in the end. Everybody dies. No exceptions. It is appointed for every human to die in a very short amount of time.

All that is done “under the sun” is vanity and chasing the wind (Eccles. 1:14). It is like trying to lay hold of the wind only to come up empty-handed. It passes so quickly.

Time was ticking in my soul, and my need for answers was growing every year as life passed me by. I wanted impact. I wanted purpose. I wanted to know that whatever I was supposed to do in this life, I did with confidence. I wanted something that had continuity into eternity. There was such a sense of urgency in my soul for answers.

Like most of us, I have memories of myself at five years old trying to grasp how long forever was. All of us have tried to wrap our brains around life and death because it is written on our hearts, and the conclusions that we come to about death shape the way that we live. It’s inevitable. How I answered the question of eternity defined the purpose of my life, and the question to the purpose of my life massively shaped the way I lived. But what was that answer?

D
EALING
W
ITH
G
OD

At nineteen I was diagnosed with cancer, and eternity pressed in on me even more. That diagnosis took my already frantic desire for relevance and purpose and catapulted me into a desperate search for the meaning of life. I had to ask, “What if I die this year? What if I die next month?” The truth is, all of us should be asking these questions right now. You should live like you are going to die, because you are going to die. I know this seems like a negative way to start a book, but let me tell you, you will die, and you don’t have a lot of time to figure out what life is really all about.

In order to find meaning in life, we have to find purpose in death, and in order to face eternity, we must come to conclusions about God. You will never find sufficient meaning in a vapor called life if it is not anchored in something transcendent, with eternal continuity. In other words, to find the meaning of life we must deal with God. The purpose of life, in the most universal sense, must be accessible to all, and it must have continuity into eternity. This means we have to deal with the Creator and His original intentions in order to find the “why” behind the “what” of life. He is the only one who can make sense of this world we are in. He has the answers to why He created in the first place.

Many great thinkers throughout the ages have tried to define the meaning of life. Many of them have come to conclusions about the dignity of humans and humanity’s ability to do noble things. Some have concluded that the meaning of life is pleasure. Others defined it as the choices we make to rise above any circumstance and be “good” and “triumphant.” Still others have concluded the purpose is love but have stopped short of an answer that satisfies because they keep “love” defined only on human terms instead of God’s. I find these theories anticlimactic and empty, because they are not addressing the fact that everybody dies—the person who loved and the person who hated dies the same. So what was the point, and where is the continuity into eternity?

Another thing that these conclusions do is define the meaning of life as nobility and love, without God at the center. If the meaning of life is found absent of God and in the goodness of humanity alone, then we are all to be pitied, because it cannot be attained or sustained.

Viktor Frankl had great insight and wrote a book called
Man’s Search for Meaning
, which sold over ten million copies in twenty-four languages. But even he left me empty and incomplete. In his book he tells his own story of the great suffering he endured in World War II in Nazi prison camps. It is a moving story about the dignity of humanity, and he comes to conclusions that are profound yet incomplete.

One of his primary conclusions is that the meaning of life is for humans to use their free will, to choose how they respond to whatever fate they are given. It is the dignity of man to choose. That is the meaning of life. That is a profound conclusion, but it is only part of the truth.

If the dignity of man, to die with pride and to be a “good person,” is the ultimate purpose of man and if that is the end of the story, then I am left empty and perplexed. The same fate meets the good man that meets the bad man—that fate is death. Our definitions of the meaning of life must be rooted in our conclusions about eternity, or they are less than accurate and leave us empty.

To find the purpose of life, we must find the purpose beyond the grave and come to real conclusions not only about humans but also about God. We have to get caught up in His story in order to see ours. I must admit, it is a daunting task to take on the meaning of life. I am not sufficient to define God or His story, but in my simplicity I will take the truths He has written on my heart and give them to you in order to encourage you on this same journey.

2
WHAT IS GOD LOOKING FOR?

I
REALIZED VERY EARLY
on in my wrestling with truth and in my quest for purpose that my wrestling match was with God Himself. That mountain of questions continually led me to a face-off with God. I say that carefully, because God sits above the circle of the earth and inhabits eternity. His name is holy. He measures the ocean in the palm of His hands, and He spreads the heavens like a curtain. We cannot get rid of Him or form Him in whatever way we want to fashion Him. The universe was created and is sustained by the words of His lips (Heb. 1:3). The entire order of Creation is continuing only because He wants it to. He is God, and we have become familiar with Him and made Him in the image of what we want in “a God.”

I tread with fear upon the subject of God and don’t even begin to assume I have Him figured out. He is so mysterious. When I say I “wrestled with God,” I say it with great reverence and fear. He doesn’t owe me the answers I seek, but in His generosity and His eagerness to be known, He answers me.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 9:10), and the search for purpose is the search for wisdom. We all need a greater portion of the awe of God. I am often aware of how quickly I grow dull to the sense of His majesty, but it is the foundation of all wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the root of faith. It is knowing He is really there, and He is watching. The awe of God is what enables us to feel the impact of the love of God. We see His mercy and generosity most clearly when we see His majesty and transcendence. We cannot separate the two.

If the most powerful man in the world came up to you, introduced himself, and told you he was a fan of your work or talent, the compliment would overwhelm you, right? You would take a picture, tweet it, put it on Facebook, and tell the story over and over of how that famous man loves what you do. If a random poor man came and complimented you in the same way, you would be gracious and say thank you. But maybe the impact of his compliment would hit you in a very different way. This illustrates the impact of grasping even a little about who this God is we are talking about. Do we even know whom we are dealing with when we talk about God? When our hearts get touched with an understanding of His eternal majesty, we stand in awe, and His love and mercy impact us very differently.

The secret of the L
ORD
is with those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant.

—P
SALM
25:14

G
OD THE
C
REATOR

We must look up and behold the initiator of this life and see the Creator Himself. We tremble and humbly ask Him for understanding and then search for it as a hidden treasure. It’s the glory of God to hide a matter, but the one with a kingly heart will seek for it (Prov. 25:2). He is the author of life, and therefore only He has the reasoning behind it. It is utter foolishness to come up with an answer for the meaning of life outside of Him, because we were created by Him and through Him and will go to Him in the end. We were created by His will, for His pleasure (Rev. 4:11). This is why we exist and are entirely dependent upon Him.

Even the atheist is breathing only because God wills it. He is the Potter and we are the clay. Can the clay say to the Potter, “I don’t like the way You are forming me, You are wrong”? Or, “I don’t believe in the Potter”? It is foolish, and only a fool has said in his heart that there is no God (Ps. 14:1).

Everything in life has a cause, and everything that has order and beauty has an author or an originator. If I did not have confidence that God created the earth, I would surely just give up in despair and “eat, drink, and be merry” knowing that tomorrow I die. I cannot fathom the empty, aimless feeling of living life without God. I don’t think any person is born an atheist, for even the sky itself declares God is there, and the sunrise prophesies of His goodness. The stars tell of His wonders (Ps. 19:1–6), and every man is without excuse when it comes to knowing that there is a God (Rom. 1:9).

If you are reading this and you believe in God but have a religion other than Christianity, I challenge you to take the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, look up to the vast sky above you, and with sincerity ask God to reveal Himself to you. Then read the entire book, give God time, and I assure you, you will conclude that Jesus is God and there is no other way to life eternal. Christianity is not a blind faith; it is the wisest conclusion you can come to. I will not spend my time on this point, but I challenge you to ask for wisdom, cry out for understanding, lift up your voice, and you will find the knowledge of God (Prov. 2:3–5).

The Creator has the blueprints for life. He could have done anything He wanted, and He chose to create the human race. What was it that He was after? Some people approach God as though He were a mad scientist sitting up in heaven messing around with different potions when suddenly, poof, Creation just happened! Then humans came along and sinned, and He said, “Oh no! I didn’t think about sin,” as if it was all a mistake and humans made a bigger mess of God’s “accident” and then He sent Jesus to clean it up, as an afterthought.

No! He has very intentionally written a story so grand—a story that we are deeply wrapped up in it. It is God’s story, His own self-revelation. He has chosen the arena of humanity to make Himself known. Until we get a glimpse of that story and get caught up in the knowledge of Him, we will live aimlessly and be unable to make sense of human history. Our existence will look like history monotonously repeating itself. It will all seem irrational until we understand the story line and see that the central figure in the drama is God Himself.

He did not create, step back, and let things play out, watching from far away. He finishes what He starts, and His plan will come to pass. There is something He wants, and throughout six-thousand-plus years of human history He has been preparing humans for an end result that is beyond our comprehension. He is still actively involved and does not sit at a distance uninterested. He is looking for something, and we are moving toward something. We will not be satisfied until we satisfy Him, and we will never find what we are looking for until we find what He is looking for. Our purpose is completely defined in His.

W
HAT
I
S
H
E
L
OOKING
F
OR
?

What does the God who has everything want? Nothing is hidden from Him, yet He searches. What is He searching for? The Scripture makes it clear that His eyes are searching to and fro throughout the nations of the earth, looking for something (2 Chron. 16:9). He searches not only nations but also individuals from all corners of the earth, and He is peering into their hearts (1 Sam. 13:14; Rev. 2:23).