Last time, I wrote that in spite of all the evidence of divine will about me, I still continue on as before. On second thought, though, this is not true. In light of life’s experiences, I can no longer ever think that this life is a meaningless blank, a dark billiard table of chance happenings that works only from physical laws that somehow have arisen out of nowhere. But what of it?
This realization (and question) came from a conversation I had with someone who is regularly beset by cynical nihilism and depression. Why, he asks, in this mess of crooked politicians and murderous gangs of all types, should we even keep on living? Add to that the probability of a long and painful death, why not end it now and stop the madness and pain?
Well, I said: if this world is held together by a spiritual glue as I believe, then life is not meaningless, no matter how it appears. It is a cosmic thing whose meaning recedes away from us, but it is not something thrown together by chance. If we are made in the image of eternity, then life in every detail has great, even infinite, meaning. That we can’t grasp it is part of our purpose – to try. And when trying fails, to try again, and then to have faith, for faith is bound with the certainty that this world has been formed by more – by much more – than chance. Faith, then, is not blind; it is made from (to me) the obvious – that this world has a design to it. Faith is then only a continuation of that belief, even if we can’t understand that design (as no one does, regardless of belief or method).
After first speaking, this statement had to be modified for everyday reality. It had to be said that belief does not make bad times go away; that belief does not make us not curse our bad luck or our illness or our losses. Faith does not eliminate grief and pain. Rather, it gives context to them, and fits them in the overall design, often only after they have been lived and reflected upon. It is in this reflection that faith not only can save us from continual despair, but can give us more fuel for the fire of faith, for on reflection, things DO take on meaning.
Nice words, but reality also has a habit of crushing mere words, even if it eventually confirms them. I found that out this morning when I woke at 6:30 AM, an hour before necessary and two hours before I have normally been waking up before Day Light Savings Time. I suppose I am not the only one who got up grumpy this morning, and perhaps not the only one to then start evaluating my life in a dark light. It did not take long to go through a personal history of failures, some caused by my actions, and some solely (as far as I know) by fate. On top of that, the early spring we have been having has come crashing down with freezing temperatures and a gray sky which has scattered several inches of snow on the formerly clear ground. Winter again. Bad sleep. Life sucks. The conversation with the depressed person came back to bite me, right on the … schedule.
Except for that one thing: there still remains in me the belief that life has meaning, a belief that has already circled around and made a light mockery of my pessimism. This would not have been the case if a true disaster had stricken, for that takes time, sometimes a lifetime to begin to understand, but for this daily stuff, oh what a fool I am! Although even in saying this I cling to the superstition that maybe I shouldn’t say this, for I do not want to tempt fate, but I feel it must be said: what, really, are any of our plans but plans of mice in the big picture? Yes, one may be plucked up by the hawk in the middle of one’s busy, myopic life, but every ecologist knows that this, too, is part of the plan. Not a comfortable one for the mouse, but part of a whole that was meant to make of imperfect pieces - somehow - a perfect finished puzzle.
No, the touch of a greater meaning in life does not immunize one from depression and grief, and certainly not from bad things; but it makes those other times, the in-between times, so much better, because we then understand that we are part of the big mystery; because we then are fed by the knowledge that we are part of the great design. In that design we might manifest accusations against fate and anger, but we will not know the howling terror of meaninglessness.
Some may see belief, then, as only a protective shield, but even this depressed person admitted that his darkness was a shield: to expect the worst is to never be disappointed. I might even say that the hardened atheist is doing much the same: better to know that life is meaningless than to guess at all the possibly scary stuff that it might really encompass, from karma to sin and worse. But what emptiness in between! One does not have to know all the face of the earth to know that it is a round planet; and one does not have to know the truth to know that there is truth. The truth is never just a shield, but it may act like one. And so, I believe, it does, but if it’s the truth, what’s wrong with that? FK
This realization (and question) came from a conversation I had with someone who is regularly beset by cynical nihilism and depression. Why, he asks, in this mess of crooked politicians and murderous gangs of all types, should we even keep on living? Add to that the probability of a long and painful death, why not end it now and stop the madness and pain?
Well, I said: if this world is held together by a spiritual glue as I believe, then life is not meaningless, no matter how it appears. It is a cosmic thing whose meaning recedes away from us, but it is not something thrown together by chance. If we are made in the image of eternity, then life in every detail has great, even infinite, meaning. That we can’t grasp it is part of our purpose – to try. And when trying fails, to try again, and then to have faith, for faith is bound with the certainty that this world has been formed by more – by much more – than chance. Faith, then, is not blind; it is made from (to me) the obvious – that this world has a design to it. Faith is then only a continuation of that belief, even if we can’t understand that design (as no one does, regardless of belief or method).
After first speaking, this statement had to be modified for everyday reality. It had to be said that belief does not make bad times go away; that belief does not make us not curse our bad luck or our illness or our losses. Faith does not eliminate grief and pain. Rather, it gives context to them, and fits them in the overall design, often only after they have been lived and reflected upon. It is in this reflection that faith not only can save us from continual despair, but can give us more fuel for the fire of faith, for on reflection, things DO take on meaning.
Nice words, but reality also has a habit of crushing mere words, even if it eventually confirms them. I found that out this morning when I woke at 6:30 AM, an hour before necessary and two hours before I have normally been waking up before Day Light Savings Time. I suppose I am not the only one who got up grumpy this morning, and perhaps not the only one to then start evaluating my life in a dark light. It did not take long to go through a personal history of failures, some caused by my actions, and some solely (as far as I know) by fate. On top of that, the early spring we have been having has come crashing down with freezing temperatures and a gray sky which has scattered several inches of snow on the formerly clear ground. Winter again. Bad sleep. Life sucks. The conversation with the depressed person came back to bite me, right on the … schedule.
Except for that one thing: there still remains in me the belief that life has meaning, a belief that has already circled around and made a light mockery of my pessimism. This would not have been the case if a true disaster had stricken, for that takes time, sometimes a lifetime to begin to understand, but for this daily stuff, oh what a fool I am! Although even in saying this I cling to the superstition that maybe I shouldn’t say this, for I do not want to tempt fate, but I feel it must be said: what, really, are any of our plans but plans of mice in the big picture? Yes, one may be plucked up by the hawk in the middle of one’s busy, myopic life, but every ecologist knows that this, too, is part of the plan. Not a comfortable one for the mouse, but part of a whole that was meant to make of imperfect pieces - somehow - a perfect finished puzzle.
No, the touch of a greater meaning in life does not immunize one from depression and grief, and certainly not from bad things; but it makes those other times, the in-between times, so much better, because we then understand that we are part of the big mystery; because we then are fed by the knowledge that we are part of the great design. In that design we might manifest accusations against fate and anger, but we will not know the howling terror of meaninglessness.
Some may see belief, then, as only a protective shield, but even this depressed person admitted that his darkness was a shield: to expect the worst is to never be disappointed. I might even say that the hardened atheist is doing much the same: better to know that life is meaningless than to guess at all the possibly scary stuff that it might really encompass, from karma to sin and worse. But what emptiness in between! One does not have to know all the face of the earth to know that it is a round planet; and one does not have to know the truth to know that there is truth. The truth is never just a shield, but it may act like one. And so, I believe, it does, but if it’s the truth, what’s wrong with that? FK
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