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'Is there any meaning
in life?'
I came so that [you] might have life
and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).
INTRODUCTION
Today we begin our Advent Course of sermons based on the questions
you wanted us to address. Seventeen of you responded and we
have chosen the four most popular questions, the first of
which was "Is there any meaning in life?" It's a
question ten of you wanted us to address and is, perhaps,
the great question that scientists, philosophers and theologians
have debated down the centuries.
If you are an aficionado of The Hitchhikers
Guide to the Galaxy you'll know the answer. It's 42. But behind
the question lie others: "Why are we here?", "What
is the significance of life?", "What is the purpose
of (one's) life?" and so on. Monty Python came up with
a variety of answers: "Try and be nice to people, avoid
eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some
walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony
with people of all creeds and nations." I guess that
is how a lot of people view the meaning of life. Ultimately
the question is an existential one - that is to say each one
of us has to address the question as best we can.
'What meaning does your life have?' The
question tends to emerge in adolescence and, again, in old
age: as we become aware of life before us, and as the paths
we have chosen begin to close down.
Is there any meaning apart from, "Eat, drink and be merry,
for tomorrow we die." (Is. 22:13)
SCIENCE AND MEANING
If you were - say - a pure scientist you would probably hold
that there IS no 'meaning' to life. To the question 'Why are
we here?' the answer would simply be that we evolved accidentally
and our only purpose is to survive and, if possible, reproduce.
However, if you ask the question, 'Does
life have any significance?' you begin to open up the question
to other fields of exploration.
Again from a scientific point of view the
significance of life is what it is, what it does, and what
mechanisms are behind it. But to a psychologist or biologist,
significance is subjective; an emotional function of the brain,
that cannot exist outside thought and feeling.
PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCEINCES
We are now moving into different realms where issues such
as what makes human beings thrive begin to emerge. Survival
and reproduction may be basic to life but are there other
factors required that enable life to develop? At this point
we have to grapple with matters such as failure and success,
motivation, value and so on which lead to the question of
whether there is such a thing as a purpose to life - or in
life.
This is the realm the social scientist
explores. They investigate people's beliefs about the purposes
of human life by studying and explaining our behaviour and
interaction - why we choose goals, what they goals are, how
they are chosen, and the differences between them.
For example, what causes one person to
be creative and productive whilst another becomes a sadist
or a killer? The social scientist has to embrace a vast range
of factors that are part of our human construct: ethnicities,
religion, social context etc.
In all this, scientists have never been
able to come to a common mind and the debates rage on.
Philosophy emerged to address our understanding
of life and explore, regardless of how we came to be here,
what we should do now that we are here. Ancient philosophers
such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had views about what
sort of life was best (and hence most meaningful). Aristotle,
for example, believed that the pursuit of happiness was the
Highest Good and that such is achievable through our uniquely
human capacity to reason.
By contrast the 19th cent. Danish philosopher,
Søren Kierkegaard, embraced the concept that in order
to find any meaning in life one needs to make a "leap
of faith". He, along with Nietzsche who rejected the
notion of God, argued that each of us has to find our own
meaning in life. Their work marked the beginning of what became
known as 'existentialism' which continues to affect much of
western thinking, not least among some Christians such as
Paul Tillich and Karl Barth.
But what do all these theories mean for
us? If the existentialists are right then we each have to
work out our own meaning - if we even bother to ask the question.
I have a hunch that most people would begin answering the
question by saying that their families, or their work, give
them a sense of meaning and purpose. But what happens when
these things are taken away? When we lose the ones we love,
or when our work comes to an end?
As adolescents we may have dreamed of having
a brilliant career, a wonderful partner and a loving family.
But what if these things didn't work out?
Or if they failed? Often a major crisis in life brings about
the question - does my life have any meaning? It's at moments
like these people may escape into addictions to dull the pain
of grief at the apparent loss of meaning. Yet it is at these
very moments we have the potential to descend to a deeper
level of meaning for ourselves. Whilst most of us gain some
form of meaning from sensing we are part of something bigger
than ourselves, it is the person who stands alone who must
grapple with the ultimate question. If they dare.
In his seminal book, 'Man's Search for
Meaning', Viktor Frankl maintained that our primary drive
in life is not for pleasure but to discover and pursue what
we personally find meaningful either by what we do or through
our encounter with an-other.
And the attitude we take to suffering.
Until we have to consciously live with our mortality we can
so easily avoid those questions.
RELIGION AND MEANING
Religion, of course, seeks to offer ways to address these
'ultimate' questions. Catholic Christianity built on Aristotle's
belief that the purpose of life is to attain the highest good
by proposing that the highest good is the 'knowledge' of God.
In using the word, 'knowledge' we do not mean an academic
understanding but, rather, a gift of God whereby one is embraced
by holy wisdom in which all other goals are attained. Orthodoxy
goes on to teach that, in seeking to be embraced by God, we
become more like God and thus attain our human purpose. Deification.
All Christian teaching acknowledges we
were created in the image and likeness of God yet that image
has become marred through sin.
And the path to deification begins with
humility - embracing the truth about ourselves.
CONCLUSION
Human life is often intense and complex. Moments of crisis
can tear us away from these normal patterns and leave us exposed
and vulnerable to our essential 'nakedness' which is our glory
yet often experienced as our shame. But there are some who
have, voluntarily, placed themselves in that liminal, threshold,
relationship to life. Those men and women who sense a call
to live at the 'edge' of existence - hermits and solitaries
for whom family, career, success and all the rest of what
can often pass for the meaning of life have no meaning. They
are not people who have turned their back on life, but turned
their face to the attainment of life's ultimate purpose. And,
in that turning their face to seek their ultimate purpose
they have discovered that the path leads within.
St. Augustine expressed this aspect of the search in his Confessions,
particularly in the much-quoted passage: "Late have I
loved you, O Beauty, so ancient and so new, late have I loved
you! And behold, you were within me and I was outside…."
This inner path to the meaning of life
leads us to realise that it is in this present moment that
truth unfolds. It is not at some point in the future we discover
life's meaning, but in the now and often through pain. "At
the time when I learned that one of my dearest friends, my
encourager and guide, was dying of AIDS," writes one
Episcopal woman, "I asked God over and over why was this
happening. I struggled for an answer to the meaning of his
life and why he lay alone in a hospital room many miles away."
She then speaks of the great English mystic, Dame Julian of
Norwich: "She herself struggled with the meaning of her
own life experiences. Her answer became mine and it remains
with me today. '… do you wish to know your Lord's meaning
in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning."
For us as Christians the meaning of life
is bound into the knowledge that we are held in Love and that
that Love will never forsake us but will always draw us as
we seek it.
And that Love is to be realised in the smallest of things
as they present themselves in this moment in time. It is easy
to get sidetracked into thinking the meaning of life lies
in success, whether that be in terms of relationships or career.
Yet it is those who have turned from both in order to face
the solitary calling to life who stand for its true meaning
and purpose.
What, for us, is the meaning of life? The
attainment of union with God in love, worked out in and through
all things.
Amen.
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