Made for Another World

I can remember the feeling perfectly. Not too long ago, I had graduated, got a full-time job, and began my professional life at the very bottom. I was now “adulting.” At first, things seemed fine, but soon the monotony and drudgery of commuting and working set in and began to gnaw at the back of my mind. I got up early, commuted to work, and put in my hours, only to collect a meager paycheck that barely covered the bills so I could have the privilege of returning to work the next day and repeating the meaningless cycle until I died…

This despair had begun to stick to every surface in my life. Was this all there was to life? Was I really meant to just punch a clock, perform some menial function for a soulless corporation, take home a check that never seemed to make it all feel worthwhile, and patiently wait for oblivion? Many people have felt this sense of meaninglessness and shuddered. We ask, “What is the point of life?” “What am I here for?” “What difference will my life make in the great drama of human history?”

The Burden of Eternity  

In Ecclesiastes 3:9-15, King Solomon explores this idea, saying:

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.

What good is it to toil all our lives? If drudgery is our lot in life and we will all one day die, then life is a cruel joke. If we all ultimately end up in the grave and forgotten, then what is the point of our lives? When we consider these things only through human wisdom, there is little hope.

Despair and The End of the Universe 

Author H.G. Wells captures this feeling perfectly in his 1895 science fiction novel, The Time Machine. In the book, the time traveler has many adventures, but at the end he finds himself in the far distant future to witness the fate of man. Instead of a highly advanced civilization, he finds absolute desolation. In this future, he finds only a few bits of lichen and moss hanging on to life under the light of a gigantic, dying red sun; the only sounds are the rushing wind and the lapping of waves on the nearby beach. Wells writes:

Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives–all that was over.

The world ends, not into unending human enlightenment and progress, but in a slow fade into oblivion. When the time traveler observes this, he becomes physically ill and stumbles back into his machine to escape the haunting reality of a future with no hope. This philosophy of despair is called Nihilism. If this is all there is, then Solomon, earlier in Ecclesiastes, is right: “vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” 

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche warned that in the increasingly God-less society of the modern world we were drawing ever closer to the complete destruction of all meaning and value in life. Although he did not believe in God himself, he understood the incredible predicament humanity faced without Him.

In a world without God, without divine design and purpose, the world is simply a cauldron of molecules bumping into one another as the universe expands into oblivion. We are biological machines seeking to reproduce our genes and doomed to extinction. Even the Earth itself is doomed to die. In light of that destiny, what is life worth?

Hope in God and Immortality

Philosopher and Theologian William Lane Craig, in his book Reasonable Faith, offers a lifeline out of this quagmire. Real meaning and purpose in life can exist only if, one, God exists and, two, there is life after death. It just so happens that these two conditions are true! Christianity offers the only path that allows us to be both intellectually consistent and happy. Only in God and His offer of eternal life can we find true meaning and fulfillment.

Not only does God exist and offer eternal life, but He created me and the world we live in on purpose! The Bible says I was made on purpose for a reason. God knows me inside and out and created me with a plan. God saw me before I was formed in my mother’s womb. He knew me before I existed.

I am not an accident of a meaningless, arbitrary universe, but the careful handiwork of a loving Father. I am not doomed to oblivion, where everything I am will be forgotten, but I have the hope God offers of life after death through Christ. Though I struggle to see it some days, God has a purpose for my life.

Solomon said, “He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” I feel that eternity in my own heart. In his famous book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis offers an incredible insight. He says: 

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” 

Why do we so often feel restless at our work and dissatisfied with life? Because we were made for another world! We were made to walk with God in the cool of the day, as our first parents did. We were meant to live in relationship with our Father and Creator in the Heavenly Kingdom. We were meant to rest in His love, leap in His joy, and walk in His peace. 

Purpose in Every Day

To live out our purpose, which God ordained for us from the beginning, is a high and holy calling. Most days, I struggle to come to grips with the meaning of my life and my purpose in this world, but I know these things can ultimately be found only in God. Only in Him can we be whole. 

In Christ we have a sure identity. We are His, and He is ours. He is the Rock, and in Him we have a sure foundation. In light of this, we don’t need to strive to create meaning for ourselves or build a lasting legacy that will continue after we’re gone. In Him we have all we need. In Him, all our ordinary days and regular work have meaning if we do it for His glory and for the good of others. 

Our lives are not marching on toward a meaningless dead sun, but toward the living Son! So “be happy and do good while you live. That each of you may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all your toil—this is the gift of God.” God made you for a purpose. Walk in it.