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

Actually, I don’t take a negative view of nihilists as a whole. I see from your response how unclear (again) I was in what I wrote. I meant to say that the entier situation at MSU could enforce a nihilistic view of everything. I wasn’t focused on the murderer himself.
No, whenever I have attempted to maintain some extreme view of much of anything, someone comes along eventually and disabuses me of the view.

I hope your visit home goes well and that the church you go to is welcoming. Also that you don’t have to take grief about going to a different church that day. It can be so complicated.

I mentioned a video of an interview with a buddhist that Iain McGilchrist did a few months ago in the welcome back @jstump thread and alerted @Kendel to its relevance to this thread on Meaning. Then I just came across another interview by a second buddhist, apparently taped at the same event which is starting out like gangbusters. For anyone who can afford the time to listen to the first 8 minutes, I’d be interested to discuss both what they say and what that says about the meaning of life. Beyond that I’d also like to chip away at the idea that the only acceptable Christian goal is to convert the entire world to its cultural approach.

Imagine some day intelligent aliens arrived on earth who openly sought us out for the opportunity to meet another sentient, sapient creature and to explore what common features we might share in our sense of who we are, how we live and what we value. Further suppose we discover they too have a sense of the sacred to which they attach great, overarching importance. Should Christians seek to convert them too? Or might the galaxy be big enough for more than one approach to the sacred? If we can abide an alien race with a different road map to the divine, should we be able to do the same with buddhists, muslims and Hindus. If God had trademark interests in being the center of every being’s sense of the sacred, might He not have been more strident about converting them than in holding their neighbors in the same regard as they do themselves?

3 Likes

It’s mostly elders that go there,so I don’t mind them as much. Although elders in Greece are no joke. They can be very judgemental sometimes and rude. But I guess I’ll be fine.

If not I’ll go back to the Roman Catholic one I went on Christmas. In my city there are so few Catholics I only met like 20 people max in there.
The fewer the better for me.

I don’t want any distraction and I want to pass this Easter peacefully.

If I go to my old parish my feelings won’t be anything appropriate for the situation.
I might even lash at some of them since my mental state isn’t very good
Last time I visited my town of birth and saw some of them I was shaking and was in the verge of having a seizure. I don’t know what’s that called but when I see them something like anxiety or something kicks up and I feel very uncomfortable near them.

So I take every step to avoid them.

1 Like

I think I would gently push on some of the worldview issues at play here if that’s ok. For most Christians their faith is not (principally) a philosophy by which they make sense of the world, it is what they believe to be true, at the most fundamental, basic level. It is something that runs to core of who they are in the world. In that sense their theology matters and impacts how they live… or should at least.

Their desire, therefore, to help others come into the fold of faith is because they believe Christianity to be the truth and that folks eternal destinies are in the balance. (This is true incidental of many Muslims too, Islam also being a monotheistic, proselytising religion.) Such actions, attitudes, and beliefs are not acts of intellectual and cultural supremacy in my view, but are (or should) be acts motivated by humble love. As someone famously said, evangelism is one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I support freedom of religion and religious expression. I believe we all benefit from a society in which all are free and able to practice our beliefs without recourse or reprisal. I would never want to see State enforced religion… EVER. However, I would love nothing more than everyone to choose become a Christian. How could I not, it is the only logical conclusion of my theology and theology is important. To say otherwise would be inconsistent with my beliefs, dishonest, and hypocritical.

So where then do we draw then line? If I say I want everyone to be a Christian that would appear to some as ideologically imperialist, yet so might it to say that everyone should consider all religious viewpoints equally valid. And there in lies the rub. Is it OK for me to say that I love Hindus, Buddhist, and Muslims; that I would would fight for their right to freely and peacefully practice their beliefs; even though I consider those beliefs deeply mistaken and if given the opportunity would share (gently and respectfully) what I believe to be the truth? If it isn’t, then I would say that the religious pluralist is not much different from the religious exclusivist, since they too want everyone to share their views on religion.

Thanks for making me think, and for listening to me think out loud.

5 Likes

Hmmm… if I might politely add something, I have from time to time dreamed of asking an alien race if an infinite series can be formed through sequential addition… yes I am that big of an apologetics geek.

2 Likes

Of course, my pleasure. I also enjoy thinking about such matters, especially with someone as thoughtful and gracious as yourself. In the interest of gentle pushing I would return the favor by pointing out that no one knows God in the objective, detailed way they may know cars or mathematics or insects. Whatever God/gods may be, they aren’t the kind of thing we can study up close. We can confess what it is in our experience which persuades us of the truth of our belief, but the only thing we can study in detail is the history of what other people have thought and written down as theology. I anticipate you thinking but what about revelation, miracles and prophets? To that all I can say is we must all claim the truth that calls us and enriches our understanding of what we are here for. Those of us content with the truth we hold now, you and I for example, will have a hard time being persuaded by arguments in favor of what other people believe. That is as it should be since we don’t so much choose such truth for reasons as recognize it. Regardless the truth regarding what is sacred is not something we can be pushed toward by rational arguments; it is instead something that draws us or else it doesn’t.

3 Likes

We certainly cannot comprehend God, as in surround him in knowledge as we can more or less can with some things physical – it’s not for nothing he is called ‘inscrutable’ in a couple of places in the Bible. But we can certainly know, as in apprehend, much of him in what he has explicitly and implicitly and logically revealed to us. How many blind men were there ‘apprehending’ the elephant? We have way more data and true knowledge about God than all of them did about the elephant. I think that also says something about the meaning of life.

I would add God cannot be known in the way a flea can, and neither can there be an infinite number of those things. Yet he can be known better than that, as an infinite being who makes himself known to us in the most unexpected ways.

1 Like

I bet we cannot dictate to him how he must do it, huh.

I don’t know. It’s a start at least. And I’m sure the regular non-Christians here have prayed and seen some contradictory things. I really don’t know their stories. I’m a 46 yo guy who has spent nearly 25 years as a Christian.

In one of those Asbury articles I shared, something was said about the surpassing worth of a single moment of the Divine. It’s pretty awesome how that can change anyone’s mind. I remember Edwards said one of the marks of the First Great Awakening, was that old people who were hardened in their unbelief, came to Christ. I’d like to think that God can do it again, I know he can because he did it for me. A single touch of his Spirit.

2 Likes

Not every statement we don’t agree with is intended to misrepresent and mislead. I personally think the urgency is a traditional solution to the problem of motivating a fitting regard for the sacred which I think of as helping actualize a more robust expression of our humanity and human fulfillment - a notion especially germane to the topic of this thread - when the demands of the mundane are so much more obviously pressing and tangible. Just my guess of course, I certainly wasn’t there.

You’re too kind Mark. The terror of damnation is what drives Protestants and Muslims. Of losing everyone they love.

I really think that is a vestigial feature from an earlier time. It isn’t an attractive feature but it is variable both by denomination and by individual. There is hope it will be de emphasized going forward.

This passage came to mind and I thought it was also fitting in the context of your comment here.

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple…”

Sin is not a lie. I believe you even agreed with this recently. The question is how holy is the God you do not know.

Folks sure use motivated reasoning when they elevate their opinions and deny skeptical theism ←(new and improved more prestigious link ; - ).

Just catching up. Sorry for the length. I’ll preface my replies by expressing my condolences to @Kendel and the MSU community.

The Father mocked him? Really? No, the crowd, religious leaders and elders mocked Jesus, and the taunts that they hurled at him were couched in the same language as Satan’s temptations in the wilderness.

“If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.”
“If you are the Son of God, hurl yourself down from this height.”

image

You sound like an existentialist. Kierkegaard said, Purity of heart is to will one thing.

image

Right. See Wittgenstein. Most of our philosophical confusions can be traced to the limits of our language.

Yeah. Wittgenstein again. See his discussion of “imponderable evidence.”
image

image

Yeah. Withhold judgment until the fruits (if any) are seen.

I have a good friend who left the faith for that reason.

Try harder, my friend. This is rude.

Also rude.

3 Likes

The other day @MarkD shared a different video with Iain McGilchrist over here. I finally got to finish watching this evening and
found his thoughts about purpose around 00:30:00 interesting enough to transcribe them.

According to McGilchrist

There are two kinds of purpose. There’s the kind that the left hemisphere understands, which is the purposing of a tool or a machine to fulfill your will. Once it has fulfilled your will, it’s job is done.

There’s another kind of purpose which belongs to all the things that we like and love. It belongs to games; it belongs to our relationships, to our experience of spirality and of art. They’re not purpose-less. From the point of view of the left hemisphere, you might as well not bother with them, because they have no purpose. However, they are supremely purposeful, because they contain within them something which calls to us and makes us move toward them and beyond. This is not in some designed way by an engineering god. That is a terrible idea that the left hemisphere has dreamt up. It deifies itself as the organizer and mechanic of everything. It says, “God is like that.” But what I understand by god is nothing like that. When I talk about purpose and talk about these values as being values in themselves, ends in themselves. I’m suggesting that we need to re-imagine what we mean by those values and by that purpose.

I like how he points out two different concepts of purpose, one extrinsic and one intrinsic. And I think those two different views show themselves in this discussion in various ways, particularly the first concept: that of a tool.

I think underneath many views of meaninglessness is the assumption that the meaning of our lives results from our being made or coming into being in order to fulfill a role, complete a job, carry out some assignment. The assumption is that without a specific reason for our existence, beyond existence itself, existence is meaningless, absurd (out of tune).

If I understand this idea correctly, does it mean, then, that our lives are meaningful only if they function as a tool to fulfill someone else’s purpose? If that is the case, is that what one would want to be the source of the meaning of one’s life? Certainly it might depend a great deal on who we imagine that someone is. But still…is that desirable? I don’t think this idea works even for Christians.

I think this segment from the long quote above is valuable:

When I talk about purpose and talk about these values as being values in themselves, ends in themselves.

It seems like it’s asking too much to see meaning in our lives in this way, accepting subjectivity as part of the package, being less invested in “ultimates.” In focusing so heavily on ultimates (and our inability to participate in or change them), we tend to miss the real value of our own lives and those of others. In missing it, we are poorer. Starving at a feast.

I’ll bring Sisyphus back, the poster-boy of nihilism. Aside from his mythical existence, he can’t fit the bill of the nihilist. Sisyphus’s meaningless existence was created for him with a purpose – punishment. Sisyphus’s existence is a paradox, particularly, if one sees meaning in life tied to an assigned purpose. I don’t think we need it.

1 Like

Dan Allender and Tremper Longman arrived at that conclusion in their book The Cry of the Soul:

“God chose to violate His Son in our place. The Son stared into the mocking eyes of God; He heard the laughter of the Father’s derision and felt Him depart in disgust. In effect, the horror of judgment that God brought upon Nineveh, as prophesied in Nahum 3, was leveled against Jesus.”