Back to Basics 2: The Meaning of Human Life

Before getting into theology proper, I'd like to take a look at another foundational question: what does the life of a human being consist of? We are born, we live, we die. Some of us live long lives; some of us live a short time. If we are lucky enough to be born, we have to sustain our lives by meeting some foundational needs, for example, food and shelter. Eventually we all succumb to death. In these ways, we are much the same as the other living things on earth.

Is there any meaning in all of this?

For the great majority of human history, the 'meaning' of human life appears to have been utterly simple: find a way to keep on living. From the fossil record, it appears that the earliest humans were on the scene about 3 million years ago. They don't appear to have had language or any elements in their societies that we would regard as 'culture.' Their entire existence seems to have been consumed with finding food and defending against predators.

Some ten thousand years ago, human civilization appeared. One of the marks of civilization is that the challenge of finding food and shelter were conquered to some degree. By this time, humans had developed language and were able to communicate symbolically. With some 'free time' on their hands and a conceptual consciousness, humans had time to begin pondering questions. They began to ask: 'Why are we here?', 'How did we get here?', and 'What does all this mean?'. We have been asking these questions ever since and, from the look of things, have not arrived at totally satisfying answers. In a way, we have become a victim of our own success.

So, what does this have to do with theology? I believe it is this: any study of theology must begin by recognizing that theology is motivated by these foundational questions. 'How did we get here?', 'Why are we here?', 'What does all this mean?'.

Over the course of human history, many answers have been proposed to these questions. The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) answer the questions like this:
1. We are here because a deity (God) decided to put us here.
2. We are here to do the will of the deity.
3. Our life here is a temporary state. It is a test, the results of which determine what will happen to us after we pass on from this place.

In more recent times, some naturalistic answers to these questions are this:
1. We are here because life spontaneously generated on earth from natural causes.
2. There is no inherent 'why' to our existence. Nature is not conscious and does not have 'purpose'.
3. There is no inherent meaning to our existence. Any meaning to our existence must be generated by us. We must choose our meaning.

Other answers have been proffered. Non-theistic religions like Buddhism and Taoism do not speak of a 'personal' deity but do appeal to universal transcendent principles.

So boiling it down to basics, the possible answers to the 'why' question are this:

1. We are here for a transcendent reason, perhaps one that transcends our understanding.

2. We are here for no reason. There is no transcendent 'why.'

Which one is right?

Back to Basics 1: The Human Predicament

I've decided to start a new series on The Basics. The motivation is two-fold: to clarify my own thoughts on my intellectual and spiritual journey and to engage others in the conversation. In keeping with the modern 'bite-sized' attention span, I'll try to keep each article brief.

To begin at the beginning, I think a discussion of the human predicament is in order, which is succinctly this: to be human is to be uncertain. As Heisenberg proved, one of the characteristics of the universe that we inhabit is an inherent uncertainty. So the starting point for any discussion of theology and philosophy is the acknowledgment of this fact.

One understanding that I have come to is that a person's outlook on the world is a function of how they react to the condition of uncertainty. A person uncomfortable with uncertainty will tend toward a fundamentalist outlook in religion, philosophy and politics. A person who can tolerate a degree of uncertainty will, on the other hand, tend to take more moderate, even agnostic positions. It only makes sense. If I have a difficult time bearing the thought that my world-view may be wrong, then in order to alleviate this psychological discomfort, I will tend to seek out an ideology that leaves little room for doubt.

In my view, agnosticism has gotten an undeserved bad wrap from certain faith communities as well as some hard-core atheists. It has been derided as 'fence-sitting' and 'refusal to take a stand', but it is neither of these things. It is simply acknowledging a fact - there are some things that we as humans do not or cannot know. If a person says that she is agnostic with regard to the question of God's existence, she is simply giving her best response to the evidence as she understands it. Some evidence makes the existence of deity seem improbable, some evidence leaves open the possibility.

So, returning the main point, if there is precious little that we can be certain about in this life, where does that leave us? Should I refuse to go outside tomorrow because I'm not certain that a piece of a falling satellite might land on me? Should I not apply for that job I'm looking for because I'm not certain I'll get it? Obviously this would be a ridiculous approach to uncertainty, because even though we don't have certainty, we do have something almost as valuable: the ability to determine probabilities. And this is something to keep in mind when discussing theology and philosophy. We are talking about relative probabilities and not certainties.

So when a naturalist says something like, "Life sprung up on earth from purely natural causes", he's just saying that the best evidence he has seen combined with his reasoning faculties have led him to believe that the most probable explanation for life on earth is a natural one. He's not making a statement of faith.

When Richard Dawkins says that God does not exist, he is again making a statement of evidence and probability. When pressed, even Dawkins admits that there is some probability that God exists.

So what's the bottom line? When we discuss theology and philosophy, we must drop the pretense that we have some certain truth. We have evidence. We have our reasoning facilities. We have probabilities. And that's it.

The Time-Traveling Greek

In an online discussion, someone posted the following parable, written by M. M. Mangasarian in 1909. As I read it, I thought it was as relevant today as it was then. Modern-day apologists like William Lane Craig and Ravi Zacharias impugn the intellects of adherents of the other world religions (in the nicest possible way), insisting that the other religions cannot possibly be true. I like this parable not because it is irreverent, but because I believe that it might help Christians to understand what it feels like to be on the opposite side of the apologetic fence. And empathy is a good thing.

Without further ado, The Time Traveling Greek:

I am today twenty-five hundred years old. I have been dead for nearly as many years. My place of birth was Athens; my grave was not far from those of Xenophon and Plato, within view of the white glory of Athens and the shimmering waters of the Aegean sea.

After sleeping in my grave for many centuries I awoke suddenly - I cannot tell how nor why - and was transported by a force beyond my control to this new day and this new city. I arrived here at daybreak, when the sky was still dull and drowsy. As I approached the city I heard bells ringing, and a little later I found the streets astir with throngs of well dressed people in family groups wending their way hither and thither. Evidently they were not going to work, for they were accompanied by their children in their best clothes, and a pleasant expression was upon their faces.

"This must be a day of festival and worship, devoted to one of their gods," I murmured to myself.

Looking about me I saw a gentleman in a neat black dress, smiling, and his hand extended to me with great cordiality. He must have realized I was a stranger and wished to tender his hospitality to me. I accepted it gratefully. I clasped his hand. He pressed mine. We gazed for a moment into each other's eyes. He understood my bewilderment amid my novel surroundings, and offered to enlighten me. He explained to me the ringing of the bells and meaning of the holiday crowds moving in the streets. It was Sunday - Sunday before Christmas, and the people were going to "the House of God."

"Of course you are going there, too," I said to my friendly guide.

"Yes," he answered, "I conduct the worship. I am a priest."

"A priest of Apollo?" I interrogated. "No, no," he replied, raising his hand to command silence, "Apollo is not a god; he was only an idol."

"An idol?" I whispered, taken by surprise.

"I perceive you are a Greek," he said to me, "and the Greeks," he continued, "notwithstanding their distinguished accomplishments, were an idolatrous people. They worshipped gods that did not exist. They built temples to divinities which were merely empty names - empty names," he repeated. "Apollo and Athene - and the entire Olympian lot were no more than inventions of the fancy."

"But the Greeks loved their gods," I protested, my heart clamoring in my breast.

"They were not gods, they were idols, and the difference between a god and an idol is this: an idol is a thing; God is a living being. When you cannot prove the existence of your god, when you have never seen him, nor heard his voice, nor touched him - when you have nothing provable about him, he is an idol. Have you seen Apollo? Have you heard him? Have you touched him?"

"No," I said, in a low voice.

"Do you know of any one who has?"

I had to admit that I did not.

"He was an idol, then, and not a god."

"But many of us Greeks," I said, "have felt Apollo in our hearts and have been inspired by him."

"You imagine you have," returned my guide. "If he were really divine be would be living to this day.

"Is he, then, dead?" I asked.

"He never lived; and for the last two thousand years or more his temple has been a heap of ruins."

I wept to hear that Apollo, the god of light and music, was no more - that his fair temple had fallen into ruins and the fire upon his altar had been extinguished; then, wiping a tear from my eyes, I said, "Oh, but our gods were fair and beautiful; our religion was rich and picturesque. It made the Greeks a nation of poets, orators, artists, warriors, thinkers. It made Athens a city of light; it created the beautiful, the true, the good - yes, our religion was divine."

"It had only one fault," interrupted my guide.

"What was that?" I inquired, without knowing what his answer would be.

"It was not true."

"But I still believe in Apollo," I exclaimed; "he is not dead, I know he is alive."

"Prove it," he said to me; then, pausing for a moment, "if you produce him," he said, "we shall all fall down and worship him. Produce Apollo and he shall be our god."

"Produce him!" I whispered to myself. "What blasphemy!" Then, taking heart, I told my guide how more than once I had felt Apollo's radiant presence in my heart, and told him of the immortal lines of Homer concerning the divine Apollo. "Do you doubt Homer?" I said to him; "Homer, the inspired bard? Homer, whose inkwell was as big as the sea; whose imperishable page was Time? Homer, whose every word was a drop of light?" Then I proceeded to quote from Homer's Iliad, the Greek Bible, worshipped by all the Hellenes as the rarest Manuscript between heaven and earth. I quoted his description of Apollo, than whose lyre nothing is more musical, than whose speech even honey is not sweeter. I recited how his mother went from town to town to select a worthy place to give birth to the young god, son of Zeus, the Supreme Being, and how he was born and cradled amid the ministrations of all the goddesses, who bathed him in the running stream and fed him with nectar and ambrosia from Olympus. Then I recited the lines which picture Apollo bursting his bands, leaping forth from his cradle, and spreading his wings like a swan, soaring sunward, declaring that he had come to announce to mortals the will of God. "Is it possible," I asked, "that all this is pure fabrication, a fantasy of the brain, as unsubstantial as the air? No, no, Apollo is not an idol. He is a god, and the son of a god. The whole Greek world will bear me witness that I am telling the truth." Then I looked at my guide to see what impression this outburst of sincere enthusiasm had produced upon him, and I saw a cold smile upon his lips that cut me to the heart. It seemed as if he wished to say to me, "You poor deluded pagan! You are not intelligent enough to know that Homer was only a mortal after all, and that he was writing a play in which he manufactured the gods of whom he sang - that these gods existed only in his imagination, and that today they are as dead as is their inventer - the poet."

By this time we stood at the entrance of a large edifice which my guide said was "the House of God." As we walked in I saw innumerable little lights blinking and winking all over the spacious interior. There were, besides, pictures, altars and images all around me. The air was heavy with incense; a number of men in gorgeous vestments were passing to and fro, bowing and kneeling before the various lights and images. The audience was upon its knees enveloped in silence - a silence so solemn that it awed me. Observing my anxiety to understand the meaning of all this, my guide took me aside and in a whisper told me that the people were celebrating the anniversary of the birthday of their beautiful Savior - Jesus, the Son of God.

"So was Apollo the son of God," I replied, thinking perhaps that after all we might find ourselves in agreement with one another.

"Forget Apollo," he said, with a suggestion of severity in his voice. "There is no such person. He was only an idol. If you were to search for Apollo in all the universe you would never find any one answering to his name or description. Jesus," he resumed, "is the Son of God. He came to our earth and was born of a virgin."

Again I was tempted to tell my guide that this was how Apollo became incarnate; but I restrained myself.

"Then Jesus grew up to be a man," continued my guide, "performing unheard-of wonders, such as treading the seas, giving sight, hearing and speech to the blind, the deaf and the dumb, converting water into wine, feeding the multitudes miraculously, predicting coming events and resurrecting the dead.

"Of course, of your gods, too," he added, "it is claimed that they performed miracles, and of your oracles that they foretold the future, but there is this difference - the things related of your gods are a fiction, the things told of Jesus are a fact, and the difference between Paganism and Christianity is the difference between fiction and fact."

Just then I heard a wave of murmur, like the rustling of leaves in a forest, sweep over the bowed audience. I turned about and unconsciously, my Greek curiosity impelling me, I pushed forward toward where the greater candle lights were blazing. I felt that perhaps the commotion in the house was the announcement that the God Jesus was about to make his appearance, and I wanted to see him. I wanted to touch him, or, if the crowd were too large to allow me that privilege, I wanted, at least, to hear his voice. I, who had never seen a god, never touched one, never heard one speak, I who had believed in Apollo without ever having known anything provable about him, I wanted to see the real God, Jesus.

But my guide placed his hand quickly upon my shoulder, and held me back.

"I want to see Jesus," I hastened, turning toward him. I said this reverently and in good faith. "Will he not be here this morning? Will he not speak to his worshippers?" I asked again. "Will he not permit them to touch him, to caress his hand, to clasp his divine feet, to inhale the ambrosial fragrance of his breath, to bask in the golden light of his eyes, to hear the music of his immaculate accents? Let me, too, see Jesus," I pleaded.

"You cannot see him," answered my guide, with a trace of embarrassment in his voice. "He does not show himself any more."

I was too much surprised at this to make any immediate reply.

"For the last two thousand years," my guide continued, "it has not pleased Jesus to show himself to any one; neither has he been heard from for the same number of years."

"For two thousand years no one has either seen or heard Jesus?" I asked, my eyes filled with wonder and my voice quivering with excitement.

"No," he answered.

"Would not that, then," I ventured to ask, impatiently, "make Jesus as much of an idol as Apollo? And are not these people on their knees before a god of whose existence they are as much in the dark as were the Greeks of fair Apollo, and of whose past they have only rumors such as Homer reports of our Olympian gods - as idolatrous as the Athenians? What would you say," I asked my guide, "if I were to demand that you should produce Jesus and prove him to my eyes and ears as you have asked me to produce and prove Apollo? What is the difference between a ceremony performed in honor of Apollo and one performed in honor of Jesus, since it is as impossible to give oracular demonstration of the existence of the one as of the other? If Jesus is alive and a god, and Apollo is an idol and dead, what is the evidence, since the one is as invisible, as inaccessible, and as unproducible as the other? And, if faith that Jesus is a god proves him a god, why will not faith in Apollo make him a god? But if worshipping Jesus, whom for the best part of the last two thousand years no man has seen, heard or touched; if building temples to him, burning incense upon his altars, bowing at his shrine and calling him `God,' is not idolatry, neither is it idolatry to kindle fire upon the luminous altars of the Greek Apollo - God of the dawn, master of the enchanted lyre - he with the bow and arrow tipped with fire! I am not denying," I said, "that Jesus ever lived. He may have been alive two thousand years ago, but if he has not been heard from since, if the same thing that happened to the people living at the time he lived has happened to him, namely - if he is dead, then you are worshipping the dead, which fact stamps your religion as idolatrous."

And, then, remembering what he had said to me about the Greek mythology being beautiful but not true, I said to him: "Your temples are indeed gorgeous and costly; your music is grand your altars are superb; your litany is exquisite; your chants are melting; your incense, and bells and flowers, your gold and silver vessels are all in rare taste, and I dare say your dogmas are subtle and your preachers eloquent, but your religion has one fault - it is not true."