Memo: The Meaning of Life (and other trivial ideas)

Too often, books are written on such a topic, offering a sundry list of “how-to’s” or worse yet, a vague and ambiguous theory that only appears profound. Recently, I was struck by the fact that Scripture flies in the face of such sundry lists and ethereal guesses. With divine simplicity the Christian worldview addresses life's overarching meaning with, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s it. We can go home now. And yet, we are left with the lingering feeling of an ambiguous claim to what life is (“It’s all about sunshine and daisies”), and longing for a list of tasks that we might at least get the satisfaction of checking things off. But Scripture clearly says that we are “ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit…written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

The meaning of life as laid out in Scripture is love. God is love. The two greatest commandments are to love. It is both a noun and a verb, a being and an action to be undertaken. God calls us to love that Love, and to love the image of that Love as we love ourselves. But what does this mean? How do we live it? How do we not get lost in our own freedom, or even begin to fathom what this looks like practically?

We know in tangible form what Love looked like as He lay dying on the cross. We saw Him sacrifice His life because He first loved us, “While we were yet sinners.” Herein lies the key. We are aware of God’s grace to mankind and perhaps seen His unending mercy in our own lives, redeeming us from death. But what of the grace now given—to whom shall it pass on? We are called, having once been redeemed by Love himself, to love our neighbors (friend or enemy, righteous or sinner, same or different). This love must be the same as the Love which enables us to love. It must be without expectation of return. We must be able to love, to pass on that grace which we have received, with no fear of rejection. We must love as Christ loved us, that is, for the mere sake of loving, with only hope and no promise that that love will be reciprocated.

We love God because He first loved us, but when we turn that love outward toward fellow man, we face inevitable disappointment. To love a sinner (and that means all human love) is to accept pain. It is to endure hurt and face abandonment. It is to reach out and touch a withdrawn heart, never knowing if that action will be returned. It is to write a letter without expecting a response. It is to show affection despite ingratitude. It is to give and not require. Look at Mother Theresa, at those humans who embody love for us—they do not assume its return. They simply give that which they have received from God, and love flows on. This is true love, sacrificial in nature. It is what Christ displayed in all His glory, and is now our joy to pass on with grace.

To love in this manner is utter delight. W.H Auden once wrote, “He who bends to himself a joy/ Does the winged life destroy/ But he who kisses the joy as it flies/ Lives in eternity’s sunrise.” If we begin to love fellow man without making our love contingent on its requital, then we have begun to train ourselves in what Christ has called us to do. We have begun to not love on our own strength (which cannot be sustained in the face of continual disappointment; cannot survive without requital), but have begun to pass on the love of Christ which was given to us—to kiss the transitory as it passes in light of this love everlasting.