Why I am a Christian (5)

The Yearning for Meaning in the Human Heart Points to God

In 2012, I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I came up with 26.

The first four reasons spring from the realm of science and they are foundational to my understanding as to why I think that belief in a creator is plausible and not irrational. 

The next two are more to do with metaphysics than physics. They are rooted in the mysteries of the human condition.

One of the endlessly repeated Richard Dawkins quotes you hear is the one from River Out Of Eden (1995) in which he says: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

The question I ask is this: if the universe really were purposeless and indifferent, where did Dawkins’ evident interest in meaning and understanding come from? 

Would people ever ache for something that does not exist? Even if they could, where would that sense of longing spring from in a meaningless, pitilessly indifferent cosmos? 

What we all experience as human beings just doesn't fit Dawkins' vision of reality.

I think that the human soul’s yearning for meaning points to the existence of meaning in the universe. And the existence of meaning in the universe points to the existence of God.   

Have you ever thought about what it is that marks us human beings out from all other beasts? We, like them, eat, sleep, procreate, and defend ourselves from danger.

But unlike them, we know the difference between knowledge and wisdom. We have an existential awareness of ourselves. We explore the nature of our existence, asking questions such as “Who am I?”, “Where do I come from?” and “Why am I here?” We appreciate artistic beauty. We have a deep awareness of our mortality. We need meaning and purpose in our lives. We have an innate aspiration for significance. For all these reasons, we are not the same as other beasts. Because of these differences, human life is sacred.

We have a soul. “Soul” is a difficult word to define. It’s like the essence of a person, the self. It is what makes me me and you you. I don’t know where the soul is. Like the psyche, it isn’t hemmed in by a physical location. But I know I have a psyche, or a consciousness, just as much as I have a brain. And I know I have a soul just as much as I have a body.

Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University in La Mirada, California J. P. Moreland has defined consciousness as “Our introspection, sensations, thoughts, emotions, desires, beliefs, and free choices that make us alive and aware. The ‘soul’ contains our consciousness and animates our body” he says.

Radio journalist John Humphrys tried to articulate this in his book In God We Doubt: Confessions of a Failed Atheist:

“Biologists like Richard Dawkins know a thousand times more than most of us ever will about how our bodies work and how we evolved… But there is that other mysterious attribute, about which so many scientists are curiously incurious. There is our soul, our spirit, our conscience or whatever else you want to call it… We sense a spiritual element in that nobility and in the miracle of unselfish love and sacrifice, something beyond our conscious understanding.”

The Judaeo-Christian understanding of this phenomenon is that we are more than a tidily arranged ensemble of atoms and molecules and we are not just another species. We are created in the image of God.

Saint Augustine’s famous prayer “You have formed us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in you” gives voice to this reality. It shows that this existential yearning was known and felt in the 3^rd Century so it is not a new phenomenon. And it is all the more striking that it was written by an intellectual giant who, as a young man, lived a wild and hedonistic lifestyle. His lavishly promiscuous youth left him empty handed and still searching for meaning.

Bertrand Russell was a leading atheist in the mid-20^th Century. He wrote an essay called Why I Am Not a Christian. But tellingly, when his daughter Katharine Tait wrote a biography of her father she wrote:

“Somewhere in the back of my father’s mind and at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul, there was an empty space that had once been filled by God and he never found anything else to put in it.”

Most people would admit that they have a restless sense of something deep down that is not satisfied by any material thing. The pleasure gained by any new purchase, however eagerly desired beforehand, soon wears off. That suggests that the soul can only be fulfilled by something less tangible than the stuff we accumulate.

I find it striking (but unsurprising) that, in a century that has seen the cultural influence of Christianity recede in the U.K. - influenced by Russell’s atheism - unhappiness in marriage leading to family breakdown and world-weariness leading to drug abuse and binge drinking are at record levels. When our souls are starved of meaning and purpose our relationships become unfulfilling and we seek escape from the inevitable emptiness we are left with.

The Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias once fielded questions from an auditorium of University students in the USA. He had been commending the case for God and, as is the fashion, had received a frosty reception. One student raised his hand and stated that Mr Zacharias had been wasting his time talking about real meaning in life because there is no meaning in life. “Everything is meaningless.”

Zacharias asked him to stand and replied, “Sir, I take it that when you claim ‘everything is meaningless’, you assume that what you have just said is meaningful. If your statement really is meaningful then everything is therefore not meaningless, and you have unwittingly proved your statement to be false. But if you still maintain that everything is meaningless, including your statement, by your own criteria you have essentially said nothing of consequence and you may sit down.”

O.K., perhaps it was a little unkind to the student to so publicly expose the fatal weakness of his argument. But the premise was wrong anyway. Everything is not meaningless. It just feels like it is when you have denied your soul the oxygen it needs to thrive.

There are many ways this image of God expresses itself but today I just want to observe that some kind of spiritual expression is practically universal – and seems innate.

Swedish-American author John Ortberg writes about a little girl who asked her atheist father “Who made me?” The father started to talk about the Big Bang, random mutations, blind chance and the absurdities of this vastly meaningless universe. She listened to him and looked down at her shoes, a little disappointed. Then the father said, in the interests of balance, “Oh, and there are some other silly people who believe in an all-powerful being called *God* and that he loves everyone and that he made us all.” The little girl started to dance around the room shouting excitedly, “I knew what you told me wasn’t true! It’s him, it’s him!”

What is it in the human soul that, in all cultures in all history seems to draw so many to a sense that there is something - Someone - greater than oneself to worship? Even in cultures that violently suppress or relentlessly scoff at such a view, for example Soviet Russia and the 21^st Century Western world, nothing seems to be able to snuff out this spiritual flame in the human soul. Could it be because we are made in the image of a God who is worthy of praise and worship? I think so.

Thinking with this framework in mind makes sense to me and it helps me to make sense of the world around me. As C.S. Lewis so memorably put it in Is Theology Poetry? “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

The Bible expresses it this way: [God] 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. (Ecclesiastes 3.11).

In other words, human beings instinctively sense there is an eternal, spiritual dimension to life (though they may suppress such feelings) but can never work it all out with their finite minds.

Those who reject this vision of the human condition tell us that our existence is just an unlikely fluke; we are all alone, having arrived completely by chance in a universe that has no design, no destination, no point and no meaning.

They need to explain, better than they have so far, why human beings are on a restless quest to interpret deeper meaning, and discover an overarching structure in life, the universe and everything.

They need to tell us why we seem hard-wired to probe the realities of our existence and see meaningful patterns there.

They need to enlighten us as to why people ask themselves “What’s it all for?”

They need to get across why people so often ask themselves “Is there more to life than this?” especially when they seem to have everything they need or could want.

Maybe we do live in a universe with “no purpose… nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” But it doesn’t seem like it; quite the reverse.

As C.S. Lewis (again) once wrote in Mere Christianity, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. 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.”

Exactly. 

Or as Philanthropist Sir John Templeton put it: “Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?”

Strange indeed...