From a difficult childhood to time in prison, hear how God saved a man at his darkest hour.

Listen to Marcus’ Story.

The question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is often written off as a rather ridiculous, impossible-to-answer conversation stopper.

But it is actually a very important question to find out the answer to.
Because it’s a question about meaning and life, and meaning and life are important; they are things we instinctively know are weighty and significant.

We want to know what things mean

“What did Shakespeare mean in this part of this play?”
“What does it mean when a cold front is approaching?”
And we want to do things which are meaningful.
We desire meaningful relationships and most of us want to contribute to society, or to our plans, or to our families in a meaningful way.

Meaning is important to us.

If we watch a film which has no meaning whatsoever it is frustrating for us. We feel cheated.
We have a need to do things that have a point or a purpose, or that are working towards an outcome.

Life is important to us

Life’s not worthless or cheap. Life’s not irrelevant.
Life is deep and precious and sacred.
And it’s rich and varied and vibrant…
There’s so much of life to be experienced. Life contains Adele’s voice, Anish Kapoor’s sculptures and Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
Surely life in all its preciousness and vibrancy must mean something.

So what does life mean? Can we know what life means? Is it possible to find out if life has any meaning or purpose at all?

I want to put it to you that without God, life has no meaning.
And this is the case for two reasons:

1. We are far too limited to find out life’s meaning on our own.

Imagine a gym ball. Imagine the space inside it represents all of the knowledge in the entire universe.
How much of that knowledge do you know?
A square inch?
A square centimetre?
A square millimetre?
Surely none of us would even dare claim to have even that much knowledge.
We don’t even know what the contents are of every book in the smallest public library in Reading, let alone know what is the meaning of life.
By contrast God knows everything.
He knows the co-ordinates of every star in the sky, the contents of every book in every library in every country of the world, what there is in the basements of Area 51 and whether Budweiser beer really does condition the hair.

Shouldn’t we therefore look to him to find the meaning to life?
Isn’t it a bit arrogant to think we can work it out ourselves?

Saying that we know what is the meaning of life, is a bit like me saying I can understand how Google works on my own.
There’s no way I could find out how Google works on my own; I’d have to ask someone, and probably the best person to ask would be the creator(s) of Google.

Isn’t the best way to find out what a play means to ask the playwright?
To find out what a lyric means is’s best to ask the songwriter?

2. We need God to find the meaning of life because without God, we are creatures who are the product of chance.

Whatever you believe about creation or evolution, I’m assuming that if you don’t believe in God, you do believe the world happened by chance.
That, as philosopher Julian Baggini puts it, “If we take a long, cold look back to our origins, we just find ape-like ancestors and an evolutionary trail that leads back to the big bang.”ⁱ
And I’m also assuming that you believe that the big bang was the product of an accidental collision of something.
That no purpose or plan caused that collision, it just happened as randomly as a leaf falling from a tree and landing on a particular car windscreen.

If life was started in a meaningless way, surely life has no meaning?
If there was no purpose behind the start-up of the universe, then surely a drawing pin has more purpose than life does.

So: Life + no God = meaningless
But: Life + God = meaning

God brings meaning to life

God brings meaning to life because God made us and made life.
And the one who made us has the right to tell us what life means.
The best person to tell us what the book 1984 means is George Orwell. Because he wrote it.
The best person to explain to us what the film Inception means is Christopher Nolan, because he wrote and directed it.
The best person to tell us what life means is God, because he designed it and created it.
And the thrust of the Bible is that God has come to earth in person to tell us all about life and what it means.

Imagine you don’t know anything about American Football.
You’re up late, watching the NFL Super Bowl on Channel 5 and the men on the pitch look like they’re just running aimlessly everywhere. The game has no meaning for you.
Two scenarios could take place to help bring meaning to the game.

1. You could make up some rules and principles. I.e. you could invent the meaning of the game.
2. Or, there’s a knock on your door and an NFL coach walks in, sits on your bed beside you and explains what the game means to you.

Which is the better scenario?
Which is more satisfying?
Which will reveal the true meaning of the game?

Jesus is the NFL coach who came into the room of our world and explained to us how the game of life works.
He’s the playwright who steps onto the stage to tell us about the play.
He’s the Christopher Nolan explaining the intricacies of the Inception of life to us.
He’s God in human form telling us what the meaning of life is in a way we can understand.
He knows, after all. He made us, and gave life to us, and set us up in the world.
And finding out the meaning of life from the maker of life is deeply satisfying, just like it would be deeply satisfying to a fan of Inception to have Christopher Nolan personally explaining its meaning.

So what is the meaning of life?

The Bible contains the meaning of life.
The Bible is God’s ‘Haynes Meaning of Life Manual’.
And the essence of the Bible and therefore the essence of the meaning of life, is for us to know God, be fulfilled in Him, and enjoy Him.

Jesus told us that life is about knowing God when he said,

“…this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ…”ⁱⁱ

God doesn’t just want us to know him though; he wants us to enjoy him too.
We see this in the Psalms. The Psalms are the hymns of the Bible. They are poetry about life. One of them, Psalm 34, says this, “O taste and see that the Lord is good!”
God wants us to taste him, to experience him, enjoy him and see how good he is.
He wants us to enjoy his world. He designed us to experience pleasure.
Have you ever thought about that?
Think about food and eating. Our mouths and taste buds are receptive to taste and texture which can give us great pleasure.
Think about sex. God could have made reproduction like filling up a car with petrol. But he didn’t. He designed it to be an intensely pleasurable experience.
God is keen on pleasure.
He’s designed our bodies and our minds to be receptive to pleasure.
And when we find pleasure in him and in what he’s given us; when we enjoy him, we are most fulfilled.

Christianity injects meaning into the veins of life. And gives us deep lasting satisfaction and fulfilment as a result.

Atheism, or a belief that life started accidentally, sucks meaning out of life.
How can life have real meaning if life began in a meaningless way?
If life has no meaning, then life is at best frustrating, and at worst terrible, and is, as Bertrand Russell put it, built “…on the firm foundation of unyielding despair.”ⁱⁱⁱ
Because it’s distressing isn’t it, to look up to the stars and to think, “What’s the point of it all?
Why am I here? What does it all mean?”

Atheism, or a belief that life started accidentally not only sucks real meaning out of life, it makes death appalling.
Death is the eraser which comes along and rubs us out of life forever.
All we’ve striven for, worked towards, attained and enjoyed is severed from us forever.
Without God, doesn’t death make life meaningless? Doesn’t it mock life’s efforts?
One philosopher from the Bible wrote,

“Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. What does man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun?”^iv

Without God, the answer is nothing. Man labours and toils and then in an instant is removed forever from everything.
It’s appalling to think death instantly separates us from all of life forever.

But with God, death is not the eraser which rubs us out of life forever.
It is the portal which transports us into life forever.
And that life is a life where the things done on earth still matter, are still worth something, and are still honoured and remembered forever.
That life is a continuation of knowing and discovering and enjoying more of God.
It is a life of fulfilling our potential unhampered by the restraints we encounter on earth.
It is a life of peace, satisfaction and joy.
It is life without racism, sexism, abuse, injustice, spin or spite.
It is eternal life, with God and with Jesus.

And Jesus offers that eternal life to us.
He says,

“Come to me and find meaning and fulfilment. Find life and have it to the full. Come to me and find that death loses its sting. Come to me and find life forever where unhappiness and pain are extinct and peace and delight are alive and well.”

What will you do?
Where will you look for meaning?
Yourself, or God?

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If you have any questions about this article, or would like to meet up and chat with someone about it, please email us.

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ⁱ From an article in the Guardian on Monday 20 September 2004 entitled ‘Revealed – the meaning of life’
ⁱⁱ John 17:3, The Bible
ⁱⁱⁱ From A Free Man’s Worship by Bertrand Russell
^iv Ecclesiastes 1:2-3, The Bible

Paul was challenged one day, as a student at university, by a quote which sparked an interest in determining the truth of Christianity’s claims – “You cannot live with God, you cannot live without him.”.

He spoke to various friends – some believers in various faiths, some agnostics and others atheists – to try and find out whether he could come to a conclusion. Not satisfied with the answers he got back but still wanting to make a decision, he looked into what Christianity claimed himself.

Hear the evidence Paul found and what clinched the argument for him in Paul’s story.

Paul worked as a Statistician and Lecturer at Reading University until 2010. He is currently studying for a BA in theology at WEST (Wales Evangelical School of
Theology).

Vicky grew up in a Christian family and made a commitment to God at an early age. Yet as Vicky gained her independence as a student and was faced with a death in the family, her beliefs were challenged. Listen to Vicky explain more in her story.

Listen to Vicky’s Story.

Vicky now lives in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she and her husband David work as teachers in Bingham Academy.

Friedrich Nietzsche famously said, “God is dead.  God remains dead.  And we have killed him.”

Nietzsche was an atheist.  He wasn’t claiming that God had existed and now he doesn’t; he was claiming that the idea of a God, and in particular the Christian God, was no longer viable.  He believed that God was a human invention, but that we’ve progressed beyond our need for him.  Like a child finally leaving the reassuring but stifling security of their parents’ home, we we’ve left God behind.  But we haven’t just moved out; with no purpose and no worshippers, God is dead.  And in that line of thinking, science is the undertaker – science has buried God once and for all.  We aren’t saying that he’s impossible, just that he’s unnecessary.

The reasoning goes like this: primitive societies need God as an explanation for things they don’t understand – and in a primitive society there are lots of things they don’t understand.  Why does the sun rise and set?  Why does the rain fall (or not)?  Why do bad things happen?  But then developments in scientific knowledge gradually fill in those gaps in our understanding.  As the gaps close, the need for God shrinks, until we can be fairly confident that one day there will be no more gaps, and no more God.

And in our post-9/11 world, maybe that’s a good thing?  Maybe tolerant, open-minded reason has finally triumphed over small-minded, angry religion?

But has science actually buried God, as some people claim?  To answer this, we need to be realistic about what science can do, and what it can’t…

Science is a process – a way of gathering knowledge by making and testing predictions about the world we live in.  It’s a way of describing the world around us, and the relationships between its different parts.  And science is really, really good at doing that.

But there are some things science can’t do, not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because there are some jobs it isn’t suited to, like using a hammer to slice bread. Within this natural, physical, observable world, science is brilliant, but what about beyond that?

Science can’t answer lots of the why questions we might ask about the world.  For example, we might ask, “Why does a car travel along the road?”  We could investigate the chemical reactions taking place in the engine or the movement of pistons that drive the wheels – that would give us one answer to the question why.  But couldn’t we also answer by saying that someone wants to go to the shops?  Both answers are completely legitimate.  Science can help us get to the first, but not to the second.

And science can’t answer moral questions about good or evil, or right or wrong, or justice.  Science itself is neutral.  It’s an expert witness, but it can never be the judge.

When we come to the question, “Has science buried God?”  We have to conclude that no, it hasn’t.  On its own, science just isn’t capable of burying God.  It’s just a way of looking at the natural world, and says nothing about why it is as it is.  It just can’t answer the big questions of meaning and existence.

What science does is give us evidence, which we then have to assemble into a coherent picture of the world.  Each of us will do that through our particular worldview.  There are essentially two (with a few variations of each): naturalism and theism.  Naturalism assembles the evidence from our senses with no reference to God, whereas theism assumes that God was and is active in the world.  So there are two ways of seeing the world, two stories about what the world is like.

For example, a theist will look at the universe and see how things appear to be perfectly fine-tuned to make human life possible on earth.  As a theist puts the evidence together, he’ll conclude that there must be an intelligent power putting things together.  A naturalist, on the other hand, will look at the same evidence and put it together with no reference to God.  The argument is made that given the size of the universe even tiny odds should produce life somewhere.  And if it hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.

Two stories.  The question is, which is the true story?  Which do you choose?  How do you choose?

To solve the problem, there is one key piece of evidence we need to account for, and it will change the way we see everything else.  As a Christian, I don’t just talk about God as a philosophical concept or a variable in an experiment.  God is personal, and he’s come ‘into the box’ in the person of Jesus Christ.  Jesus is a real person in real time, he can be seen and heard and observed.  We might be separated by time and geography, but that doesn’t prevent investigation, does it?  I still believe in Ancient Rome and Henry VIII and World War II.  There are ways and means of investigating those things, based on eye-witness accounts of people who were there.

Whichever view of the world you’re operating under, you have to account for Jesus.  Whatever you make of him, you have to put the evidence together in a way that accounts for him.  Otherwise, you’re guilty of ignoring the most important evidence in the universe.  No serious scientist can ignore the claims Jesus makes.

This article is coming soon. You can find a good answer to this question at the Christianity Explored Isn’t it arrogant…? video.

This article is coming soon. You can find a good answer to this question at the Christianity Explored Does God Even Exist? video.