Purpose
1) All of us crave purpose
At the end of the movie I, Robot (2004), the robot named Sonny has fulfilled the objectives in his design program. But now he realizes he no longer has a purpose. The movie concludes with a dialogue between Sonny and the other main character, Detective Spooner.
Sonny: Now that I have fulfilled my purpose, I don’t know what to do.
Detective Spooner: I guess you’ll have to find your way like the rest of us, Sonny … That’s what it means to be free.
At the end of the movie I, Robot (2004), the robot named Sonny has fulfilled the objectives in his design program. But now he realizes he no longer has a purpose. The movie concludes with a dialogue between Sonny and the other main character, Detective Spooner.
Sonny: Now that I have fulfilled my purpose, I don’t know what to do.
Detective Spooner: I guess you’ll have to find your way like the rest of us, Sonny … That’s what it means to be free.
In this view, “freedom” means that there is no overarching purpose for which we were created. If there were, we would be obligated to conform to it and to fulfill it, and that is limiting. True freedom is freedom to create your own meaning and purpose. The Supreme Court has enshrined this view in law when it opined “the heart of liberty” is to “define one’s own concept of existence, of the meaning of the universe.”
2) Our purpose comes from our design
3) Living our design brings freedom
The famous Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote a fascinating little book called The Sickness Unto Death in 1849. In it he defined “sin” in a way that is rooted in the Bible but also is accessible to contemporary people. “Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God.… Faith is: that the self in being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in God.” Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from him.
What does this mean? Everyone gets their identity, their sense of being distinct and valuable, from somewhere or something. Kierkegaard asserts that human beings were made not only to believe in God in some general way, but to love him supremely, center their lives on him above anything else, and build their very identities on him. Anything other than this is sin.
Most people think of sin primarily as “breaking divine rules,” but Kierkegaard knows that the very first of the Ten Commandments is to “have no other gods before me.” So, according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God.
The famous Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote a fascinating little book called The Sickness Unto Death in 1849. In it he defined “sin” in a way that is rooted in the Bible but also is accessible to contemporary people. “Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God.… Faith is: that the self in being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in God.” Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from him.
What does this mean? Everyone gets their identity, their sense of being distinct and valuable, from somewhere or something. Kierkegaard asserts that human beings were made not only to believe in God in some general way, but to love him supremely, center their lives on him above anything else, and build their very identities on him. Anything other than this is sin.
Most people think of sin primarily as “breaking divine rules,” but Kierkegaard knows that the very first of the Ten Commandments is to “have no other gods before me.” So, according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God.
At the end of the movie I, Robot (2004), the robot named Sonny has fulfilled the objectives in his design program. But now he realizes he no longer has a purpose. The movie concludes with a dialogue between Sonny and the other main character, Detective Spooner.
Sonny: Now that I have fulfilled my purpose, I don’t know what to do.
Detective Spooner: I guess you’ll have to find your way like the rest of us, Sonny … That’s what it means to be free.
In this view, “freedom” means that there is no overarching purpose for which we were created. If there were, we would be obligated to conform to it and to fulfill it, and that is limiting. True freedom is freedom to create your own meaning and purpose. The Supreme Court has enshrined this view in law when it opined “the heart of liberty” is to “define one’s own concept of existence, of the meaning of the universe.”
Christianity is supposedly a limit to personal growth and potential because it constrains our freedom to choose our own beliefs and practices. Immanuel Kant defined an enlightened human being as one who trusts in his or her own power of thinking, rather than in authority or tradition. This resistance to authority in moral matters is now a deep current in our culture. Freedom to determine our own moral standards is considered a necessity for being fully human.
This oversimplifies, however.
3) Living our design brings freedom
3) Living our design brings freedom
At the end of the movie I, Robot (2004), the robot named Sonny has fulfilled the objectives in his design program. But now he realizes he no longer has a purpose. The movie concludes with a dialogue between Sonny and the other main character, Detective Spooner.
Sonny: Now that I have fulfilled my purpose, I don’t know what to do.
Detective Spooner: I guess you’ll have to find your way like the rest of us, Sonny … That’s what it means to be free.
In this view, “freedom” means that there is no overarching purpose for which we were created. If there were, we would be obligated to conform to it and to fulfill it, and that is limiting. True freedom is freedom to create your own meaning and purpose. The Supreme Court has enshrined this view in law when it opined “the heart of liberty” is to “define one’s own concept of existence, of the meaning of the universe.”
The famous Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote a fascinating little book called The Sickness Unto Death in 1849. In it he defined “sin” in a way that is rooted in the Bible but also is accessible to contemporary people. “Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God.… Faith is: that the self in being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in God.” Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from him.
What does this mean? Everyone gets their identity, their sense of being distinct and valuable, from somewhere or something. Kierkegaard asserts that human beings were made not only to believe in God in some general way, but to love him supremely, center their lives on him above anything else, and build their very identities on him. Anything other than this is sin.
Most people think of sin primarily as “breaking divine rules,” but Kierkegaard knows that the very first of the Ten Commandments is to “have no other gods before me.” So, according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God.