I didn't write this. I was just organizing files and came across this word document from d'Nous Academy 2013 (a camp for building up our mind, soul and spirit with the study of the Bible, praying and reflecting with God in solitude and acting out what we learnt through community engagement activities and fellowship with one another). There wasn't a name on it, so I'm not sure which speaker wrote it (I know his name is David though, because of one sentence inside). Anyway, it's really well written, in simple terms anyone of regular schooling can understand. After reading it, I think it's just perfect, especially for my generation. It's all copy-and-paste, I didn't edit it at all, none of it is by me. I just think it's too good not to share.
Maybe some of you
have heard of the famous rock band called Radiohead. The lead singer was once
asked in an interview, “What are your ambitions after achieving so much success
in the music industry?”
And he answered,
“Ambitious for what? What for? I thought when I got to where I wanted to be
everything would be different. I’d be somewhere else. I thought it’d be like in
heaven. And then I got there and achieved the success I’ve always dreamed of.
But I’m still here.”
Then why are you
still making music?
He says: “It’s filling up the hole. That’s all anyone does”.
The interviewer
goes on and asks: “What happens to the hole?”
There was a pause…
And he finally says: “It’s still there”.
It seems like we
human beings have this infinitely huge vacuum in our hearts and we try our best
to fill it up with things, money, gadgets, sex, music, success, English Premier
League football, religion, you name it… but it leaves us empty as before. And in some cases we see the symptoms manifested as
boredom, addiction (i.e. workaholic, alcoholic or drug abuse), a sense of
despair or even suicidal tendencies.More
than a thousand years ago, Saint
Augustine wrote that our hearts are restless until
they find rest or fulfillment or satisfaction in God.
In modern terms, the
psychologist Dr.Viktor Frankl said that the drive to fulfill our meaning in
life is the
primary motivational force in us, human beings. From his experience in a horrible Nazi prison camp, he
observed how prisoners who have lost hope and meaning for the future also lose
the will to survive. And those who do not have a
purpose worth living for will find an inner hole and a deep sense of emptiness
within their hearts.
OK fine… We need
to find the purpose of life. But why can’t I live a normal, meaningful and
functional life without God?
Since we’re all
going to die anyway, then let’s make this world a better place. We hear
speeches at funerals that so-and-so has enriched many lives so his life and
death is not in vain.
Or some may say,
“Since we’re all going to die, let’s seize the day! (Carpe diem) Let’s party,
eat, drink and be merry for life is short. Enjoy the simple pleasures while we
still live. Then life can be meaningful.”
Or the
existentialists will say, “Yes, life is meaningless and absurd. But I refuse to
accept it and live as if there’s meaning. Let the world be cruel and
indifferent, but I will not. I will choose to be compassionate and kind. That’s
authentic human life.”
Well, so far so good. But let’s do a
thought experiment here… If there is no God, then we are nothing but the
accidental, by-product of nature. We came from matter plus time plus chance. We
hit the lottery so we were born. We are a random collision of carbon based
molecules. No soul, no spirit in us. There is no reason or no purpose for our
existence. Our ultimate destiny is death and nothingness.
So in a million
years from now, it doesn’t ultimately matter what you did to improve the world
or how many sunsets you have enjoyed. We all come to
the end of our lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day we were born. We
can’t take anything with us. In the long run, it’s just chasing after the wind.
Maybe your life
was important because it influenced the course of history like Mahatma Gandhi
or Martin Luther King Jr. But even that is like leaving your footprints in the sand… in
just a moment, the waves will come, washing over them and they are gone. In the bigger scheme of things, it makes no difference. Nothing
means anything. Because
our lives are not connected to something bigger than ourselves… if there is no
God.
But with God, everything changes. Yes, you can work to make this world a better place. Heal the sick.
Fight injustice and relieve suffering. And that only makes sense because people
are created in the image of God. Therefore human lives are infinitely precious
and valuable in themselves… even when they are weak, unproductive and
suffering, they are still precious and worthy of our care. In a million years
from now, the choices we make today will echo through eternity. One day, we
will be raised back to life and God will judge our thoughts and actions. So how
we live today has enormous significance.
Yes, like the
existentialists, we can defy the absurdity and cruelty of the nature. But if
there is no God, there is no higher law of right or wrong. Everything is just
‘survival of the fittest’. It’s only natural for the strong to prey on the
weak. That’s the law of the jungle. Being kind and compassionate to the weak
only makes sense if there is an objective moral law higher than the law of the
jungle and a moral Lawgiver we call God. For unless you know what a straight
line is, how do you know that the world is crooked? Unless we know a divine law
higher than the law of nature, we cannot rationally defy nature’s cruelty and
indifference.
And lastly, yes,
we can enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Friendships. Love someone truly,
madly, deeply. Hug a baby. Write a poem. Listen to music. Go backpacking and
enjoy the sunset.
But again, that
only makes sense because a creative, personal and loving Creator God made us as
relational beings, able to love and reason and enjoy the beauty of creation,
music and creativity. Without God, love is just a biochemical reaction in your
brain. Friendships are just an illusion created by our selfish genes to help
pass on our DNA to future generations. Sunsets are just light reflections and
nothing more. Without God, you can only enjoy these things if you suppress
thinking about what they really are. For the Christian, these pleasures of life
are good gifts from God that we can enjoy. They are clues, hints that point us
to the Creator who is the ultimate source of all joys.
So the funny thing
is this: we can have the courage to make the world a better place and enjoy the
good things in life only because God makes all these things meaningful and
beautiful. Everything is full of purpose. But
without God, life is absurd, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Alright, I know what you are going to tell me, David, I
need religion to give me purpose in life, right? All religious worldviews teach
us to do good and if I live a better life, a less selfish life, I’d find the
purpose of my life rite…
Actually,
that’s not it. The Christian worldview is much more radical than that. The
problem is not that we don’t know stealing, lust, hatred, attachment to worldly
things, selfishness, cruelty is wrong or sinful. The problem is we already know
it but we still do it. We want to do good but at the same time, we also find
another desire to do exactly the opposite. It’s like our parents say “Don’t
touch!” and we purposely touch it. So just getting religious advice and
teachings, laws and regulations, do’s and don’ts is not the solution. The
diagnosis has to be much deeper than that.
Cause if we are really honest with
ourselves, we can find selfishness, greed, pride, lust and fear hidden in the
deepest core of our being. I want to be good but there’s a dark side inside of
me. It’s like having a split personality.
Have you heard the story of Dr Jekyll
and Mr Hyde? Once upon a time, a brilliant scientist named Dr Jekyll came to
realize that his dark side is waging a war inside him. So he comes up with a
potion that can separate his good nature from his evil nature. When he drinks
the potion during the day, he will be his good self and free to do what is
good. But when he takes the potion at night, his bad side comes out and he
becomes 10 times more selfish and evil than he normally is. This evil side of
himself is called Mr Hyde, because he is hideous and because he is hidden in
the dark.
Even in the best, the most righteous and kindest
of us all hide something hideous in the depths of our hearts. There is a strong
tendency in you and I to seek our own interests above all others, to be self-seeking…
Unless we realize that we are sick,
we will not look for a doctor. Unless we realize how helpless we really are, we will not
turn to God.
When Dr Jekyll realizes that he is
this living contradiction of good and evil, he decided to do all he can to get
rid of selfishness and pride from his heart. He devoted himself to charity and
good works, to drown his selfish nature with acts of kindness and sacrifice and
pay for the wrongs he had done before. You know what? And it worked! He became
the most moral and kind person, and stopped taking the potion at night to
become Mr Hyde.
Then one fine day Dr Jekyll thinks of
all the good that he has achieved, and how much better a person he was compared
to others. He says, “I can say with total honesty that my decision to do good
has produced great results. You know how much hard work I spent to help
suffering people… But as I smiled, comparing myself with others, comparing my
acts of goodness with their lazy, cruel neglect to do good… at that very
moment, a horrible feeling came over me and I looked down… I was once again Mr
Hyde”. At that moment, just when he has achieved his standard of being good and
righteous, Jekyll transformed into Hyde again, this time without drinking any
potion at all. Unable to control his transformations any longer, Jekyll killed
himself.
The moral of the story is this:
Covering up our selfishness and pride with lots of good works and kind deeds
won’t make us less self centered. Instead they only feed into our pride and
self righteousness. Jekyll becomes Hyde, not because he is bad, but precisely
because he is good. If you define the purpose of your existence in terms of
performance, you do good deeds motivated by
self-interest (in order to get to heaven, escape from hell or to feel good
about yourself, to meet expectation of others). In the end, the ultimate motive
is still ‘yourself”. If you achieve it, you end up with self righteousness and
pride. If you
fail to achieve it, you will end up with despair and fear. Either way you still
end up becoming Mr or Miss Hyde.
Here’s the difference:
Other worldviews: “Do good, obey the
rules – then I will be accepted by God”.
The Good News: “I am accepted by God
because of what Jesus has done – therefore I obey”.
Imagine if your
Father hugs you and tells you, “Girl, you are my daughter. Boy, you are my son.
I love you because you are my child. Not because of your performance in exams.
No matter how you perform in exams, you are still my child and I love you.
Therefore I want you to do the best you can in the exams.” How would that make
you feel? Would you turn around and say, “Thanks Dad, since you love me so
much, I’m gonna fail all my exams this year”? No, this kind of love releases
you from fear and the crushing need to earn his love through performance.
Instead it gives you a new motivation to perform i.e. because you are loved and
want to please your father. You’d want to do even better. That’s exactly how
God the Father accepts and loves us.
For the Christian, the purpose of life
is LOVE – “ To love God with all our heart, soul,
mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves”. That’s why we obey God. Not out of fear, but out of love. 2000 years
ago, God Himself came into the world and became a man. His name was Jesus the Christ. While we are
still sinners, still disobedient and undeserving of God’s love, Jesus lived the perfect life
that we should have lived and died the sacrificial death that we should have
died. We should have died for our sins but the Lord
Jesus laid down His life for us. This is the reason God came into the world. He
came to rescue us. He came to be
crucified on the cross to take all our guilt, punishment and shame upon
Himself. Because He loves us, He opens the way so that we can be forgiven and
accepted by God. The Good News is: “You are accepted by God because of what Jesus has done –
therefore you obey out of love, not out of fear”.
So the Purpose of
life is not an abstract principle, a theorem, a set of rules and regulations
you can find in a book. The Purpose of life is a Person. You can have
relationship with this person, to love and be loved by God. The good news is
Christ loves us more than we ever dare imagine even though we are more sinful
than we’d ever dreamed of!
Not only that, on Easter Sunday he
was resurrected from the grave! Jesus is the only Person to have conquered
death itself. Death will not be the last word. It is not the end of everything.
Because what God has done in Christ He will one day do for us and the rest of
creation! Our physical bodies will be transformed to glory. The heavens and the
earth will be renewed and purified. And this project has already started like a
mustard seed in the world, ever growing and swelling and spreading. In the
meantime, we are called to be the ambassadors of God’s kingdom on earth – in
our lives, in our studies, in our worship, in our work, in our relationships to
reflect God’s love to the world. We will say something more about this
later.
If you will place
your trust on Jesus at the center of your being, and let Him shape your life,
you will be transformed. You will love because God first loved you. You forgive
others because God has forgiven you; and you serve others because God has
served you. In a million years from now, you will have eternal life, caught up
in wonder and awe in the presence of God forever. This is the purpose of life
according to the Christian worldview.
