What Do You Mean When You Talk About Meaning (of Life, That is)?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Yeah, just pulling those two bits out of a few paragraphs was so confusing to me, I had to go back and look at what I write.

Not what I said.

again, not what I said

Marta, I think you have really misunderstood my discussion of Sisyphys.

Me, too. that’s why I’m challenging the assumptions of “normality” by questioning meaning coming only from loving relationships. Not all good relationships would be charactarized as loving. Some are extremely hard and require a kind of determination that few people outside them would understand as love. Even if it is.

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Not all relationships that we are involved in are loving relationships. Think more broadly about the kinds of connections you have with people in your life. Professional, neighborly, governmental, etc. These add to our connectedness.

Eh???

I do not equate productivity having a sense of one’s place in the world.

A person may not sense her or his place in the world, but still has one. It’s important that we maintain connections with people, as that connectedness is of value to them (and us).

I brought in the idea of Intelligent Design, because I see the urge to understand Meaning in ultimate terms as similar to the urge to intuit a maker from the orderliness of what exists.
I am not promoting Intelligent Design. I am goading those who reject it to consider whether they apply the logic of ID to their search for Meaning.

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So how would you frame the question, @Bucky_Wood?
And then how would you answer it?

Thanks for the nice nutshell synopses.
Good to see you around the Forum again.

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Sorry. I was having a hard time figuring out how to articulate it as well with any sort of brevity. Your example, though is precisely the kind of thing I was trying to get at. Thanks for trying so hard to make the connections.

Earlier you had said:

Unexpectedly, I’ve had contact with a wider range of disabled kids than I ever imagined possible.

As you mentioned, kids with autism are a good example. At best social interactions are frustrating and challenging on both sides. How to communicate comprehensibly on my part? On the part of the kid with autism: how to interpret, react and then respond socially appropriately?
Communication and response can be excruciating for both, and still fail. And still be significant, particularly when situated within a significant relationship, and enhance a sense of meaning in both lives. But still be incredibly hard.

Other kids, who are profoundly disabled may appear unresponsive to “outsiders.” Family members, who are able to pick up on the minimal and subtle responses, will understand the responses and the child differently. Depending on how we handle the question we are considering, the relationship could be seen as one-sided and meaningless. The families I know would do (really do) anything to provide the best possible life for their child.

Yeah. I want to keep bringing “the exceptional”, the examples at the ends of our bell curves, back to mind (not specifically yours). Umbrella topics like “meaning of life” can’t only include “people like me.”

Amen, brother. Our jobs as parents is, as much as is in our power, to make ourselves obsolete.

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Terry, I’m speechless!

“At last!” you say.

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Dale this has nothing to do with the OP question: “What do we mean when we talk about meaning (of life)?” or the challenge most of the rest of us are entering in to decide how best to answer it.

Feel free to participate in the actual discussion and put out your own version of the question and how you think it is best answered, rather than criticizing other people’s answers without risking anything yourself.

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When one sees order, one seeks the source of the order. That is a rational process, not an intuitional one. The Greeks found the source of order in the Logos. The Hebrews found the source of order in YHWH. In a sense Christians combined the two. Do you have another theory? Do you think that there is no order, and it has no source?

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Roger, there are other threads for discussing the merits and demerits of ID. This not that thread.

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I agree with you both that life is not absurd though the questions we have may sometimes be. Logic and rationality have a limited sphere of application just as does science though it isn’t always as obvious as to where the line is as it is with science.

What makes sense for us is what fits the map we’ve forged by our experience. But where our sense making maps run out, it is over reach by reason to conclude nothing does could exist beyond.

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I found this quote from Thomas McCall relevant while reading about the revival in Asbury:

“I am teaching a class in theological anthropology at the university this semester, and as we met last Friday, I reminded my students that we are creatures made for worship and communion with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is our telos, the end for which we were created. We are never more fully alive and whole than when we worship. And what we are experiencing now—this inexpressibly deep sense of peace, wholeness, holiness, belonging, and love—is only the smallest of windows into the life for which we are made.”

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This is our telos, the end for which we were created.

From the article. Oh, you already quoted it. :slightly_smiling_face:

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That’s fine. It’s worthy to be repeated.

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This week I’m a bit more focused on other “Meaning of Life” news in my front yard:

Service this morning at University Reformed was full of raw wounds and broken hearts. We’re praying for the survival of the 5 kids still in the hospital and a way for the uni to function somehow.

Telos or no telos, recognized or not, there are many components that make meaning for lives.

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One is the cure and the other is a symptom

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Very cheap shot. You brought up ID and implied that I was ID. Then when I clarified my position, you say I am off topic.

Answer my questions.

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Meaning can be distilled and concentrated, concisely. That does not necessarily preclude nor contradict other expressions.

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Doesn’t meaning entail some kind of telos, temporal at least? If there is no telos, there are no components. Therefore despair.

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That statement you quoted appears to be a genuine contradiction.

This conversation about telos or meaning people can’t help but have, but neither do they really want to have it.

We can’t ever really stop loving!

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Clever way to say infer we often love that which is not lovely

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Yeah. You know first hand the power we have to damage each other. There is risk in relationships. It’s true.

When you say “dependent” here, do you mean specifically needing something from you? Like affirmation, money, companionship, etc? Or do you mean something more like “emotionally close”? I don’t think they’re the same thing. I just want to make sure I understand what you’re saying.

There is a point, where adults are responsible to make their own decisions about how to use or not use the advice they seek from other people. If they’re asking advice, and you give it, they can take it or leave it.

These are really good points. I don’t think that’s what I’m suggesting, but I sure see how you could think that’s what I mean.

Part of the difference is our framing of the question. You use the term “purpose”, and I use the fuzzier, subjective term “sense of place”. “Purpose” doesn’t work for me. But it does for many people, maybe most. I think it is self-defeating, though. It depends on something from outside of us, and it is evaluative. While I’m a Christian, and I think the purpose that you are talking about, can be found in a relationship with Jesus, that purpose is not entirely clear in the day to day. And I understand that people with no relationship with God see their lives as having meaning, even without purpose from God.

The fuzzier, subjective idea I’m talking about “sense of place in the world,” indicates the way we feel about fitting into our worlds. It rejects evaluative factors that go along with the idea of purpose (Good purpose? How well we accomplish our purpose, etc.) And while we are never free of culture, language, and other formative influences (including relationships), or that these things establish our value somehow, they do affect how we feel about our place in our world. Some of them are things we can control, like working to be free of bad relationships, or improving relationships with people we feel hopeful about, or building new connections and relationships.

I’m not claiming to have this all figured out. It’s how I’m thinking right now.

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No I haven’t… but there are still beautiful things in the world. I liked how Robert Malone would quote this passage about how beauty is what will save us. Beauty in Christ, as there is no greater beauty.

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We certainly can’t stop loving something! When it’s the wrong thing(s) I believe it’s called idolatry.

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