DOES ANY LIFE MATTER?

Does your life matter?  Does any life matter?  When I ask this question, I am using the word matter as a verb, to inquire if your life has any intrinsic or inherent significance and importance, any meaning and purpose, any ultimate dignity or value.  If you say yes, my next question of course will be, why do you believe that?

If your answer is anything other than “Because I was created by the eternal, infinitely glorious God in His image and likeness for His glory to be displayed in me; finding my significance, meaning and purpose in knowing, loving and being loved by Him, living under HIs sovereign rule,” I would suggest you have a significant problem.

You may then respond to my suggestion by affirming, “Did not the writings of Charles Darwin in the mid-19^th century and related scientific research since eliminate the need for the Biblical narrative of God creating mankind in His image and likeness for any significant purpose.”

And I would have to concede, unfortunately, that many in our society would support your affirmation.  However, they do so at great cost, namely the loss of any true significance, meaning and dignity to their life.  Why would a man, who is only matter (organic substance), matter?  If all I am as a being is a cosmic accident, the product of primordial slime plus time, wherein over a thousand mutations over millions of years my species evolved from distant cousins who I can visit at the local zoo, as they were not as privileged as you and I were in the evolutionary process; then what is the basis of my dignity, my significance, my purpose in life?

With such an origin, my life becomes an unending and desperate search for and struggle to gain a sense of true significance in and meaning for my life,  which can only come from within myself or from the responses of others who are on their own desperate search.

I use the word desperate because despite our rejection of God as its source, there is in every human heart a longing for significance, a hunger for meaning and purpose such that men and women will many times risk their health, their families, their fortunes, their very lives to achieve it.

There is nothing worse than feeling we are insignificant; that our life really doesn’t matter; that we are of little importance or value to others and that there is no true meaning or purpose for our lives – our existence. A sense of insignificance produces strong feelings of worthlessness, meaninglessness and hopelessness which many times drives people to despair, resulting in angry destructive behaviors such as we see on our city streets today, and/or self-destructive behaviors such as drug addiction and suicide.

A sense of personal significance and meaning are pursued and achieved independent of God through many means in this present world.  There are some fortunate enough to have evolved in ways that result in them having great beauty, intellect and talent, such that they are admired, honored and treated as someone of great significance by those who in some way benefit from or enjoy their evolutionary gifts.  They may use those gifts to obtain riches, honor and power for themselves so as to increase their sense of significance, and then use the riches and power they obtain to either help or to exploit others, whichever they feel will bring the greatest sense of meaning and purpose to their lives.

There are others who will seek and find their significance in their ability to manipulate and exploit the feelings of meaninglessness and insignificance in those around them, while others will seek significance, meaning and purpose through good deeds, through advocating or acting benevolently on behalf of those less fortunate than themselves and/or from identifying with that which they believe to be important political causes.

Most though will find their significance, see meaning and purpose in being good employees, in their role as spouse or parent, or in their competence in video games or some other esteem building hobby.

Yet even though a person can obtain a sense of significance, of meaning and purpose for their life in this world apart from God, it is temporary, either as a result of changing circumstances in their life and in this world (see COVID 19) or due to death, wherein in evolutionary theory they become nothing more than worm food.  And thus, even if they had accomplished something significant for their families or society in the course of their brief life in this world, and no matter how heroically they may die, their sense of significance, that their lives ever mattered, ends for them in the grave.

In my next post I will explore how mankind’s true and unending significance, meaning and purpose are inherent in and intrinsic to the eternal purposes of God, who created all mankind in His image and likeness for our everlasting enjoyment of Him through His display of His eternal glory, the infinite perfections of His being in us, through us and for us.

Grace and Truth ×