The Facts of Life Series: Meaning & Purpose
What is this life all about? What is the meaning of life? And what is its purpose? What’s the point of reality and existence, of our living and dying? What do we live for and how do we rightly live?
These primary, profound questions confront virtually every person who has ever lived. Even our young children ask these questions. For such questions are the foundation for all of life and our ultimate destination, our immediate existence and our practical activity.
And, in our most introspective moments, their profundity haunts us and their practicality confronts us. That’s why so many of us just put our heads down and go about our daily living without thinking all that much about these questions. For thinking this closely and clearly about all of life makes most of us uncomfortable, unsettled, uncertain. Thinking this closely about our lives’ ultimate meaning and purpose and their connections to our temporal practicalities and priorities can make things seem more obscure, rather than clearer and more certain.
To make matters worse, our dominant culture ignores such questions and denies the possibility of any and every truth about life’s purpose and meaning. Our cultural default belief is that no truth really exists. Our modern culture’s only universal truth is that there is no truth at all, with the possible exception of a small set of scientific truths about the physical universe we inhabit.
While it is up to each of us to solve the puzzle of existence, our culture remands questions of meaning and purpose to the complete subjectivity of each and every person. Each of us must determine our own personal truth about life’s meaning and purpose, rather than discover the inherent truth about life’s meaning and purpose. Our modern culture teaches us there is no truth, no possibility of real truth about these crucial questions. Our public intellectuals and educational entities teach this explicitly and implicitly and have for decades. In our modern world, the absence of truth is a cultural given.
But they are wrong. Wrong on a scale as profound as these questions. For life does have meaning and purpose. And, its meaning and purpose are matters of truth, real truth, objective truth, knowable truth, provable truth. Not only is there truth about life’s ultimate meaning and purpose, there is also a wealth of immediate and practical truths that inherently derive from these ultimate truths. And, all this is surprisingly simple to prove.
The primary error in modern culture involves faulty assumptions about what constitutes evidence and how such evidence is used to prove the case for life’s meaning and purpose in the ultimate sense, as well as in its many practical, immediate manifestations. Our modern culture assumes science is the only way truth can be known with any degree of certainty and confidence. Unless truth is physically demonstrable under the controlled and rigorous conditions inherent in the scientific empirical processes, it is not truth, but merely an opinion, a philosophical idea. For philosophy is always a matter of opinion to them.
Think about that for a minute. And, look at the assumptions here. Anything not physical, anything intangible, is merely a matter of opinion. Nothing more. That’s what they think. But isn’t this very idea intangible, untestable, unprovable. Can they even test this idea scientifically? Isn’t this idea a contradiction? For their idea about meaning and purpose is not a physical thing either.
To make matters worse, they misapprehend the nature of science. For science derives its rigor from reason. Simply put, science is just reason applied to the physical phenomena of the tangible, material world. Science is reason applied to the physical aspects of life. And, reason, in all its forms, is science’s primary perceptual and perpetual guide. And, reason isn’t a physical thing either, right?
Reason is a mental process, an intangible order, a facet of the intangible mental reality of human life. Reason is rooted in right thinking, grounded by the rules of inductive and deductive logic. Reason guides and informs science. It structures scientific research and its derived evidence and proves the truth about the physical world.
But, reason also proves truths of an intangible nature. Just look at the “law of cause and effect,” a crucial law in virtually all scientific investigation. Every effect must have a prior cause. Effects can’t cause themselves. This is a scientific certainty and a logical law. Now, look at the origin of the cosmos. What caused this effect? Can you see that sooner or later, science and reason must conclude the ultimate and inevitable existence of a cause that was not caused? And, this is what we call God.
For God is the necessary “uncaused causer,” a being that isn’t a matter of belief, a being who must be there. For God must be there as a deductive logical necessity and as a scientific inevitability. And, if you deny this factual rational truth and this scientific necessity, you are implicitly rejecting science and reason. For your problem is in your assumption that the only real reality is the physical one and this assumption prevents you from seeing the true nature of science’s rational foundation.
This modern mistake falsely limits what we can know to the physical dimensions and denies the inherent rational realities of the scientific method. This modern error denies reason’s real power to know truths of a mental nature and to prove not only the existence of truth, but many other truths in areas we have come to think of as matters of belief, not matters of fact.
For philosophy, theology and morality contain truths as certain as science does, provided reason is used properly and rigorously. Just look at the brief proof for the existence of God above. The “uncaused causer” tells us clearly the physical cosmos must start with a being, an intangible being of immense power and knowledge. That this being is an eternal, intangible mind that organized the composition of the cosmos in minute detail. That all parts of this cosmos were intended and planned with an overall purpose and with a variety of particular purposes.
That this Divine Being designed organic life and crowned this vast creativity with creatures who bear the very imprint of the Divine image, a reflection of God’s very nature in all its facets and feature. That this Being created the rational order and our rational faculties, as well as our capacity to use them routinely and purposefully. That this being enabled us to perceive and to understand goodness, beauty and love in all their many forms. And all of this is known through our rational powers applied to the tangible and intangible worlds we inhabit. All of existence exists for a reason and with an end in mind. It does because a Divine Mind intended it that way.
So, what is the meaning and purpose of life, in light of this reality? Well, it is two-fold. The ultimate purposes for every human being, entail the two great Commandments: To know and love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love others as we love ourselves. Both of these assume the presence of our individual free will, the capacity to decide to pursue these purposes or to avoid or reject them. They also implicitly entail a relational intimacy perfected in eternity, a state of consummate love with God and others, which we develop here as we live our temporal lives, but which is fully and finally fulfilled in Heaven.
These two purposes are our ultimate purposes, as well as our temporal ones. Lest we forget these two overarching purposes, Jesus reminds us of some derivative practical purposes such as the Great Commission’s call “to make disciples of all nations” and “to be the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” He also exhorted us to “be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect,” “to love one another as I have loved you” and prayed that we “may be one as” the Father and I are one.
More particularly, our intimate relationship with God is sought not only as an end itself, but also as an ongoing process of relational intimacy, intellectual enlightenment and discerning obedience to His particular purpose and plan for our individual lives. For when we embrace this temporal purpose, it has an idiosyncratic character, a character specific and intimate to each of us. That is why we seek His guidance regarding His call to a particular vocation in life, and why we seek the specificity of this plan as we follow Him day-by-day.
For He desires us to know Him in the fullness of our relationship with Him and to seek His plan, that we can know Him intimately and individually, particularly and personally. For that is what true love is. This is also why He exhorts and invites us personally to seek and to keep seeking Him. For as we do, we will most surely find and keep finding Him, until we fully consummate our relationship with Him and see Him face to face in Heaven.
For our life’s meaning is consummated in our perfected love for Him and in our eternal intimacy with Him. And our life’s purpose is the development of this intimacy over the length of our life and our joyful willingness to follow Him wherever He may lead. For He calls us to abide in Him and to follow Him, just as He promises to be with us and to enable us. For He calls us to an epiphanic life, a life of intimate encounter and experience. A life of high adventure and joy. A life of true beauty and goodness. A life of passion and a life of peace. A peace that passes all understanding.
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This article is the tenth part in an extended series on the “The Facts of Life” by F. X. Cronin. You can start with part one by clicking here and see previous entries by clicking here.
We also recommend Mr. Cronin’s latest book, The World According to God: The Whole Truth About Life and Living. It is available from your favorite bookstore and through Sophia Institute Press.
Photo by Dmitry Tomashek on Unsplash
