I have been an atheist, a new age spiritualist and a Christian, and I’ve been drawn to different teachings and philosophies from around the world at different times in my life. I spent a good deal of my adult life searching painfully and desperately for truth.
My life has taken on a different meaning since I became aware that there really is a God. When God reveals himself to you, it changes everything. It is both wonderful and frightening. The God that I now know is all-powerful and has created our universe and everything in it. God is in control of the perfect chaos of existence on Earth and throughout the universe. All of the good, and all of the bad, is the result of God acting in creation.
When I was a Christian, my life was filled with purpose. I was on a mission to discover more about Jesus by studying the Bible and I was very evangelical. Bringing people into the Christian faith was my ambition and this gave my life so much meaning. I thought that I would be a Christian for the rest of my life.
But things changed when I began to think in depth about some of the key teachings of Christianity. These teachings conflicted with my knowledge about God in a way that made me feel deeply uncomfortable. For instance, I know that a part of God’s nature is that he is omnipresent (everywhere) and therefore all is God. There cannot be free will – all will is God’s will.
If all will is God’s will then it is not coherent to talk of sin, or the fall of man, or punishment in hell, or the devil. Knowing that there is no free will means I can no longer call myself a Christian. I now know that the whole of existence is contained within God, and wherever there is action in existence God is the animating force.
The meaning of life, I have come to understand, is that we are all part of a cosmic game with God in control. God needs to stay entertained and occupied for all eternity, so he has created this complex universe in order to express many different aspects of himself and of reality.
In this short article, I have merely scratched the surface. For a deeper insight into my life and philosophy check out my books. Alternatively, you might wish to explore some of the many articles about philosophy and religion on this blog.
What are your views about the meaning of life? Leave a comment below!
Perfect Chaos 
5 responses to “What is the Meaning of Life?”
I often try to look at things from a different perspective. Imagine that God is not omnipotent! Consider the possibility that God is nothing more than a ‘Vital Force’. A Dictionary of SCIENCE, (I have an old copy that was prepared by E.B.Uvarov, D.R. Chapman and Alan Isaacs, as a Penguin Reference Book), includes an entry under VITALISTIC THEORY: The view that life, and all consequent biological phenomena, are due to a ‘vital force’. A similar idea was explored in one of the Star Trek feature films, but the characters referred to it as, “The Genesis Factor.” Have you viewed it?
I’ve set the scene now let me address your question from this perspective. God or the Vital Force has been extremely active on this planet: there are the plant and animal kingdoms with millions of varieties of species and add to it the fungi and the unicellular organisms (e.g.s amoebas and plankton) and all the micro-organisms e.g. bacteria and viruses. Please excuse me if I’ve missed anything through my own ignorance.
Now the meaning of life is clear: each species naturally exists to perpetuate itself; to compete for its existence with other species; to overcome adverse environmental factors by evolving; and, to flourish in environs that are favourable to it. Some become extinct but the Vital Force remains unconcerned! There are still millions of forms of life that continue to exist. Maybe the God so many human beings pray to is similarly unconcerned, even if God is omnipotent! God does not die if a species becomes extinct.
The Vital Force idea could explain all the mysteries of life for the human species. Without a need for benevolence, nor malevolence, all the miseries that we perceive as human beings (e.g.s disease, famine and mental suffering) are merely the consequences of our struggle for survival and the ability of relatively small groups of elite human beings to dominate the rest of us. In the past, religious leaders used to subdue and dominate the masses. Currently, elite groups of secretive organisations fulfil these roles. Examples may include the Freemasons and the Illuminati. Links for more info on these and other secretive organisations are included below:
http://listverse.com/2012/11/21/top-10-scandalous-freemason-secrets/
http://armageddonconspiracy.co.uk/the-illuminati%28903482%29.htm
http://listverse.com/2007/08/27/top-10-secret-societies/
To conclude: What is the meaning of Life? For each species on this earth it is to: exist, reproduce and flourish. For most of us human beings, we want, additionally, to: enjoy our lives, love one another, avoid wars, respect our planet and all its life forms, engage in intellectual and artistic activities, and improve our quality of life for ourselves and future generations.
Dinos Constantinou, 24/04/15
LikeLike
There is no inherent meaning of life, other than – being. Being in itself is hardly a meaning, is there a meaning to being a tree? A tree doesn’t ask, because it doesn’t have Consciousness evolved enough to ask.
All meaning seems to be context created, in the context of each individual Consciousness.
If you doubt this Steven.. consider this. Who is going to care about YOUR specific life in five years? Ten years? Fifty years? One hundred years? A THOUSAND years?
We humans take ourselves way too seriously.
LikeLike
Thank you for an interesting post. We take ourselves ‘too’ seriously because we can. We use forums to experience a wider range of views and we enjoy this activity because we are social animals. If the question could be worded better, then why not suggest an alternative? Maybe, “What is our role on this planet?” Or, “Should we care about how our species pollutes this planet and erases other species from it?”
Trees are important because of the amount of Oxygen they provide to creatures that need it so they serve a purpose in the Carbon Cycle. All living things are connected in some way: predator and prey; parasites that harm hosts and symbiotic ones that give and take; good bacteria that aid digestion, etc. All living things on this earth owe their existence to the confluence of several precisely balanced factors, e.g. our distance from the sun and the water that prevails.
I think Prof Brian Cox explained it much better in his series, “The Wonders of Life.” Did you watch any of the episodes?
Dinos Constantinou
LikeLike
A ‘ghost’ gives us the option to do bad things. That is the work of evil – the Devil.
LikeLike
Hi Ted, I don’t believe in the Devil because if God is omnipresent then it is impossible for a being to exist ‘outside of God’. In other words, all action is God’s action; all will is God’s will.
LikeLike