By MIKE WILEY, Publisher
Some time ago, I read a book about the meaning of life by Canadian professor and psychologist Jordan Peterson. The book, which was a huge best-seller, is called 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
One thing I quickly discovered is that you really have to put on your big boy pants to read Peterson.
Peterson’s book is not exactly pessimistic, but neither does he whitewash the realities of life. As Peterson tells it, it is foolish to pretend that life is not difficult and dangerous, though we certainly try. Millions and billions of creatures have come and gone and struggled and died over eons. We humans are the inheritors of all that struggle and death. We experience it ourselves.
Human philosophers, reasoning apart from God, have striven mightily to answer the great questions of human existence. Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Is there any meaning to existence?
Despair of human philosophy
Today, the development of human philosophy has been reduced to something called “existentialism” — the view that, at best, all we can really know is that we exist, but can know nothing about the reasons for our existence, if any reasons even exist. This has led, in the end, to something called nihilism. Nihilism is the ruling philosophy of our age. Wikipedia defines it this way: “Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Moral nihilists assert that morality does not exist at all.”
This is the empty despair to which the best human philosophers have reduced the essence of human life apart from God: meaninglessness and nothingness.
This despair has led directly to the rise of many “isms,” as humans desperately search for some kind of meaning for their lives. It has led to the rise of socialism/communism as a kind of new, secular religion. Catholic scholar Richard John Neuhaus said, “Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.” Seems about right.
The atrocities of the Nazi’s and the communists in the 20th century were a direct result of, and ultimately justified by, nihilism. If nothing really matters, if individuals aren’t really intrinsically valuable, then what does it matter what is done to them? The final reality becomes power for the sake of power. This seems to be the view of many on the secular left today.
That Old Time Religion
However, it is the “old time religion” that provides the best explanation for the dysfunction of human existence. It tells us that human beings have dignity and are capable of amazing beauty, creativity, and goodness because they are created in the image of God. However, “the old time religion” also tells us why human beings are also capable of terrible evil and cruelty, and suffer sickness, deprivation, and death. It is because they are disconnected from the Creator through deliberate choice, and have chosen the worship of self over the Creator. It still seems the best explanation.
I don’t necessarily buy into all of Peterson’s citations of evolutionary theory, although I understand his use of it to drive home his points. However, Sacred Text allows, between the first and second verses of Genesis chapter 1, a span of creative time culminating in a final, fairly recent, creation in the Garden of Eden.
The Sacred Text teaches that the purpose of creation was for the larger Divine purpose of obtaining a love relationship with men and women who will step out of darkness and choose relationship with Him. Winning a free, non-forced, love relationship with human beings is far more difficult than merely creating the physical universe. This “people of God” are designed to be in relationship to God the way a bride is to the bridegroom, and they would share this ever-growing, ever-deepening love relationship with God forever. Now that’s a beautiful vision.
Christmas Comes to Rescue
However, with the world in the merciless grip of the powers of darkness and rebellion, with death the ultimate reality for every person, how could this beautiful vision possibly be realized? Humans certainly could not save themselves or work their way back to God. Nothing they could do could erase their spiritual crime. They were too far lost.
If anything could be done, something from the outside would have to come in. The Bridegroom would have to leave his safe haven and take a perilous journey to rescue the bride, beaten, bedraggled, alone, and trapped in the dragon’s dungeon. And so it is.
When humanity on earth was trapped and helpless, at just the right time, heaven invaded to save. Heaven invaded in the form of the God-in-the-flesh Christ child who would grow up to defeat the powers of evil, darkness, and death by a sacrificial life. This is what we celebrate at Christmas. This or nihilism. What say you? HVN