The Most Tormenting Question

Does life have a purpose? Millions of people believe that is one of life’s most tormenting questions. It torments them mostly because they are open to finding out the answer. They are open to reasoning. Then there are others—usually so-called intellectuals—who pedal the archaic evolution fairy tale and who declare that life has no purpose. They are closed to reasoning—for a reason.

The Apostle Paul cut through the fat of endless debate when he said that if Christ has not been raised from the dead and guaranteed a resurrection for every human being, then “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”  (1 Corinthians 15:32). You know, if there’s no God, no purpose, no judgment of evil, I’m home free. I can play God and run my own life.

Only one problem with that “no God-no purpose” head-in-the sand approach. It’s a lie that will die one instant after death, when God’s purpose changes from grace and mercy to judgment and punishment. Besides, if there was no “purpose” in life, we could never know it. The word itself would have no meaning.

But now, to the rest of us who don’t choose to be willfully blind. Of course there is purpose to life. God calls it “the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1:11).  God had a purpose in letting you be born. If He gets His way, He plans to have you with Him forever in a new earth and new heaven of purest pleasures so ecstatic that earth’s honeymoon excitement will be like tea and yogurt in comparison. That’s why Jesus came. “For this PURPOSE the Son of God was manifested (revealed), that he might destroy the works of the devil”  (1 John 3:8). Christ came to destroy the one whose diabolic purpose (see, even Satan has a “purpose”) was to destroy you beginning now and for eternity.

Just imagine the misery of the man or woman drifting without purpose. Love has no purpose. It’s just a changing evolutionary emotion. Being married has no purpose—just another of those evolving survival-of-the-fittest necessities that future millennia may deem unnecessary. Having kids has no real purpose, so don’t forget to tell them that, so that they can contemplate suicide rather than face the madness of a grave waiting at the end of their “no-purpose” lives.

Without God, nothing makes sense. With God, everything makes sense, even the toughest moments in life once we hear that the God who is love will make “all things work together for good to them that love God; to them who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). There’s that word “purpose” again!

So let’s take “purpose” to its conclusion. 1) God’s purpose in creating the universe anticipated you being made in His image. 2) Christ’s purpose in sacrificing His perfect life to let you and me escape the judgment that we deserved anticipated our receiving Him with grateful hearts. 3) And now the Holy Spirit’s purpose is to guide you and me into God’s love letter called the Bible so that our thoughts, words and actions will revolve around one purpose—to glorify God and fulfill His plan for our lives. Only then will there be no regrets when we take that final breath on earth and reappear on the stage called eternity—where the curtain never falls.    

"Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ" (I Corinthians 11:1)
The ST. PAUL SCHOOL, with Frank Eiklor, Eileen Young and Cecilia Contreras