Chapter 1: Meaning of Life

Meaning of Life

Since creation, we have been engaged in a never-ending quest spanning thousands of years seeking ultimate knowledge of all existing things.  The quest for ultimate and definitive all-knowing unquestionable understanding of life and its origins, our planet, space, and the beyond.  The question of life somewhere other than our planet seems to many of us to be a real possibility.  Governments and private entrepreneurs together spend billions of public and private dollars searching deep into the space for the answer to that very question.  We want to know if we are alone, do we have meaning, are we more than just a spec of dust in a universe that is so large we can’t see the end.

Medically, doctors and scientist seek to know all aspects of human anatomy and what causes our bodies to function properly.  Healthcare is a multi-trillion-dollar industry world-wide with significant advances in medicine, creation of artificial body parts from hearts to legs, and even the ability to transplant living organs and tissue from one person to another.  These medical achievements have lengthened, improved, given hope to, and cured lives everywhere.  However, with so much advancement in medical technologies, we have yet to find cures for modern diseases or eliminate congenital disorders.

Technological improvements in the ability to predict the weather have revolutionized the ability to predict weather patterns, understand how jet streams both in the atmosphere and in the oceans cause and effect weather around the globe.  Yet with all this new technology, weather is still not 100% predictable and huge weather events still decimate populations around the globe.

Over the span of human history, there is no shortage of great minds who have explored these basic questions and uncovered unfathomable revelations and discovered unimaginable inventions.  Yet, even with hundreds of years of science and technology, including todays super computers, we cannot, as an intelligent being with the ability think and reason, replicate our existence or our terrain (our planet and the creation around us).  For those who want to argue this fact, let me rephrase my point; we have yet to be able to create life or terrain from absolutely nothing. 

How are we to wrap our brains around the “nothing” that existed before the first “something”.  Though there have been a couple attempts to explain it, none but one makes any logical sense to me.  What is that one that makes logical sense to me?  The Bible.  Unfortunately, by the reasoning of the philosophical thinkers from the enlightenment to today, this position alone makes me, by their definition, a simple minded, science denying, brainwashed fool.  Oh, but I guess clinging to the theories that it was aliens that brought life, or a big bang explosion makes much more sense.  Yeah right.

Socially, we are a created being that must work together just to survive in a complex world with inherent danger arising from our own kind (bad people), everchanging weather, wild animals, and challenging terrain depending on where we are born.  Yet while amazing advances have unquestionably occurred in civilization from the first human, we as a people have not definitively figured out the ability to live together in peace.  Wars persists, evil rulers abound, and differences between well intentioned people strain the closest relationships. 

Let me share a secret to why I think this problem exists.  It is simple to me, but not so simple for those with no concept of who God is or why He create all.  Humans naturally do not understand or comprehend what “nothing” is, we have never seen “nothing”, and we need to stop looking at “nothing” since there is something there who has been calling our name since His spirit first flowed over the waters before creation was complete.  We do not, never will, and cannot achieve on our own the mind of God, but we were, we are and we will forever be, if we are accepting of Him, a part of His mind, His intention, and His eternity if we dare to look at Him as a reality.  It is not foolish to believe in God, in fact it is a big step of intellectual significance to lay down the thinking that we, humankind, can figure our the mind of our creator, as if we can outsmart the One who made the universe that is so large we can’t see the end the one who knit together human bodies of which the largest microscope cannot see the finest detail, with the ability to reason, think, choose and accept this or that. 

I believe our existence since the first man has been connected to a something, yet our infatuation with the “nothing” has handicapped our ability and or willingness to accept that the “nothing” might really in fact be God.  That “nothing” may just be the omnipotent, omnipresent, and unchanging God of the Universe who created, who shepherds, and who has redeemed humans whom he originally created to walk with, talk with and engage with daily in paradise.

GLIMPSE OF PARADISE

Walk with me in the Garden of Eden for a minute.  Whether you believe it is for real as I have chosen to do, or as a metaphor, or you think it is just an ancient story, and even those of you who think it is man-made propaganda; for now, it doesn’t matter to me what you think about it, just walk with me for a minute in this Garden.  This garden we are walking in has been created for us with everything we need for not only survival, but for enjoyment and satisfaction.  The garden is full of colorful plants and vegetation, with hills, mountains, lakes and streams, waterfalls, birds, animals with which we are put in charge.  There is no danger from others, from the animals, weather or terrain, all operate just as they were created to be, in perfect harmony.  In fact, this Garden is so perfect, it would be unimaginable for us to even want to be anywhere else.  This would be a nice place to be wouldn’t it, I mean we can’t even find this on the greatest vacation to the most beautiful places on Earth.  Close your eyes and just imagine the awesome beauty of this garden, and believe if for only a moment that it was created just for you.

Now that we are in this garden, and you have seen its beauty and understand all it offers to us, can you think of anything that would cause you to want to leave this place?  Oh, I’ll wait, yes you can go get your family and friends, bring all your loved ones to the garden, the point is I want you to feel so loved and supported, surrounded with astonishing beauty and unlimited provisions that you want for nothing.  Now, tell me, what would cause you to leave?  Hopefully “nothing” right?

POWERFUL ENEMY

            The Bible says that God had one commandment (rule) for the first humans, Adam and his wife Eve.  Talk about limited government, these two lovebirds were free to roam paradise as they pleased with the exception of just one thing.  Now I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me that I “can’t” do something, you know what happens to me?  I just have to do it!  Why?  I have no idea.  Maybe it is that desire to know why I can’t have it, that I want to understand exactly why it is that I am being told not to touch it, eat it, hold it, use it, talk to it, ride it, or whatever it may be.  I must know WHY!  So, what do I do?  I do that one thing that I have been warned not to do.  And please don’t you pretend to be so perfect.

            What does a child do when a parent says, “Now please don’t touch the stove while Daddy is cooking, it is really hot, and you could burn yourself really badly.”  What does the child do most of the time?  They touch the stove.  Maybe it is not the first time they are told, and maybe not the second time they are told, but eventually they must know the answer to the question that is literally tearing them up inside.  They want to know, “How hot could it be?”, “What does it feel like to burn my finger, would it really hurt that bad?”, “I’ll just touch it quickly so I don’t burn myself?”. 

            My genius moment was when the Easter Bunny got me a knife for Easter.  When I was young, I remember clearly my Daddy telling me, “now son, be very careful with that, it is a real knife, it is ver….”, and then, I had already brushed my index finger across the sharp edge of the knife to “feel” how sharp it was.  And yep, sliced my finger splitting my fingerprint right in half.  Now that I am grown, I’m still not much better with these warning.  My wife Kim will say, “Todd, if you eat another piece of that birthday cake you are going to feel sick, put it back!”  But it is so good, and after all it is birthday cake, I’ll be…. sick, you guessed it, I feel terrible later.  AND, I end up wishing I had listed to that warning, then I wouldn’t be feeling as bad.

            You can think of many examples where you have been faced with a similar situation.  This feeling, this “I have to do it” is called simply, temptation.  And temptation is NOT our friend, in fact temptation is our enemy.  Without temptation, we would have less burnt fingers, less tummy aches, less coins, peas, and Legos stuck up our noses, well, you get the picture.  And these are just innocent examples.  The point is, temptation is real, and it is powerful, and over time, it has destroyed lives, relationships, and creation. 

            If you have chosen to deny the existence of God, how do you explain this very real powerful emotion of temptation.  The innate desire to do that which is contrary to our senses and reason.  If we are simply a cosmic accident which has continued to improve over time in a survival of the fittest environment, wouldn’t this temptation emotion have been weeded out thousands of year ago?  Maybe it was a joke the aliens are playing on us, maybe they planted temptation in our brains as a sick joke and they are laughing at us each time we fall to temptations power.  I believe there is another answer, a truth, to the power of temptation. 

REAL CONSEQUENCE

The wanting to have the knowledge of God and their deliberate action believing they would have this knowledge, actions which were in direct defiance of God’s only commandment at the time, only achieved Adam and Eve’s banishment from this perfect paradise.    And this happened because someone tempted these first humans to believe they could be superior or at least on the same intellectual level as God. 

The thought of having the knowledge of God was so powerfully tempting to Adam and Eve that they literally risked the chance they may die to get it. 

While they did not immediately die, tragically, for them and for all humankind, it was a lie.  The ability to have the knowledge of God was a lie.  Believing that God is “nothing” as some claim Him to be is also a lie, and it is my deep hope that you will journey with me as I attempt to explain why this pursuit by human kind to ignore and in some cases run in the opposite direction of the Jehovah Jira (the God who provides) is a fool’s errand.  The hope of paradise is still available to you, don’t be fooled into believing that it is not a real place.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned — Romans 5:12