The Meaning of Life

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." — C.S. Lewis

Our current Sunday School material is challenging and dense. Case in point — this week's lesson was on the meaning of life. It started with the Atheistic perspective, which states life has no meaning. It quoted an atheist philosopher which said the atheistic worldview provided no redemption, no salvation, nothing beyond our life, and no hope for those who'd ruined their one life on earth.

What a bleak outlook. What the chapter centered on was that God provided the meaning for life through the person of Jesus Christ. But one of the more interesting, and difficult discussions, was the assertion that the world would be a dark, bleak place if everyone was an atheist. William Lane Craig, the theologian and Bible scholar, is that if life had no meaning, and nothing happened after you died, there would be no motivation to live a noble or moral life. His assertion, essentially, was that the world would be a dark and violent place.

This was a struggle for some who know self-described atheists that are moral people. The question is, if there was no Christianity, would that still be the case? And that's where it's hard to reconcile the argument with our knowledge of the world because we can't picture it.

The lesson asserted that morality and our knowledge of good and evil come from the meaning God gives to life. In fact, founding father Noah Webster — author of the dictionary and an avowed Christian — asserted the only basis for the law is found in the Scriptures. He said, "All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible."

But we also know people that don't subscribe to the Scriptures that are still moral people. How can that be?

The answer, I believe, comes in that quote from C.S. Lewis that I started the post with. Lewis was noting how his consideration of evil convinced him of the existence of God. It showed him the universe must have meaning, because if there was no God we wouldn't know there was such a thing as good and evil, and we would't understand the concept of meaning. In other words, God gives meaning and is the reason we even ask the question.

So how does that pertain to our inability to reconcile what William Lane Craig said about a world with no God and the non-believers we see who try to be good people? The answer is we can't see a world without meaning and without God because it doesn't exist. It's a fascinating and difficult argument to grasp, but one worth serious consideration.