MONDAY
In our current campaign, The Irresistible Gospel, we are simply exploring how we should all, whether we are Christian or not, want the gospel to be true because the story is so good. The gospel both appeals to reality and it is compelling. It is simply irresistible.
As we’ve moved through this campaign, we’ve been exploring the irresistible gospel through the philosophical questions of origin, meaning, morality and destiny. To truly be settled and satisfied in one’s life we must have workable answers to these questions. The gospel provides not only satisfactory answers but truly irresistible answers. This week we are focusing on the question of meaning.
Have you ever stopped in the middle of a task and asked, “Why am I doing this?” I do this all the time and I’ve come to realize that it relates back to my childhood. I was a kid who just did stuff with little to no thought of why. I was hyper and annoying. When I was being annoying my brother would just wrestle with me and remind me that he is stronger than me. My sisters, however, had a much more sinister way of dealing with me. They would challenge me to run around the house claiming that they would time me. It was the perfect task for me. I was competitive, hyper and didn’t think much. It required no effort on their part and they rid themselves of my annoyances for a while. They would never actually time me but I would still do it.
Knowing that I would be preaching on this, I ran a test on my daughter, Ellie, last week. She was being annoying, so I challenged her to run a good distance and I would time her. Not surprisingly (she is my daughter after all and takes after me in many ways) she did it without question.
My son Shiloh, however, is a little more thoughtful but no less annoying. Just the other day he was doing what kids his age do to be annoying and asking me “why” to everything I told him to do. I asked him to take a shower and that started the sequence of “why’s.” Although he was just trying to be annoying (and succeeding!) I realized this was a profound question. I could answer this question from multiple angles and no matter which angle I take, as Christians, they end at the same place—God.
Why take a shower?
Angle #1: Personal Hygiene
Because you stink. Why do I stink? You sweat. Why do I sweat? Your body’s way of cooling itself. Why?… I could keep going with natural causes but eventually I would get to “God made it that way.” Then in response to the question of why should we take care of our bodies, God has gifted you with life and a body. He gave us agency and stewardship over creation, so taking care of your body is a part of fulfilling the creation mandate. When we fulfill the creation mandate we make God look glorious. We find joy and satisfaction in him and doing what he called us to do.
Angle #2: Social Considerations
We don’t want to smell you and you don’t want other people at school to have to smell you. Why? It’s repulsive. Why? People don’t like to smell bad smells? Why?… Fast forward a little bit…It’s an act of love towards others. God told us to love one another. When we love one another we make Jesus look glorious. When we love instead of hate we find joy, peace and satisfaction in walking with the Spirit, enjoying the presence of God as love is produced in us by the Spirit.
There are more, but you get the point. The difficulty in this question of meaning is that it is so layered. None of us spend much time thinking past the first or second why throughout our day. We can’t. We shouldn’t. Even though we don’t spend much time thinking about it, this week I want to emphasize why it’s so important that we have this ultimate why as an overarching purpose for our lives.
So often in the daily rhythms and tasks of life, we feel like the figure Sisyphus from Greek mythology. Sisyphus, you’ll remember, was sentenced by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down when he got close to the top. This absurdity and the meaninglessness of life’s tasks feels familiar to all of us. Meaning is ultimately derived in our answer to the question, “Why?”
Holocaust survivor, neurologist and psychologist Victor Frankl wrote a classic book called Man’s Search for Meaning. In it he quotes Friedrich Nietzsche in saying, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” Unfortunately, Nietzsche lost his why and became a nihilist of sorts and towards the end of his life lost his sanity (it’s unclear how much his philosophy had to do with this or if it was caused by illness). Frankl, however, found this statement to be true in the concentration camps. In his experience it was those who had a rich inner, spiritual life of meaning that not only survived the horrors of the Holocaust but did so with enough of their inner life intact to truly live after they were released.
In Scripture we see this question of meaning often explored through story. The story of Job allows us to explore the why of life in the midst of suffering. The story of the people of Israel beckons us to constantly ask why. The big story of Scripture from creation to new creation reveals God’s ultimate purpose.
Scripture is also full of definitive, didactic statements along the way as well. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament explores meaning. Ecclesiastes famously repeats in different ways, “Everything is meaningless.” The conclusion of the matter he says is to “Fear God and keep his commandments.” (Eccl. 12:13) The rest of the week we will fill that in a little bit and bring some clarity.
Reflection
Have you ever asked yourself, “Why?” to the big things of life and even the small things? Do you feel settled in your answers to those ultimate questions of meaning?