1.2—Why Life? (12 min video)

Transcript

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Well, welcome back. We’re going to try to answer the question, “Why are we doing this thing called history?” And I always go through this with my students. In fact, if you have studied the American History Series that I have, You’ve also dealt with this question in some way or another. You’ll find that in this intro, this orientation lesson, I’m going over a lot of the same things, a lot of the big ideas. That’s because these things matter. These things are at the core of why we’re doing what we’re doing. In other words, another way to actually look at this is we can’t just answer the question, “Why do we study history?” We will, but we’re going to do that actually in a later lecture. Because before we can answer the question, why do we say this thing called history, or say the past and things like that, we have to answer the question, why do we do school?

Why do we have this whole thing called education? Why do we spend so many years upon it? And why even do we have the crazy idea of kind of being a lifelong student or learner? But of course, before we even answer that question, we have to ask an even more basic question, And that is, what’s the purpose of life? What’s the meaning of life? Why life? Let me give you a quote by Anthony Esolen. And he comments on education in this way, especially modern education, and kind of it’s stumbling to try to figure out how to teach and how to pass on things to people. And he says, quote, “We do not know what “or how to teach children, “because we do not know what a child is.” And we do not know what a child is because we do not know what man is and him from whom and for whom man is.

In other words, it’s very simple, it’s logic here. And he’s saying that we have a problem figuring out how to pass things on to children because we don’t know what a child is. And the reason we don’t know what a child is is because we don’t know what a man is. And the reason we don’t know what a man is is because we’ve kind of abandoned this whole idea that man has a creator, this whole idea that man has a savior. The fact that man has someone that he is from and someone he is for. In fact, it’s the whole purpose of life, to actually know our God, to actually be with him. In fact, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, when asked what is the chief end of man, it makes it very clear that our chief end is to glorify God, it is to enjoy him forever.

In other words, when we begin to unpack this whole idea of the meaning of life, one of the things I want you to note here today is that our main purpose is worship.

Our main purpose is to actually worship Him in all the things that we do. So for example, when we look to worship, it’s not just what we actually do, say, in the church. It’s not just what we actually do in a church service. In fact, the church is a much bigger word than just the building or just the service that we go to. The church is us. the church would be us actually following Christ. In other words, worship goes beyond the actual formal act of worship, what we call congregational worship, and actually applies to what we call rational service, the things that we actually devote our time to, the ways in which we actually work and answer things like calling.

Right now, your calling is to be a student. Right now, you have the opportunity to use the leisure of your life to just read, to just study, to just know. You don’t have the obligation of paying bills right now. There’s also this incredible thing about us that we’re really looking at education, we’re looking at worship in the sense of we’re learning to do a thing rightly. That’s called truth. We’re also learning to do a thing well. You could call that beauty. And we’re also learning to do a thing with thanksgiving, with joy, and in the service of others. You could call that goodness. In fact, that whole pattern of truth, beauty, and goodness, you’ll find it showing up in all of the great commentators, all the great Christian commentators that it is, of education throughout the past. But of course, another part of why we do this whole thing called life is, of course, to enjoy God forever, to actually rest in Him, to actually take refuge in Him, to delight in Him, to be still and to know that God is actually God.

In other words, the whole goal of life is God himself, both in life and beyond life. That’s why Paul’s able to say that to live is Christ and to die is gain in the book of Philippians. He ultimately is our goal. It’s not simply heaven itself. In fact, we often kind of get distracted when we think of our goal being heaven or being maybe the avoidance of the pains of hell.

In fact, something that Mark Twain was able to kind of poke fun at very well in both the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huck Finn.

If you’ve ever read those books, you’ll encounter Tom Sawyer getting dissatisfied with the idea of heaven because he’s told that you’re basically gonna sit around all day wearing white and playing your harp. And he finds that dull, so he would rather not go to heaven. Or with Huck, Huckleberry Finn that is, When he learns that in heaven there will not be a Tom Sawyer, his best friend, according to Miss Watson, one of his mentors at the time, he decides that heaven really isn’t a worthwhile place. That’s the whole point. That’s not really the vision of heaven. It’s so much more than that. The vision of heaven is God himself in the new heavens and the new earth. Of course, we could try to unpack what that looks like, but we’ll find a lot of areas to discuss or even debate that. But that’s not the point. The point is that our goal is God himself. The other thing I want you to consider about the whole purpose of life is there really is a pursuit of wisdom here. In fact, part of the pursuit of life is first of all to know who God is. The formal term for that would be theology, the actual study of God himself, knowing things like his names, knowing things like his attributes. But not only that, we also want to know who we are. How is it that we’re made? What is actually going on with us, especially in terms of being sinners? That would be called anthropology, the actual study of man himself. But beyond that, in terms of wisdom, we also want to know how can we be reconciled to this God? That, of course, would be called soteriology, which is the study of salvation. But not only do we pursue wisdom through all the things that we do in life, we also pursue delight itself. Delight in who God is, and delight in the way that he has actually made his world. Ultimately, the reason we do anything is to take delight in it, because God himself takes delight in it. I mean, the whole interesting thing about God is that he didn’t actually need to make us. He did not need to make this world. He was already complete in and of himself. And so we’re completely unnecessary. In fact, this is a point that James Shaw makes in his great book on the unseriousness of human affairs. This whole idea that God made us simply because he wanted to. He made us because he found a light in it, or in us, that is, and that’s the best thing about us. In other words, it reminds me of another quote by G.K. Chesterton, somebody that I’ll be mentioning to you often, in fact, we even have a whole lesson in which we take a look at his life in greater detail.

But Chesterton in his great book, Orthodoxy, when commenting on this whole idea of taking delight in life, he makes this statement that it’s simply good to be in the fairy tale. He describes life, even with all of its problems, as being like a fairy tale. Now, he wasn’t naive. He didn’t somehow think that there are no problems in the world. Chesterton understood those problems very, very well. But he was somebody who understood that there is actually a God who’s actually out there, who’s actually not silent, who actually is working all things together for good for those who love him. That’s the fairy tale. Just understood that it was simply good to be in the fairy tale. It’s good to have life. It’s good to offer thanksgiving for that. You’ll also hear me talk occasionally from Arthur Kuller-Kooch. It was Q, as he was known, who said that there is such a thing in this world as a love of learning. This is ultimately where we go with education. that the reason we actually pursue these things is to know God, to delight in him, to know his creation, and to delight in that creation because he made it.

It really is the entire purpose of why we do anything that we do, or at least should be the purpose of why we do anything that we do.

Q also said things like this. He said, “The very best things in the world,” such as learning who God is and what he has made, “The very best things in the world do not pay “for the simple reason that they are priceless.” In other words, think of the things that you do when you don’t have to do anything else. Those are the things that are priceless. The things that you choose to spend your time doing that are simply for the sake of pursuing beauty, for the sake of pursuing truth, for the sake of pursuing goodness, those are priceless because they’re simply worth doing for the sake of doing them. That’s why, for example, we make beautiful things. That’s why, for example, we delight in making our food tasty and wonderful and delightful to the eyes, in terms of texture, in terms of taste.

We don’t do those things just to give us fuel. We do those things because we find a delight in them. We find a light in them because we’re made in God’s image, because he finds a light in making things have great variety, and making things actually be quite worthwhile in their pursuit, not just something that we have to do.

Finally, in this rather short lesson today, I want to share with you what Tolkien said when a young girl approached him and asked him the question, “What is the purpose of life?” Actually, she wrote him this question in a letter, and he responded with a letter. He said, “At their highest, our prayers seem simply to praise Him, that is God, for being as he is and for making what he has made as he has made it.

In other words, our prayers at their best are not just a series of requests. Our prayers at their best are a thanksgiving to God for being who he is. They’re praise to him for being who he is. They’re a thanksgiving for the fact that he’s made us and they’re thanksgiving for the fact that he’s given us life. He’s given you, he’s given me life on this day, whatever day you’re watching this. Those who believe in a personal God, a creator, do not think the universe is itself worshipful, though devoted study of it may be one of the ways to honoring him.

And while as living creatures we are in part within it, and a part of it, our ideas of God and our ways of expressing them will be largely derived from contemplating the world about us.

Though there is also revelation, both addressed to all men and particular persons. In other words, we will of course find delight in what God says in his word, but we can also find delight in praising the creation that he has made because he’s made it. So it may be said that the chief purpose of life for any one of us is to increase according to our capacity, our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.

That’s why we do this whole thing called life, that’s why we do this whole thing called school. to better know Him, to better know what He has actually made, and to take that knowledge and to be moved to praise and worship, and to be moved to thanksgiving, to recognize what it is that He has actually done for us.

That’s the purpose of all these things that we’re doing.