24.11.06
Why I Am A Christian (6): The Meaning of Life
John 17:3
I slipped up last week. After making a mental note to put my reading of the Russian author Anton Chekhov’s Short Stories to one side, I picked them up again and read one. It was called “Typhus” and was the story of a soldier coming home to Moscow after serving in the army in Siberia. It begins on a train, with the soldier in a bad mood at a fellow passenger. Before long, the soldier starts to feel sick and run a temperature. When he gets home to Moscow, he goes straight to bed. After 2 weeks fevered hallucinations, he wakes up to a beautiful bright morning. He feels great. He’s managed to survive a dose of spotted typhus, a great killer disease of the day. Just when the story looks as if it is going to conclude on an uncharacteristically Un-Chekhov high point, the downer hits – this man’s younger sister nursed him back to health – a girl with all the promise and beauty of a life ahead of her – but during the her brother’s illness, she caught spotted typhus from him and quickly died. The last line of the story reads, “And joy gave way to the boredom of everyday life and the feeling of his irrevocable loss.”
Man, don’t you just hate endings like that? No happy endings in Chekhov. And why should there be; after all, remember this is a man of whom his biographer wrote, “In Chekhov’s writing, everything, absolutely everything, is seen as a problem that has no solution; everything, absolutely everything, is questioned by why? Why? Why? though no answer to the question is ever proposed.” You know what Chekov’s problem was? He didn’t know the meaning of life – He never was, for all his intellect, able to find an answer to the why question of life. Is that like you? Is life for you the ‘boredom of everyday life and the feeling of irrevocable loss?’ You don’t have the meaning of life? You don’t know why you are here?
The question of meaning forms the penultimate reason why I am a Christian. If you remember, I am a Christian because I live in God’s World, I am a reader of God’s Word, I am an admirer of Christ’s life, I benefit from Christ’s death and I believe in Christ’s resurrection from the dead. But now I want to add a sixth reason to that impressive list and it is this – I have found the meaning of life in Jesus Christ.
In the passage before us in John 17:3 we read of a phrase “eternal life” – words which mean many different things to many different people, as we shall see later, but words we Christians understand to signify a life both extended in terms of quantity – in that it goes on for ever, but also stretched out in terms of quality – in that eternal life is the ultimate in fulfilment and meaning. And it is in this, latter sense, that of eternal life being ultimate meaning, I want to talk about today.
I want to address the question of meaning in life by looking at two things: first, the roads people take to find eternal life (and understand when I am talking about eternal life in this instance I am primarily talking about fulfilment and meaning) and secondly, the destination or reality of eternal life – that is what exactly people expect to find at the end of their journey.
[A] The Road to Eternal Life
As many people as there are on this planet, as many roads people take to try and find true meaning in life. And yet, everyone is looking for true meaning – they want to know why they are here and what they are here for. And so, people go down many different roads looking for true meaning – and I want to focus on what turn out to be dead end streets and what turns out to be the true way:
1. Dead End Streets – there is hardly a road to meaning which has not been taken – I read on the internet last week that a new religion with an adherent base of 40,000 in the UK alone (that’s 4 times bigger than the entire Free Church of Scotland) has applied to the United Nations for recognition as an official religion – it is the religion of Jedi Knights – that is Star Wars ‘may the force be with you’ religion. Whatever it is, however weird and wacky, people will search through it for meaning. As I see it, there are two main dead end streets people look down in an attempt to find meaning:
a. Materialism – another term for materialism is secular humanism – that is to say that there is no God and that true meaning can only be found in what we have and what we are here and now. And so, the consistent materialist will find all his pleasure and meaning in what he does in life in terms of career, in who he is in life in terms of popularity, character, reputation and physique, and who he is with in life in terms of friends and family. I call this the Walt Disney pursuit of meaning – the world is your oyster and the stars are your goal. As long as there is no God, you can live purely for yourself. And let’s not beat about the bush – this way of life can be enjoyable – there can be great pleasures in sin. And yet, we all know stories of people who got to the top of their career only to find that nothing lay beyond and the meaning they had been searching for doesn’t satisfy; we all know people, perhaps we are them, who staked everything upon their families only to experience the pain of break-up and loss; we all know that ‘the world is your oyster’ is a not-so subtle lie, because this oyster has a habit of spitting sand in your eye. Listen to these three quotes from famous actors – first, Ioan Gruffudd, the actor who plays Captain Hornblower, on life in Hollywood, “one morning you feel on top of the world, the next morning you want to kill yourself.” Then the actress Joan Collins who said, “The problem with beauty is that it is like being born rich and getting poorer.” And then the actor Antonio Banderas who said of fame, “I don’t care about being more popular than anybody. Being popular is a pain in the ‘backside’. It would be a great gift to have for six months. For your whole life, it’s not fun, unless you’ve an ego the size of a hotel.” Materialism doesn’t yield meaning – it’s a dead end street.
b. Religion – it would seem strange coming from a church pulpit, but another dead end street in the quest for meaning is religion itself. Clearly, religion is a far more popular dead end street than materialism – for every one person seeking meaning through secular humanism today, I would suggest there are probably 5 seeking meaning through religion. There are 3 aspects of religion in particular which people use to try and find purpose in life:
· Morality – some people try and live the best moral lives they can, believing that the harder they try, the more good works they do the more fulfilment they will find in life. They see life as being like a set of scales held by God, and as long as your good works outweigh your bad works then you are OK. The problem with this way of thinking is that it is blind and leads to despair – blind in that if you think you are a good person, you don’t know yourself very well – not the way that God knows you anyway; and leading to despair because whatever the good works that you do, the world around you is slipping more and more into immorality and there’s really nothing you can do to stem the tide. Trying to find meaning and purpose through morality is a fruitless attempt to catch the wind in a box – it just leaves you exhausted and more confused than ever.
· Ceremony – some people think that as long as they perform the right religious ceremonies, as long as they read the Bible, go to church, perhaps pray from time to time, take communion and get their kids baptised – as long as they do these things, they will find meaning and fulfilment in life. Or to de-Christianize it, as long as they pray three times a day, as long as they offer the right sacrifices to God or as long as they spend the right amount of time meditating or reciting spells and chants – as long as they get the ceremony right, then they will be OK – eternal life, and all that goes along with it, shall be theirs. This is a view I encountered when I went as a teenager to private school in England – my fellow pupils honestly thought that because they were members of the Church of England, and because they had been confirmed, that was all they needed.
· Idolatry – this is a bit like the last point, but in the world today, there are literally billions of people engaging in the worship of idols, thinking that they will find true fulfilment in bowing down to a piece of stone or wood. They might offer sacrifices or burn incense or candles to their idols, but whatever it is, there are billions engaged in it. And yet, there’s a meaninglessness about it all – after all, what possible difference can a piece of painted wood or stone make to your life? Can these idols speak? Do they have ears? Can they smell the incense? Trying to find meaning and purpose through worshipping idols is a pointless attempt to contain the ocean in a thimble – no matter how many idols you have, you’ll never find meaning in any of them.
Our world is full of people looking for meaning in all the wrong places, performing acts of contortion just to make ideas fit their mould. I saw in the paper this week a series of pictures showing how a certain man can dislocate his hips so as to make himself fit into a small box – he ends up with legs mixed up with arms and head all over the place – that’s what we do with the meaning question – dislocate and break ourselves in a fruitless attempt to find eternal life and fulfilment – but at the end of the day all we are left with is broken hearts and doctor’s bills.
2. One Way – By contrast, Jesus here is telling us that there is only one way to find true meaning and fulfilment in life – there is only one way to have eternal life – He says, “this is life eternal, that they may know you, the only true God and the one you have sent Jesus Christ.” Eternal life, true meaning and fulfilment as human beings comes not through religion or materialism, but through knowing the one true God and His Son Jesus Christ. It is a relationship with God, not the amount of real estate we have, or the reputation we have earned, but a relationship with God – knowing Him – that is the road to true meaning.
But the question we’ve got here is one of access – given that our God is the one true God – given that He is infinitely holy, infinitely mighty and infinitely great – how can we frail, mortal, sinful and pathetic creatures get to know Him? Where is the common ground between us and God at which we can meet and the relationship between us can grow? That’s why in vs. 3 we read of another person involved – there is us (they), there is God (the only true God) but there is also Jesus Christ. How can I get to know God – how can I have a relationship with God – the answer is through Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except by me”. Millions are searching for meaning in many and any god this morning, but meaning can only be found in this only true God, and it can only be found by coming to Him through the One He has sent Jesus Christ.
Bear in mind the timing of Jesus praying of the prayer in John 17 – it is the night before He was crucified upon the cross. On that cross, He was that middle ground between us and God – on that cross He was bearing all our sins and wrongdoing upon His own shoulders and doing away with it – He was preparing the ground for us to know God. Nobody else has ever done that or could do that – only Jesus. And that’s why you can find true meaning in knowing God today, because of what Jesus has done for you on the cross; and that is where, if you are not a Christian today, you can find true meaning and purpose in life – not in your cash book or your career, but in the Christ who hung upon the cross to introduce you to the only true God. Do you know God today? I know it’s a preposterous question to be asking, but look at the text, see its worth asking in the light of what Jesus says there – do you know God? Why don’t you come today, even now and experience true meaning as it is to be found in Him and Him alone.
[B] The Reality of Eternal Life
In this point, I want to look at the aspect of what that meaning, or eternal life itself, looks like. Remember, we’ve already seen the right and the wrong way to go about finding the meaning of life, but now I want to ask what is it that we deem to be the most satisfactory meaning to life? I want to look at two meanings – the first, a Pandora’s box of worldly ideas, and then the real meaning of life.
1. A Pandora’s Box of Ideas – If you were to go out onto the street and stop 100 people and say to them, what do you want life to be about you would get many different ideas, but I think these ideas would boil down into 3 groups:
a. Eternal Pleasure – the idea behind this meaning is that life is about living now in such a way as to make sure that after we die there is eternal pleasure – and when I say eternal pleasure, I mean pleasure in the carnal, worldly sense. I am talking about a heaven full of alcohol and women – physical and emotional pleasure forever – a Nirvana state of eternal filthy ecstasy. A variant of this would be the New Age spiritualism view of the consciousness of the dead being absorbed into the eternal mind in which there is infinite joy. The problem with this view of eternal carnal pleasure is that it doesn’t appeal to everyone – it may come across as an ecstasy to Joe Bloggs, but to his next door neighbour it sounds like hell.
b. Temporary Pleasure – the idea here is that because there is no afterlife, because there is no God and therefore no accountability for our actions, you can find meaning in experiencing carnal pleasure here on earth – whether that’s sexual pleasure, narcotic pleasure, high risk sport pleasure, or career pleasure. There’s the dropout Uni student who snowboards his way through the haze of marijuana and a host of faceless partners looking for himself. But he doesn’t find anything worth looking for at the end of the tunnel – he just turns to despair. He is looking for the bigger rush, because the meaning of life is pleasure and more pleasure. Another variation of this, probably more common, is the fantasy of finding ultimate meaning in the simple things of life – in the family, in the career, in the success of your football team, whatever. The problem with finding meaning in temporary pleasure is that it’s like a drug, and like any drug its addictive and you need progressively more and more of it to keep you interested and fulfilled – but there’s no more of it, its just an empty sham we weren’t made for and doesn’t truly satisfy. The high-risk pleasure seeker breaks his neck on a bungee jump and is left paralysed for the 50 year remainder of his life – dependant upon others to clean him, dress him and take him to the toilet – where’s the pleasure in that?
c. Nihilism – people of this type are quite happy saying that there really is no meaning and purpose in life. They are of the Queen variety, who according to the favourite song ask, “who wants to live forever”. Life means nothing, there is no ultimate purpose – everything which takes place is either purely random or mechanically ordered with you as a concoction of chemicals of no more intrinsic value than a child’s chemistry set. Life is the proverbial scream of the painting fame – one long howl of frustration at the lack of meaning. It’s Chekhov’s Typhus – your birth, your marriage, your children, your job – none of it means anything – Einstein’s theories of relativity, Constable’s Haywain, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – the greatest achievements of mankind – they serve no purpose. What a dark, depressing, sordid prospect – that nothing you or I will ever do counts for anything – and it’s a picture every sinew of our beings strain against because we intuitively know it’s not true.
See the lengths to which people will go just as long as they don’t have to admit God into the picture – just as long as God isn’t part of the equation!
2. True Reality – what is the reality as compared to the fantasies of our own imaginations. The great St. Augustine wrote, “Lord, thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee”. Though he lived 1600 years ago, Augustine has it spot on – the reality is that not only is the road to true meaning to be found through knowing God, but true meaning itself is knowing God – and God has so made us as to leave us restless and frustrated in every other road we try until we come to know Him. Eternal life, whether measured in terms of its quantity (as going on for ever) but especially its quality is a wonderful thing because it is what we, as human beings, were made for – to know God.
But again, I ask the question, since knowing God seems to be such a nebulous idea, what is knowing God? What does it mean to truly know God? Look at the text in John 17:3 – ‘this is life eternal, that they know you – the only true God and the one whom you have sent Jesus Christ’ – this word ‘and’ which comes in the middle of the sentence is there for a purpose – it is telling us what it means to know the only true God – it means to know the one He has sent Jesus Christ. In other words, what this text is telling us is that eternal life is knowing Jesus Christ. That is the way to eternal life, but that is also eternal life. Eternal life is not sitting on clouds plucking harp strings; its not being faced with roomfuls of banquets and harems of women, its not being absorbed into mother Gaia and her consciousness – it is knowing Jesus Christ. And now that takes us full circle back to the beginning of what I am trying to say today – that we can have the beginnings of eternal life here and now if we know Jesus Christ. To know Him is life – I never lived before I came to know Him as Saviour and Lord. And the times in my life where I have been closest to Him have been the times when I have been least restless – they have been the times when I knew why I was alive and I was at peace inside and out.
And you ask, what is it about Jesus that is so wonderful? Heaven’s infinite ages will not exhaust all that we can see in Him, not just in terms of the wonder of His character and love towards us, but also in terms of the greatness of what He has done for us in His life, death, resurrection and exaltation to the right Hand of the Father on High to reign as Lord for ever and ever. Knowing this Jesus – that is the meaning of life – and I encourage you today, on the basis of the invitations of God’s Word and the prayers of Jesus Himself – to come and know Jesus. AMEN