1.3 What Does This Life Mean?

We have looked through the telescope and the microscope at arguments for the existence of God and, as interesting or compelling as they might be, they are ‘out there’ arguments. To do this conversation justice, we also need to look at the ‘in here’. Like, we all have this shared sense that this life matters. We’ll say something like, ‘Don’t waste your life,’ but the only thing that can be wasted is something precious or something valuable. Or in moments of great joy and satisfaction we’ll say something like, ‘I just feel like I was put on this Earth for this specific reason’ or ‘I just feel like I was meant to do this.’ Are we delusional? Is this just how we make sense of a senseless world? And apparently we’re the only ones on this earth that are asking the question, What does this life mean? If there is no God, then although this place is beautiful, even we are beautiful we are just an accidental arrangement of atoms. Although it might seem cold and it might seem harsh but take God out of the equation and there is no defined purpose for which we are made. Now this is not to say that we can’t make a purpose for the here and now or even for our lives, but where does the impulse to create and discover meaning come from? Think about the stories that take our breath away. Are they not just merely words and themes designed to provoke a reaction in the brain, driving us to believe we can create a better world? What about love? In a world without design or intention, love is simply a biochemical response. But if life is just chemistry or biology, then why, when we sit at a hospital bed beside the one we love, is the sound of the heart monitor the most important sound in the world? Why does each beep matter? When tragedy hits us, from the death of a loved one or even a really bad breakup, we’ll say that we are ‘broken-hearted’, but what does that mean? Our hearts are still beating fine. The problem is with something else we call our ‘hearts’, that centre of ourselves, that place which is our innermost being. It’s in this place where we feel the deepest pain of those we have lost and the absence of what we truly long and desire for. But why do we have these longings and desires? How would we explain them? On the one hand we have physical longings like hunger. Like right now I long for a chocolate cone with vanilla ice - cream. And just because I long for it doesn't necessarily mean I’ll get it. But is it not true that my appetite for food means that food exists? And on the other hand, we have longings and desires that go much deeper, emotionally and spiritually. Like we’ll have a picture in our head of what our future could be or we long to be part of something bigger than ourselves, or we might have a desire to do something with our life that makes a lasting impact. Is our hope for something truer, deeper, more fulfilling a clue to the existence of something else? Or someone else? CS Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, once said... If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. The writings in the Bible explain that this ‘other world’ is heaven and that this ‘someone else’ is God and that we’re made in God’s image. Now I’m not talking about my arms, or my legs or even the weird mole I have on my back. No, I’m talking about my consciousness, my nature, my capacity not just to survive, but to create, to love, to imagine. That all these things reflect the God who created me. And maybe you could argue that everything that defines us like love, joy, romance, imagination, creativity, that all these things are just a chemical reaction. But how extraordinary is it that a universe would come from nothing and produce the impossible yet ideal conditions for life to exist; that humans would form as a result and look at themselves and others and say that this improbability means nothing? Because we live like it means everything.