Human meaning in a material world

“Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.”

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill.” (Acts 17:22-29)

Disconnected

Like the Athenians, people continue to add things up and come up short. Many of them are wealthy and highly educated. It would seem that their wealth and knowledge should bring deep and lasting meaning. Why is that these things which are so meaningful on one level, do not bring deeper lasting satisfaction and purpose? Why is there this nagging sense of disconnection? Why do we struggle with the feeling that something very important is missing? Why do we carry a deep sense that whatever it is that is missing, it cannot be found in the material world?

No accumulation of possessions; no amount of success; not even meaningful human relationships – as valuable and satisfying as they are— none of the “this-world-experiences” satisfy the restless longing deep within ourselves. Our sense of disconnection seems to go beyond the natural and material world.

William A. Dembski, a fellow of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, wrote about this search.

“Materialism remains unsatisfying. It seems inadequate to explain our deeper selves. People have aspirations. We long for freedom, immortality, and the beatific vision. We are restless until we find our rest in God. These longings cannot be satisfied by matter. Our aspirations are after all, spiritual (the words are even cognates). We need to transcend ourselves, but the motions and modifications of matter offer no opportunity for transcendence. Materialists in times past admitted as much. Freud saw belief in God as wish-fulfillment. Marx saw religion as an opiate. Nietzsche saw Christianity as a pathetic excuse for weakness. Each regarded the hope for transcendence as a delusion. This hope, however, is not easily excised from the human heart. Even then most hardened materialist shudders at Bertrand Russell’s vision of human destiny: ‘Man is the product of causes which hand no prevision of the end they were achieving’ and which predestine him ‘to extinction in the vast death of the solar system.’” “The human heart” Dembski wrote, “longs for more.” (First Things: A Journal of Religion and Public Life).

We must agree with J. I. Packer that, “we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs its.” (Knowing God, pp 14-15).

How do we understand people who do not know and live for God but seem content and satisfied?

“Many of them have uncomplicated assumptions about meaning and take a great deal for granted. If life has been good to them, they probably have some personal goals in their job or marriage which give them enough satisfaction that they question of deeper meaning seems a bit remote. Unfortunately, however, the realities of life have a way of ganging up on a person with shallow assumptions. Something almost always comes along to shatter the dream and raise the issue of meaning for them. The reason for this is simple: happiness based on worldly security alone is endlessly vulnerable to the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune which may come in the form of illness or inflation or the loss of a loved one. There are all manner of threats to the meaning of our lives both internal and external which can conspire to destroy it if it is inadequately grounded.”

“What the Christian faith offers us is a structure of deeper meaning based upon the love of the Father– which is not vulnerable to destruction (Romans 8:38-39). Of course, it is easy to deny God verbally. What I am saying is that it is not at all easy to deny him in the living out of life because only the existence of God can adequately support the meaning of life. Confessing the atheist’s creed is certainly possible; but living consistently on the basis of it is practically impossible” (Acts 17:27-28) (Pinnock, Reason Enough, pp. 34-36).

Steve Cornell