| RE: The Meaning of Life
I want to elaborate or expand this a little.
Indeed we are created by and for the pleasure of God, it is his will
that we are here. But what purpose? Of course, simply put, we are
here to please God. However, it was said of Enoch, that he pleased
God, and therefore God took him...it never elaborated on "how he
pleased God, specifically". The answer, furthermore, does not seem to
be written in the bible directly...I have, however, found elaborations
other writings.
One book which elaborates is entitled "Metu Neter" (which means Speech
of God, in Egyptian), by Ra Un Nefer Amen, an Egyptian priest of 20
years, and native Egyptian.
In it he states that, God being incorporeal, desired to experience
corporality and created manifested things, and then came into those
things. Thus all living things are God, and that's why it is said, God
is in all things at all times. We, are therefore Spirit in flesh,
temporarily, in a learning environment. As it is written, when we know
Christ we come to realize we are aliens from a far off land, in the
world but not of it. Many seeds are planted in the earth, many spirits
are planted in the flesh, but not all seeds are blessed enough to find
themselves in the proper soil or environment, the firm foundation,
which makes it possible for them to grow and mature and bear fruit. We
being of the spirit, must therefore "cultivate" our spirit, the inner
man/women towards pleasing God, for the purpose of eternal life,
because God has a desire that we should all live. Thus, pleasing God
is a matter of doing those things that tend to eternal life in us.
Our purpose here, in the flesh, is to learn from the trials and
temptations, as Paul said, "The sufferings in this life is nothing
compared to the glory to be revealed in us."
We sing praises to God, continuously, as we come to the realization
that God is US, in US, for US, JES-US!
He who loves God hates the world...the world passes away but God's word
endureth forever. We are fundamentally WORD, or an IDEA. In the Metu
Neter, METU means not only verbal word, but image or vision WORD. With
each word sound there is a corresponding image or vision, or as Plato
says "FORM". Each idea has a corresponding form...all this is related
to the "Purpose of Life"...
Playtoe
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| Actually, on a more serious note, this question of the meaning of life
is a serious one for me. Like, I imagine, a lot of teenagers, I began
ruminating on this question during my adolescence; but, perhaps because
I have never found a fully satisfactory answer, I have never stopped
thinking about it. When I first began to ask this question, I had
accepted the tenets of fundamentalist Christianity; because I could not
find the answers I sought in the religion I had heretofore embraced, I
broke with my religious faith and decided that God did not exist.
Adolescence is a time of extremes; I went from one extreme to the other
in my religious beliefs.
But the questions remained, and through further seeking I came to the
conclusion, that God probably exists after all. That was as gut
wrenching a decision as the decision to become an atheist, and both
experiences gave me first hand knowledge of just how difficult it can be
for people to alter their basic world views, and it explains why people
tend to defend their systems of belief at all costs. My tentative and,
sometime even questioning acceptance of the existence of God is not the
same as it was as a youth; my beliefs have not gone full circle. I had
to, in effect, reinvent my theology, from scratch, after a lot of soul
searching, reading, and discussion. And the process still continues.
But a belief in God doesn't necessarily imply a particular answer to
the question of the meaning of life. Many people have different
conceptions of God, and consequently different views on theodicy, life
after death, and so on. I don't yet have a final answer, and that is
why I am still searching.
-- Mike
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| I recently finished reading two books by Albert Camus: his essay, "The
Myth of Sisyphus", and his novel "The Stranger". The essay, which was
written just prior to the novel, expresses Camus's philosophy of The
Absurd. The novel fleshes out this theme artistically.
Camus is usually identified as an existentialist, and his doctrine of
The Absurd is often assumed to be extremely pessimistic; but his
philosophy is actually very much life affirming. He begins by posing
the question of the "meaning of life" in the most direct possible
terms: he suggests that the only philosophical problem that really
matters is the question of suicide. Only once that issue is resolved
can the more esoteric issues of philosophy be evaluated.
For Camus, life is characterized by a fundamental contradiction, which
he terms The Absurd. On the one hand, humans wish for a world that is
meaningful, rational, and characterized by a unifying principle; he
refers to this desire as "nostalgia". On the other hand, he argues,
the world is without such an eternal, rational principle; our actions
are ultimately meaningless because we die, and because time ultimately
erodes the consequences of our actions into nothingness.
Clearly, from the outset, Camus is presupposing that there is no God,
and no eternal life. Thus, one might reasonably ask what possible
value Camus's philosophy has for the Christian. I think that is a valid
question, but I think Camus is important for two reasons. First, his
viewpoint characterizes, to one degree or another, a point of view
that is not at all unusual in the world, and it must therefore be
confronted head on. Secondly, and I think this is very important--I
think that, while I don't entirely agree with him, he does raise some
important issues.
But let us assume for a moment that Camus's presupposition is correct.
For Camus, any philosophy which seeks to transcend this Absurd reality,
with some sort of ultimate hope, commits what he calls "philosophical
suicide". He extends this criticism to existentialist philosophers,
including, for example, the devoutly Christian Kierkegaard--the father
of existentialism. For Camus, philosophy must at all times accept the
fundamental contradiction that lies at the bottom of the The Absurd.
This means accepting the reality of human nostalgia for a unifying and
eternal reality, and also accepting that this eternal reality does not
exist. From this we might infer that Camus is offering a philosophy of
hopelessness. In a sense that is true, because Camus rejects "hope" as
philosophical suicide for any existentialist. But for Camus--and this
is key--the proper response, in the face of this absurdity of human
existence--is threefold, consisting of revolt, freedom, and passion.
Humans who accept the absurd must accept their fate, but rebel against
it, living life to the fullest in each moment, precisely because there
is no future.
The essay describes the application of Camus's philosophy in specific
examples of life. Camus also presents his philosophy of art in this
context. In "The Stranger", we see Camus putting his philosophy of art
into action. The novel describes a man who is drawn into committing a
murder, and then facing the consequences from society for his action.
In "The Stranger", we see echoes of the absurd reality. Life is
presented in terms of absurd choices, choices devoid of hope and
ultimate purpose. This is summarized early on, during a funeral
procession the the stifling Algerian heat: "If you go slowly, you risk
getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and
then catch a chill inside the church." When the protagonist takes his
final, fateful steps to committing murder, he writes:
I just stood there, my head ringing from the sun, unable to face
the effort it would take to climb the wooden staircase and face the
women again. But the heat was so intense that it was just as bad
standing still in the blinding stream falling from the sky. To
stay or go, it amounted to the same thing. A minute later I turned
back toward the beach and started walking.
As I mentioned, though this all sounds very depressing, Camus's
philosophy of revolt, passion, and freedom in the face of this
absurdity is actually very life affirming. Nevertheless, there are
reasons for objecting to his philosophy.
For many Christians, the solution is simple; their life is not absurd
because they have eternal life. This is, to them, the "good news" of
Christianity. Camus would have dismissed that point of view out of
hand, much as he dismissed Kierkegaard, for its reliance on a final
appeal that saves the individual from the ultimately lack of eternal
meaning, and furthermore representing an appeal to something *outside*
of the life that we experience here. Camus was not interested in a
world beyond what we know here and now; to him, it was the absurdity of
*this* world that was crucial.
This suggests that the possibility life after death is only part of the
problem. The other point is that the world we experience here and now,
in his view, displays a lack of eternal meaning for human beings.
Camus alludes, in his essay, to the problem of evil as it relates to an
omnipotent being. And this point is, in my view, very important
indeed. We clearly live in a world that displays considerable
irrationality. We see hatred and suffering, despite our best
intentions. We live in a world in which people suffer and die, good
people; and in which evil sometimes triumphs. Does this not prove
that the world indeed is absurd?
Tragic, yes; absurd, no. That is my take on the issue. The
irrationalities that we see in the world are due to the fact that the
world is a multiplicity. But a multiplicity does not also exclude some
sort of ultimate unity as well, at a higher level. By that I mean that
we indeed co-exist with a multiplicity of free creatures, and it is
that multiplicity of freedom that creates the conditions of conflict
and suffering. It is the multiplicity that creates our
irrationalities, and thus our tragedies. But I also believe that there
is a God, and this God, though a unity that transcends, is also
immanent in the multiplicity of the world.
What we do in this world matters, even if we are not eternal, because
God is eternal. And this, to me, is the "good news", and would be the
good news whether or not any of us have a life after death. If God is
eternal, and if God is affected by what we do, then our actions
permanently and irrevocably enhance the divine life. This is the
doctrine of objective immortality. I believe that objective
immortality gives ultimate, transcendent meaning to our lives, even if
there is no subjective immortality for the individual humans who live
in the world.
Of course, if we do not survive after our death, this would be a great
tragedy. It would certainly contradict our hopes. But a tragedy, I
believe, is not an absurdity. Ultimately, God as a unifying principle
serves as the eternal purpose in our lives. God guides us as we make
our free choices in the world. Furthermore, God gives a purpose to
what we do in *this world*, and thus what happens in this world really
matters.
Perhaps Camus has something to offer to us as we face the little
absurdities, the small irrationalities that govern our lives. We are
still faced with the fact that the world does not meet our expectations
of how we wish it to be, and in that sense we are forced to accept a
fundamental tension in the everyday, one that we should face with
neither a false hope nor a faulty belief that somehow everything that
happens in the world is always "for the best". I believe that much of
what we face in the world is most certainly not for the best, that they
represent the failings of free creatures in the universe. As free
creatures, we stumble and make a failed world. The ultimate
rationality of the world lies not in everything being "for the best",
but in there being higher principles to guide us--principles that stem
from God--and in our actions making an ultimate difference, not just in
the short run to each other, but eternally to God.
-- Mike
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| "Dover Beach", by Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;-on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow,
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are hear as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
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