Sounds a little morose.
But, the truth is that we are all going to die.
I once heard it said that the two great adventures of life………are birth and death.
And this raises some very big questions.
Why? Why do we die?
On a very basic level, from the day of our birth, we were built to die. Our very design determines that we must, at some point, die. For many of us, perhaps most of us, the ultimate cause of our death is built into us at birth………high cholesterol, genetic predisposition to cancer, a predilection to risky behavior. In a word……..we are programmed to die. Whether you believe in God or not, it is clear that we are temporary. From the day of our birth, our clock is ticking.
When? When will I die?
When we are young, we kid ourselves. We have big plans. We are powerful. We are “the captains of our fate”. In a word…….we are……..immortal. We are too important……to our family, to our friends, to our job, to the community……..to die. And yet we do. Time is slippery stuff. How long a period of time is depends on your perspective. When you are waiting for something life altering to happen, a minute can be a very long time. When you look at the history of the earth, a lifetime is the blink of an eye. The short answer……..I will die soon…… too soon.
There are other questions……..what will it be like?…….will I suffer?……..what about my family and friends? For now I will skip ahead to the overarching question.
What does it all mean…….life, death, eternity?
And here we encounter the great dichotomy. I have often said that there are two great religions in the world……. intelligent design and Darwinian evolution………..the big plan and the big accident.
If you believe in Darwin, the “big accident”, then you can argue that there is no overarching universal “meaning”. Instead, there are lots of little meanings. And the best part is that you can assign any value that you want to any of them. So can I. Life means my spouse…….. my child…….the environment…….my job……..my stuff……my politics…….my rights……..my freedom. The conflict that arises between the values that we place on these different “meanings” accounts for most of the rancor in our public conversation. I think it is safe to say that Darwin is the dominant religion in daily life in America today……..even among those who identify publicly as Christians.
If you believe in intelligent design, things get much simpler, but in many ways much harder. Along with the idea of intelligent design……you get a designer. It is possible that the designer created all of this and then lost interest and wandered off to new projects…….but that seems unlikely. If that is the case then we are on our own and we are back to no universal “meaning”. I think it more likely that the designer created all of this as part of an ongoing plan of his. And the meaning of life…….the meaning of my life…….hinges on that plan…….his plan……..not mine.
I am a Christian. I choose the Bible as my moral code because it is the most widely accepted moral code on the planet and because there is enough evidence to convince me that it is valid. There are a lot of details in the bible and it is easy to get lost in the detail. Here are the broad strokes of the designer’s plan……… God’s plan.
Love God
Love your neighbor
Act on this love daily
There is absolute right and absolute wrong. But, this is determined by the creator……not by you……not by me. There are some gray areas but not nearly as many as you might think. To sort between right and wrong…….you must study the source material…….the Bible.
There is an existence beyond this temporal life. Death is not the end.
The creator loves you and wants you to succeed……on an eternal time frame……..on his playing field……….using his set of rules………a set of rules that he created for the sole purpose of leading you to success…….to happiness………on an eternal time frame.
But, what does success look like? This is critical. Because, in the final analysis, the meaning of life is determined by the definition of that success.
You succeed in life by approaching the designer…….your creator……God.
This bears repeating.
You succeed in life by growing closer to your creator…… God.
In essence, the meaning of life is to grow your relationship with God. After all, you will spend most of your time…….your eternity……..dealing with him.
Or you can ignore him…….deny him……..but, if you do……..you had better be right. Because, if you deny God, you will spend eternity separated from the love and joy of your creator.
And that is a good working definition of hell.
“The graveyards are full of indispencible people.”
Charles DeGaul
“Nobody Gets out alive.”
Jim Morrison
God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death ’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away .”
John, NIV