The Atheistic Meaning in Life

"I tried your religion for awhile," he said, "and I found it's just a burden to carry.  You know what I've figured out?  Life justifies living.  Life is its own reward and explanation.  I don't need some pie-in-the-sky mirage to keep going.  This life has enough pleasure and mystery and adventure in it not to need anything else to account for it.  Life justifies living."

Mark Buchanan, Leadership, (Winter 2004), 38

I have heard this so many times.  I was first confronted with it as a philosophy student as an undergraduate.  The person talking was trying to convince me that my childhood belief system should be discarded.  Little did they know when they started the discussion that I had become a believer at 18 for fairly non-childish reasons.  It was a great discussion.

Why?

In many ways I agree with the above statement.  I so enjoy life.  I love friends and laughter.  My biggest disappointment in moving is being separated from my friends.  Good friends are so important for enjoying life!

In addition, I find such peace and beauty when I am out in nature.  In fact, I do everything I can to get out in nature all the time!  I think more than most, I truly enjoy life.  I love its pleasure, mystery, and adventure.  I do pray it will never end!

That being said, I know it will end.  As my body settles into middle age, I cannot enjoy the food I once enjoyed.  My intestinal pain and other physical symptoms make eating what was once pleasurable very unpleasurable.  Now I have to watch carefully what I eat.  It does take some of the pleasure and adventure out of my life while adding a non-enjoyable mystery as to why my body behaves as it does with gluten full food!

What about those who begin life with a series of poor choices- choices that haunt and misshape them for the rest of their life?  What about those who experience incredible abuse that warps their entire life experience?  What about those who witness and experience trauma that haunts their dreams and paralyzes their waking hours?

"Life is its own reward and explanation" is a selfish observation from one who is blessed with health, strength, good-fortune, and financial resources that allow them freedom to find pleasure.

When times are good, I agree with the above paragraph.  When times are bad, I think that the above paragraph leaves room for little else than suicide.  At the very least, all that is left is frustration and anger.

What if the above statement was given some better context?  What if this life is often extremely good, but even at its best it is a mere glimpse or shadow of a better world, a better life, that we were created to enjoy?

Such a perspective would explain why we find such pleasure, mystery, and adventure in many events and experiences in this life.  It would also give an explanation for those who are suffering.  

Friend, there is more to living than just this life!  We were created for eternity.  All that is lacking in this world helps us understand and clarify what the next world will be like.  Life with God, in relationship with God, gives us a taste of what life will be like when our mortal bodies depart and our sinful nature is gone.

The hope in Christ is not a crutch for the weak.  It is the truth that explains our experience.  The here and now is not all there is.  We were created to enjoy so much more.  That is why we have such longing; why we have such a desire for peace, security, love, and respect.  

Don't be satisfied for the pat answers of the healthy, wealthy, and young.  Find the true meaning of life in a faith relationship with Jesus Christ.

Our Empowering Pride

We will encounter all of these evils in various forms in the other sins.  But is only when we know the working of pride in us that we see how deeply the sins are interwoven.  Here is the keystone of the arch, and once we recognize that it runs through almost everything that we do, everywhere in our natures, we are in a better position to fight the other sins.  This is the importance of the warning of Dorothy Sayers, that "the devilish strategy of Pride is that it attacks us, not in our weakest points, but in our strongest.  It is preeminently the sin of the noble mind."  Not only of the noble, but also of the righteous.  Self-rightesouness is a common and peculiarly loathsome form of Pride.  When we encounter it in the noble mind, Pride is like a taint or flaw.  It suffuse the whole character of the person, even where that character is apparently noblest or strongest.  If it lies so pervasively in the best, it must lie at least equally so in us.

Pride is in our Envy, persuading us that we deserve better than we have, even to be other than we are, and so inciting us to pull down whatever we perceive to be superior to us.  Pride is in our Anger, in which we adopt a position of superiority from which our scorn and obstinacy, and even our elation, will not let us be budged.  Pride is in our Avarice, prompting us to display ourselves in 'an extravagant array of clothing,' as the Parson puts it in Chaucer's tale, and in 'keeping up great households,' which we do not need.  Pride is in our Gluttony, in the display again of an 'excess of divers meats and drinks; and especially in 'certain baked meats and made-dishes,' as the Parson says with his usual spirit, 'burning with spirituous liquors and decorated and castellated with paper, and in similar waste.'  Pride is in our Sloth, in our assurance that we may get by with a minimum of effort and find achievement and reward by sluggishness.  Pride is in our Lust, in our scant regard for the flesh and feelings of others, and our belief that we may dehumanize them and ourselves and still be regarded as human.  Pride is the sustainer of our sinning, the reinforcer of all its motives.

Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly Sins Today, 44.

I have to say again that I have truly enjoyed re-reading this book!  As I get older, I find that I am less concerned with reading all the new and exciting books.  I find that I know what most of them say from their dust jacket (how's that for pride!).  Truly Solomon was right that there is nothing new under the sun.  By application there is really nothing new written about the Christian life and the Church that has not been thought of before.

Increasingly I am enjoying deep and thoughtful books and writers who make me slowly think through what is written.  I guess somewhere along the way I got old and boring!

Our culture promotes and encourages misplaced pride in all of us.  From our consumerism to our view of government and its role in "promoting the common good" (whatever that means to you) our Western Culture promotes, encourages, and lives by feeding our pride.

Is there any wonder why most of us do not see it?  Is there any wonder why Americans are known as the most pompous, foolish people on the planet?

Take some time to think and pray through the above passage.  How is your life marred by pride?  How does pride feed those sins that you just cannot seem to shake?  How does pride keep you from walking with God in humble reliance on the Holy Spirit?

We need grace!  Lord, I need grace.  Help us to see our sin so we can repent of our sin against You and find our rest in Jesus Christ's love and righteousness.  Truly He is enough!

The Fire and Death of Anger

William F. May gives the name of Hatred to the sin of Anger, to emphasize that it takes hold of us "in the highest reaches of the mind," that it becomes an obsession, that once it has taken hold it endures.  The point is important, but Hatred is the wrong word.  Hatred is not the same as Anger, although it is a large component of it.  It is often one (but only one) of its motives, and is unavoidably one of its consequences.  If we are to give Anger another name, to emphasize its character, we should stick to the family of its close relatives.  We may call it Wrath, which carries the same suggestion of an obsession, of something that consumes us, not the flash of lightening, the sudden clap of thunder, but a burning in us like a banked fire.  Wrath is a fixation.  Its eyes are set on the object of its anger.  It devours itself and others.  It lays waste.  A modern symbol of it is the policy of the scorched earth in war.

We think of Anger in terms of fire: blazing, flaming, scorching, smoking, fuming, spitting, smoldering, heated, white hot, simmering, boiling, and even when it is ice-cold it will still burn.  It has been called the Devil's furnace, and other sins will fuel it.

Henry Fairlie, The Seven Dead Sins Today, 89.

I first read Fairlie's book in the early 1990s.  Since that time I have used it as a text in teaching systematic theology, and I have recommended it many times.  This book is an excellent and deep portrayal of sin in the modern world.  I am amazed how a book written in 1978 for an obviously academic audience can remain insightful.  I guess I should not be amazed since the character and effects of sin have not changed!

At different times in my life, I have been a very angry person.  For example, when my dad died I was obsessed with my loss and why it happened.  I remember clearly waking up at night from a dream with my teeth clenched and my blood pressure up.  I wish this only happened once, but it occurred several times.  Even my sub-conscience mind was angry.  

Perhaps a little background might help explain this anger.  My dad died because he had really given up the desire to live.  Because of the pain and hurt he had experience, he ate himself to death.  Now knowing some of my health issues, I believe he suffered from the same malady, which helped sap his desire to live.  At the time, I did not know this.  Instead, I ran over in my head all the ways that by dad had been hurt.  I knew I missed him greatly.  I was mad at all who had caused him pain.

Meanwhile in my own life, I was going through a very difficult period.  I was in my Ph.D. program and preparing for exams.  I had an emotionally and mentally abusive new faculty member who delighted in tearing me down.  Like most graduate students, we had extreme financial pressures.  Pressures from outside and loss weighed me down.

Through it all, I found within myself a consuming anger: fuming, smoldering, simmering, with the occasional white hot and boiling moments.

The problem with anger is that it poisons the well to all relationships and all of life.  Anger casts out love, diminishes faith, and colors every area of life with the very flames of hell.

No wonder anger has been called the Devil's furnace!

Honestly, I do not know if I have ever gotten over it even though people do not tell me anymore "You are really an angry person."  Anger mars the soul.

How did I deal with it?  

First, I had to recognize it.  I could not see it.  I believed my anger was "justified," not only over my dad, but in all areas of my life.  As such, I was displaying "righteous" anger.  Can you see how my pride got involved!  

The Holy Spirit had to use life, others, and His still small voice to confirm my problem with anger.  I was so angry when He did this!  Then as the consequences became more apparent, I was appalled, ashamed, and at the end of my rope.  I had no power to change.

So, I cried out for mercy.  I repented of my sin and confessed my inability to change my angry heart.  I found I truly needed a savior.  I am so thankful that Jesus answered my prayers by lavishing His love upon me.  

Slowly He quieted the fire.  I wish I could testify that I was transformed instantly, but it took time to find healing.  In fact, now that I know what anger looks and feels like, I find it is something I have to constantly repent of and seek Jesus' help to deal with.

In some Christian circles this would illustrate weakness.  I think it illustrates maturity and growth.  Like a "recovering" alcoholic I have many days of anger sobriety, but I now know this tendency is always within me.  All of my other sin tendencies can feed it and bring it back into flame.  As a result, I need to keep close to Jesus and have Him tend my soul!

So what about you?  I have met many believers who are marked by anger.  Mentioning it to them brings denial and "righteous" anger toward your presumption.

Is that you?  Is this your mark?

We live in a fallen world.  It is not fair.  It is often cruel.  It is filled with pain and abuse.  The key is to allow Jesus to transform you so you do not promote unfairness, cruelty, and more pain and abuse.  If you do not deal with the Devil's furnace, it is more than likely that you are passing on more fallenness than grace, no matter what you claim to believe.

Repent of your very real sin and believe in Jesus Christ as your only hope.  Ask Him to love the anger right out of you.  Ask Him to watch over those places within you where anger can come back to life.  He will do so.  He loves you so much.

Making Insiders and Outsiders

A second counterfeit form of spiritual maturity is outward appearance.  In his commentary on Romans, James Dunn noted that first-century rabbinic writing focused on dietary law, circumcision, and Sabbath keeping.  Why would the rabbis spend so much time on these ancillary aspects of the faith?

Because all groups want to define who is in the group and who is out.  Groups tend to establish "boundary markers" to make this distinction.  Sociologists define these markers as highly visible, relatively superficial practices- like dietary laws and Sabbath customs.

Conforming to boundary markers too often substitutes for authentic transformation.

The church I grew up in had its boundary markers.  A prideful or resentful pastor could have kept his job, but if ever the pastor was caught smoking a cigarette, he would've been fired.  Not because anyone in the church actually thought smoking a worse sin than pride or resentment, but because smoking defined who was in our subculture and who wasn't- it was a boundary marker.

Boundary markers change from culture to culture, but the dynamic remains the same.  If people do not experience authentic transformation, then their faith will deteriorate into a search for the boundary markers that masquerade as evidence of a changed life.

John Ortberg, "True (and False) Transformation," Leadership Summer 2002, 102.

Amen and Amen.

John Ortberg hits the nail on the head with this article and this quote.  What is amazing is that groups often cannot see that they have created an artificial boundary marker.  It is assumed.  It is part of the culture.  It is the very air they breathe.

Yet, outsiders can feel it immediately.

This is one of the primary reasons that churches do not grow!  Only people who outwardly conform to our boundary markers- before arriving at our church- will feel welcome and loved when with us.

Notice that the cause of our boundary markers is rooted and established in unbelief.  Because of a lack of individual and corporate  transformation, we consciously and unconsciously establish secondary boundary markers to define "true life."  Unfortunately, they have nothing to do with a transformed heart by the grace of Jesus Christ!

How do we escape these tendencies?

I think there are two ways to escape.  First, we can attack the ugliness of our boundary markers directly.  Then, folks will repent of our these idols when confronted with them.  Unfortunately, this rarely works.  Why?  To confront our boundary markers is to attack our "spirituality."  Even if it is false spirituality, it feels like life to those who practice it.

Such confrontation of false spirituality is what got Jesus killed.

The second means of escape is like the first, but it is a bit more subtle.  Instead of directly dealing with the false boundary markers in others, we merely proclaim, model, live out, and believe the real gospel of repentant, dependent faith.  Such faith always leads to transformation and joy.  From this position of life change, we can invite folks to something deeper and better than false boundary marker spirituality.

I wish I could say this always works.  Yet, my experience tells me that it works sometimes but not always.  Why?  People hold on to their false spirituality even when it does not work to produce transformation and joy.

Such gospel living and proclaiming is what got Jesus killed.

Even with these potential pitfalls and possible rejection, gospel-living and gospel-believing is the call of the True Church and all true believers is Jesus.  Authentic spirituality removes the need for defining who is inside and who is outside (also who is right and who is wrong).  It puts us all in the same boat of needing grace to be transformed by faith in Jesus as our source of life.

Are you willing to take up your cross and follow Jesus to promote this true spirituality?  What steps can you take to begin or further this promotion of the gospel over false boundary marker spirituality?