Man's Search for Meaning
Ephesians 1:11-12: In him, according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will, we who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory.
Scientific Inquiry and Big Questions
An engineering student said to me once, “Only the hard sciences give us truths that matter.” He meant that, due to all of the differing opinions out there in philosophy, theology, and politics, only those things that we can test with the Scientific Method are worth our time and effort studying. But once you ask a few simple questions, the person who makes such a statement realizes its limitations.
Can you define ‘justice’ using the Scientific Method, or the concept of ‘rights’?
Do you really reduce love to just biochemical interactions caused by a certain person, or is it more than that?
Do you really believe that great literary works give us nothing meaningful or important? Are you saying that Shakespeare has nothing meaningful to say?
How do you see the purpose of your life, or is it devoid of meaning because the Scientific Method cannot provide an answer?
The most important and crucial questions we can ask ourselves have nothing whatsoever to do with the natural sciences. “Why am I here?” is a question about the ultimate meaning and purpose for my life. The answer we supply is the central thing that drives our daily life, from mundane tasks like studying for a quiz to deeply impactful decisions we make, like walking away from a bad group of friends or pursuing a serious relationship. The answers we give to Why shapes us to our core, even if we have not fully articulated what those answers are, and even if we have blindly accepted what our friends’ answers are to that most crucial of questions.
The problem with Scientism (remember this from the last talk?) is that when you overvalue the natural sciences you tend to undervalue other sources of knowledge until you view those other things as bad, false, or just unimportant. The medium is the message and soon those deeper questions that are more philosophical in nature will be dismissed, even though they are the most important for your life. You will find yourself saying things like “There is no meaning or purpose in life. We are all just whirling atoms and the result of evolution. That’s it!” You end up blinding yourself to other avenues of truth precisely because science cannot prove them.
Understanding Purpose
Suppose a group of explorers is traveling to a remote village in a jungle. One explorer leaves behind his old pocket watch as a gift to the tribe they meet. They have never seen a watch and he doesn’t explain the watch at all. They have no concept of seconds or minutes and cannot figure out what the hands are for and the roman numerals are inscrutable. Since they cannot understand the pocket watch’s purpose, they are not able to answer the question, “Is it a good watch?” Good for what? They don’t know. They can use the watch to throw at a cat, but it isn’t made for that purpose.
Aristotle, the greatest of the Ancient Greek philosophers, taught that moral reasoning was based upon the telos, or a thing’s end or purpose. The telos tells us why it exists. Once we know the purpose of a thing, we can evaluate it. You cannot say if a thing is good or bad if you have no understanding of its purpose. For instance, if the pocket watch is too heavy to be comfortably carried and is a bit too large to fit in most pockets and does not keep time well, we would say that it is a bad watch. From these facts, we can form an evaluative judgment, but only if we know its telos or purpose.
When humans make things we impose a telos onto them. We invent them for a purpose. To Aristotle, there are four causes of a thing’s coming into existence: the formal cause, the material cause, the agent cause, and the final cause. The final cause is the intention of the creator behind what he or she creates. The intention of the creator is the telos of the creation.
The Analogy of the Statue
So an artist (agent cause) intends to make a statue for a church in Rome and conceives of it in her mind (final cause), which then causes her to select the shape and color of the statue (formal cause) and the marble she will use, as well as the tools to use on that type of marble (material causes). The final cause is “the first in intention, but the last in execution.” The artist intends to make a statue for a church which starts everything else in motion, but also only fulfills its purpose when the statue is installed in the church. This is the statue’s telos.
When it is finished we can ask, “Is it a good statue?” Does this color of marble work with the existing colors in the church or is it an eyesore? Is it tall enough to match or did she make it too small? Since the church is very classical in architecture, is the style too modern that it doesn’t fit in well? The purpose of the statue in the church allows us to make these judgments about the statue and about the artist’s choices in making the statue.
Applying this to our lives, this means we have to understand what the good and best human life is- the telos of human life- and only then can we form judgments about good and bad, right and wrong, just or unjust. Only with the end in mind can we frame laws and correctly administer justice in society. So knowing the telos or purpose of human life matters a great deal for all of us. This is what Ancient and Medieval societies shared within their cultures and what Modern societies reject. Purposes are private, not public. Once a shared telos is stripped away, moral language about good and bad, just and unjust, cease to make sense. This is why every election season we just yell past one another, unable to resolve our disputes.
Purpose-Driven Life
You did not create you and thus, you cannot give yourself your own purpose. This is why humans cannot live meaningless lives. We are wired for purpose and purposelessness leads us to boredom and ultimately to despair. In talking about meaning and purpose, there are only two roads by which we can walk in our lives: we receive our purpose from God or we invent our purpose for ourselves. Received meaning is something that I did not create for myself, but rather I discovered this meaning. Invented meaning for my life means that there is no purpose out there to discover, but rather comes solely from within.
You hear this in our modern sayings: “Look within yourself.” “Find your own truth.” This is the language of invented meaning. There is a lot of obvious appeal in this. It asserts our own autonomy and freedom and maybe fosters creativity.
Imagine you're driving to the gas station with a buddy back in 2005 when a gallon of gas was $3.00. Seeing the price, your buddy gets angry, but then he spots a sign on the gas station window that says, “One Gallon of Water, $0.59.” Your buddy tells you his plan of buying the cheaper water and putting that in the engine.
“You can’t do that!” You tell him, “It will kill your engine.” Incredulous, he turns to you and says, “Who are you to tell me how to live my life? I’ll do what I want.” Now that you see how serious he is, you fling open the glove box and grab the owner’s manual and show him what it says, “See! ‘Unleaded gasoline only.’ It says it right here in the manual!” He responds, “I’m not going to let some book tell me how to live my life.”
“BUT THE PEOPLE THAT DESIGNED THE CAR ARE THE ONE’S WHO WROTE THE MANUAL! THEY KNOW HOW IT WORKS!”
Yet there are two major problems with invented meanings: they change and they cannot withstand suffering. Instead of a strong standard by which you can evaluate your life, we humans always tend to shift our standards and rationalize our poor behavior. It becomes sand under our life’s foundations.
In terms of suffering, Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychologist imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, saw first hand the difference between received vs invented meaning. He realized there were three categories of men who were imprisoned with him: those who despaired and literally laid down and died; those ordinary men who, out of a sheer animal sense of survival, became cruel and vicious to their fellow prisoners; and those precious few men who actually became more humane, loving, compassionate, and courageous. He interviewed these men and found out that they all had a greater purpose or meaning that they were living for that the evils of the camps could not touch. In fact, the suffering refined their purpose into something greater and deeper. It made them better men.
In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he fashions an entire psychotherapeutic method based on this understanding from the camps and he called it Logos therapy. Logos is the Greek word for “Word” but also “Reason” and “Meaning”. It is the same word that John’s Gospel uses to tell us about Jesus Christ: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.”