“… everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” (Is 43:7)
Lord, you have made me for your glory. May I, by your grace, reflect that glory for which I was made.
Last week we talked about the fact that everyone is a moral creature, that we all believe some things to be right and some things wrong. Of course, every now and then, you hear someone say that moral absolutes do not exist, but these people do not believe what they say. If someone were to walk up to them and slap them in the face for no reason, what do you suppose they would do? Would they say, “That’s OK. You could not have done anything wrong since wrong doesn’t exist”? Of course not! Instead, they say, “Hey, you can’t do that!” But if there is no such thing as right and wrong, why can’t you do it? What’s wrong with it? As long as we are talking about vague, general theory, these people can convince themselves that right and wrong do not exist, but once we get specific and wrong them, they contradict their theory. Real life gets in the way. Deep down, they know right and wrong exist because deep down they are human.
Now once you start thinking about morality, you must begin to acknowledge the existence of some other things that go with it, like personality, authority and purpose. Without those things, morality makes no sense. Today, let’s talk only about purpose. Imagine a world that had no purpose. Why would it be wrong to kill my neighbor in such a world? You say, “Because killing your neighbor harms him.”
“But if there is no purpose, what is wrong in harming him? He had no purpose.”
And you may say, “But the human race cannot survive if people were to consistently behave that way.”
“But if there is no purpose, why should the human race survive? We have no purpose. You are still assuming a purpose.”
You could continue this dialogue a long way, but once you assume it is wrong to kill your neighbor, you also assume some kind of purpose that the killing violates. The purpose may be in you, in your neighbor, or in the fabric of the universe, but the existence of right and wrong seems to point to some bigger purpose in life.
Instinctively, we all sense this. We all desire life to have purpose, and most people believe it does. To be sure, there are scientists and philosophers who say we are nothing more than a collection of atoms, but they had to work hard to get their thinking where it is, for they have had to fight constantly a powerful and pervasive sense everywhere they turn that there is more to life than atoms. Such thinkers are in the minority even within their own fields. To think as they do is not natural. As long as humanity shall exist, such thinking shall be paddling upstream, for the stream of human experience flows against it.
Even the atheistic existentialists write of the despair that their thinking produces. It is ironic. They claim that life has no purpose and then despair of that belief. But the despair they write of is a curious phenomenon. It indicates that their very insides feel that their philosophy ought not be. Their despair arises from the fact that they desire meaning in life. They may believe no such meaning exists, but deep down they wish it did. They are human. This universal desire for meaning (held even by those who deny meaning) is difficult to explain if we are just atoms. Why should atoms care that life has purpose?
