The Meaning of Life

Article: Life Has No Meaning? 9 in 10 Young People in the UK Believe That by Ken Ham

A recent poll ( https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/08/02/poll-9-10-young-britons-believe-their-lives-have-no-purpose/ ) in the United Kingdom revealed that 89%—nearly 9 in 10—of young people, aged 16 to 29, “believe that their lives have no meaning or purpose.” This saddening statistic is explained with a corresponding statistic shared in the same article—only 1% of this age group identifies as belonging to the Church of England, the largest denomination in the UK, meaning that very few young people in the UK hold to any semblance of Christianity (half of UK residents are atheists). This is being reflected in decreasing church attendance. In England, such attendance is down to less than 5%.

The study also found that 30% of these young people say they are “stuck in a rut,” and 84% don’t believe they are living “their best life.” But if there is no meaning or purpose to life, what makes you “stuck in a rut” or not stuck in a rut? What is your “best life”? In this worldview, there is no way even to define these things, apart from arbitrary feelings and opinions.

This belief that life has no meaning or purpose is the outworking of the religion of evolutionary secularism that permeates the education system and the media throughout the UK, and here in the United States. When you adopt the religion of atheism, you have to deal with the consequences—and one consequence is that ultimately there’s absolutely no meaning or purpose to life!

Now, many atheists get all emotional about this and say they have purpose here and now (i.e., being happy or making others happy). And yes, they can subjectively decide what purpose and meaning to believe they have now, but the fact is that they know they will die—everyone will! They know it, but I believe they really refuse to accept it, even though it’s inevitable. And, in their present existence, they have to borrow from the Christian worldview to even talk about purpose and meaning!

Atheists just don’t want to face the fact their worldview means, as Bill Nye said to me, “when you die, you’re done.” In other words, an atheist has to admit that when they die, that’s the end of them since everything is purely material in that worldview. So ultimately, nothing matters! More and more the younger generations, who have been indoctrinated in evolutionary naturalism (atheism), are realizing the hopelessness and purposelessness of the naturalistic worldview.

But as God’s Word teaches in Romans 1, God has made it evident to all that he exists, and so everyone is without excuse. God’s Word clearly teaches where we came from, what our problem is (sin), and what the solution is—Jesus Christ.

And the incredible inconsistency is that, from an atheistic perspective, eventually everyone dies, the whole universe dies, and no one will know they ever existed. So, why do so many of them get so emotional over fighting Christians/creationists? The fact that they get so emotional about it is because it’s a spiritual battle, and in their heart, they know they’re rebelling against God. Otherwise, they wouldn’t care! It shows their hypocrisy and utter insecurity in their ultimately meaningless and purposeless existence in the here and now that, to them, is doomed to become. . . nothing!

Where do meaning and purpose come from? It comes from our Creator! It comes from having a proper perspective on the history of the universe and humanity—one that starts with God’s Word. We’re not accidents, the result of millions of years of random, chance processes. We’re fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14) in the image of our Creator (Genesis 1:27). He has given us his Word, which clearly tells us our purpose and meaning. As Ecclesiastes puts it, “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). We’re created to bring glory to our Creator and enjoy him forever. That’s ultimate meaning and purpose.

We can only find this purpose, and the joy that comes from walking in it, when we repent and put our faith and trust in Christ alone for salvation. When this happens, we die to our old selves and our old ways of thinking and living, and we are remade to live for him (2 Corinthians 5:17)—and we find great joy in doing so (Psalm 119:162–168)! If you want true meaning and purpose in your life, turn to Christ. He alone satisfies (Matthew 13:45–46Isaiah 61:101 Peter 1:8–9).

The Language We Use – The Attempt to Rid the World of “he” and “she”

Dr. Al Mohler from today’s briefing:

Humpty Dumpty once said to Alice, as in Alice In Wonderland, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean. Neither more or less.” Alice responded to Humpty Dumpty, “The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things?” Humpty Dumpty’s retort? “The question is, which is to be master? That’s all.”

There is incredible wisdom and an embedded threat within that quotation. If one is the master of language, then one controls the entire communication system, and for that matter eventually the culture. To control the lexicon, to control the dictionary, to control the vocabulary is eventually to control the meaning, indeed, the entire worldview of a society. The worldview shapes the vocabulary, but make no mistake, the vocabulary shapes the worldview.

Therefore, we have to take seriously a serious opinion piece published recently in The New York Times by the Times columnist Farhad Manjoo. He wrote an article with the headline, “The Perfect Pronoun, Singular ‘They.'”

Manjoo wrote, “I am your stereotypical cisgender, middle-aged suburban dad. I dabble in woodworking, I take out the garbage, and I covet my neighbor’s Porsche. My tepid masculinity apparently rings loudly enough that most people call me, ‘he’ and ‘him.’ And that’s fine; I will not be offended if you refer to me by those traditional uselessly gendered pronouns, but ‘he,'” the author went on to say, “is not what you should call me. If we lived in a just, rational, inclusive universe, one in which we were not also irredeemably obsessed by gender, there would be no requirement for you to have to guess my gender just to refer to me in the common tongue.”

Farhad Manjoo has written for Slate. He’s written for the Wall Street Journal, and now for the New York Times. He’s dabbled in the gender issue before, even writing a piece in which he suggested that men should wear makeup. But in this article, published recently in The New York Times, he is calling for the rejection of traditional gendered pronouns and instead simply the use of the word “they,” even in the singular.

You’ll note that in the article’s opening sentences, he went on to say that this is how we should speak to one another. Manjoo is making a moral argument. He intends to make a moral argument. He is effectively arguing that it is morally superior to use non-gendered language, including pronouns. And the specific pronoun he recommends, well, we know this already, it’s “they.”

Later in the article, he writes, “So, if you write about me, tweet about me, or,” he says, “if you’re a Fox News producer working on a rant about my extreme politics, I would prefer if you left my gender out of it. Call me ‘they,'” he wrote, “as in, ‘Did you read Farhad’s latest column? They’ve really gone off the deep end.'”

He goes on to say, “And unless you feel strongly about your specific pronouns, which I respect, I would hope to call you ‘they’ too, because the world would be slightly better off if we abandoned unnecessary gender signifiers as a matter of routine communication. Be a ‘him’ or ‘her’ or whatever else in the sheets, but consider also being a ‘they’ and a ‘them’ in the streets.”

Well, his suggestion of a linguistic difference between the language used between the sheets and on the streets might be a little bit clever, but it’s way too clever when you consider what’s really at stake here. What he’s calling for is a revolution, not only in the language, but in the morality, and not only that, in the entire worldview, even the understanding of who human beings are, what it means to be human, what it means to be a him or a her, what it means to be a they.

You should remember that earlier in the column, as I quoted, he went on to speak of those traditional uselessly gendered pronouns. Useless. That’s very interesting. He’s calling gender pronouns uselessly gendered. Well, is that true or is that false? Is it important when we speak to one another that we speak to one another as male or as female?

Well, let’s just consider the fact that that is not only the traditional way that human beings have conceived, known, and spoken of one another, throughout the entirety of human existence. It is also something that is deeply embedded not only in the language but in the entire system of meaning. It’s also something that the Bible affirms as a matter of God’s revelation. Indeed, it’s a matter of the creation that God has brought about to his glory. When he created human beings, the only beings in his image, he created us, male and female.

It’s right there in the very first chapter of the Bible. Thus a he and a she, a man and a woman, a male and a female, this is written into the entire structure of creation, and even as Farhad Manjoo refers to them as being now useless, they’re hardly useless. And furthermore, Manjoo protests the fact that many elite institutions that presumably are entirely sold out to and enthusiastic about the moral revolution, including the gender revolution, they haven’t yet caught up with the linguistic revolution.

He asked, “Why do elite cultural institutions, universities, publishers, and media outlets still encourage all this gendering? To get to my particular beef,” he wrote, “when I refer to an individual whose gender I don’t know here in The Times,” that’s The New York Times, “why do I usually have to choose either he or she, or in the clunkiest phrase ever cooked up by small minded grammarians, he or she?”

Manjoo doesn’t want to have it. He writes, “I shouldn’t have to. It’s time for the singular ‘they.’ Indeed, it’s well past time and I’d like to do my part in pushing ‘they’ along.” Manjoo writes as if this is probably inevitable. He says that many in the society are already adjusting to the singular “they.” He says it’s perceived as neutral in gender. “When people encounter it, they’re as likely to guess it’s referring to a man, woman or non-binary person.”

He says this makes the singular “they” a perfect pronoun. “It’s flexible, inclusive, and obviates the risk of inadvertent mis-gendering. And in most circumstances,” he says, “it creates perfectly coherent sentences that people don’t have to strain to understand.”

Well, before looking at the inherent contradiction that comes in using the word “they,” it’s also an inherent confusion, let’s consider the fact that even if you take Farhad Manjoo’s argument at face value—”Oh, it’s wrong to use gender pronouns, we would be morally superior if we get rid of those gender pronouns”—he says that there is no real loss, but of course there’s an immediate loss. We really don’t know as much as we used to know about the person being referred to. When you speak about “they,” intentionally, as he makes clear, referring to either a male or a female or what he calls a non-binary person, you really don’t know as much as you knew when you referred to someone or heard someone referred to as he or she. There’s a tremendous loss of meaning with the use of “they” in that sense, but that’s actually the point. You can’t bring about a moral revolution on gender if the language keeps showing up with those noisome “he’s” and “she’s.”

But then we have to move on to the bigger problem when it comes to the language and that is that “they” is plural. It always has been plural, but now he’s insisting that we should use “they” in the singular.

Speaking of the resistance to using the singular “they,” he writes, “Institutions that cater to grammar snoots still disfavor the usage. The Times allows the singular ‘they’ when the person being referred to prefers it, but its style book warns against widespread usage.”

Here’s The New York Times style book citation, “Take particular care to avoid confusion if using they for an individual.” Why would there be confusion? Well, because “they” implies plural, more than one person. When you speak of “they” in the singular, you begin to confuse the entire language system.

Just consider this simple English sentence: They are drowning, we need to save them. Well, of course we should respond to that with an effort to bring about lifesaving intervention. You save one person. Have we saved them? No one person is a he or a she. If we are told we need to save them and we save only one, have we failed to save another who needs saving?

But we’re talking about this because this is an argument that is coming up again and again, and here it has shown up in the most influential newspaper in the world, and in the voice of one of that newspaper’s own columnists. And furthermore, we are told that Manjoo himself wants to be referred to with the singular “they.” That is his own, you know the language now, preferred personal pronoun.

So I pulled up the biography of Farhad Manjoo on the website of The New York Times. It doesn’t work. Just listen to how he is described. “Farhad Manjoo became a Times opinion columnist in 2018. Before that they wrote the Time’s state-of-the-art column, covering the technology industry’s efforts to swallow up the world. They also have written for Slate, Salon, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal. To their chagrin, their 2008 book, True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post Fact World, accurately predicted our modern age of tech embedded echo chambers and alternative facts.”

The last sentence, “Farhad Manjoo was born in South Africa and immigrated with their family to southern California in the late 1980s. They live in northern California with their wife and two children.” So here we have, and remember this is straightforward, this is the official bio on the website at The New York Times, we have an individual who has moved with their family, they live, their wife.

But at this point we should note that this ridiculous exercise only works because we actually do already know who he is. He understands that the issue goes far beyond the language. That’s why the language must be conquered. He says, “One truth I’ve come to understand too late in life is how thoroughly our lives are shaped by gender norms. These expectations are felt most acutely by those who don’t conform to the gender binary.”

But he says, “Even for people who do fit within it, the very idea that there is a binary is invisibly stifling.” Well, let’s just consider for a moment the fact that the vast, vast majority of human beings, for what we know who have ever lived and certainly who speak of their judgment on such things now, are quite comfortable, indeed insistent, upon being known as a he or a she. This is not invisibly stifling.

He also speaks of how this applies to his parenting, “From their very earliest days, my son and daughter, fed by marketing and entertainment, and (surely) their parents modeling, hemmed themselves into silly gender norms. They gravitated to boy toys and girl toys, boy colors and girl colors, boy shows and girl shows.” He concludes, “This was all so sad. They were limiting their very liberty to satisfy some collective abstraction.”

No, they weren’t. And they weren’t just responding to cultural or consumer impulses either. They were responding to some deep knowledge within themselves. And even if the issue of color preferences related to male and female are an abstraction, the fact that even children want to clearly understand themselves as male and female is not an abstraction.

One respondent to Farhad Manjoo in the letter section of a later edition of The Times wrote, “The universal use of the singular ‘they’ by contrast would compel all speakers to change virtually every sentence and deference to the half percent of the population who identify as non-binary. In the process,” wrote Ron Meyers of New York, “it would destroy ancient and universal linguistic distinctions of gender, and much worse, the distinction between the singular and the plural, which is essential to linguistic clarity.”

Here’s something deeply essential to the Christian worldview. The Christian worldview begins with the self-existent God, the God who created everything and gave the gift of being, that is an actual objective reality, to his creation.

Of course, the Bible makes very clear the elaboration of creation from that point. But God, the Creator, gets to determine what the creation is and what the creation means. He made human beings linguistic creatures. We have the capacity for language.

Our responsibility, according to the Christian worldview, is to order our language so as most faithfully to correspond to the reality that God has created. This is a moral responsibility. It’s a theological responsibility. It’s also just a natural impulse because human beings, made in the image of God, given the gift of consciousness, given the gift of language, we desperately do want our language to make sense and to be communicable, one to the other, understandable to those to whom we speak or write or communicate. If our language, if our vocabulary becomes detached from reality, it becomes not only less linguistically useful, it becomes subversive of the very idea of communication.

But note very carefully, this is intentional. This is exactly what the moral revolutionaries, the gender revolutionaries are trying to bring about. If they do not change the language, they cannot change the contours of the worldview, and that’s what they are determined to do. Our language will, if they succeed, no longer correspond to reality, objective reality, it will instead correspond to their newly invented system of gender understanding, or we might say of gender misunderstanding, of confusion rather than of clarity, of self-deception rather than of truth.

God, Logic & Reason

Jeff Durbin:

There is no coherent appeal to reason or the laws of logic apart from the Revelation of God. You cannot satisfy the preconditions necessary for the intelligibility of the laws of logic apart from the triune-God of Scripture. No other worldview can provide a cogent appeal to immaterial, invariant, necessary, abstract laws like the laws of logic. As image bearers of God, we will use them and appeal to them. However, there can be no meaningful justification for these laws outside of the Revelation of God. Atheism cannot provide it and neither can Mormonism.

God’s Revelation provides the grounding for reason/laws of logic. That grounding is found in God’s own eternal nature and character. God is Spirit (and therefore immaterial – John 4:24), God cannot lie (and therefore cannot engage in contradiction – Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18), God does not change (Hebrews 13:8; James 1:17), God is omnipresent (Jeremiah 23:23-24; Proverbs 15:3), God provides the foundation for believing the laws of logic are consistent everywhere and at all times (Colossians 1:17), and the triune-God revealed in Scripture provides the foundation and answer to the ancient philosophical conflict of the “one and the many” (providing a foundation for “class concepts”, distinctions, and unity).

Trying to engage questions about truth and reason apart from the Revelation of God puts the Mormon in no better place than the militant Atheist who believes that all that exists is a material universe with nothing spiritual/immaterial and is essentially “sound and fury signifying nothing”. Again, Mormons will appeal to laws of logic because they are in the image of God and can’t live in God’s world otherwise. However, the Mormon’s degradation of Scripture and abandonment of biblical revelation as the principium forces them into incoherence along with the unbeliever. The Mormon god, who is just another part of the *material* universe, who has a god above him (with standards above him he has to obey), who is not ominpresent, who does not “hold all things together”, who changes, does not provide a foundation for a cogent justification of abstract, immaterial, unchanging entities like the laws of logic.

Since Mormons have abandoned God’s Revelation as supreme, they have also abandoned any coherence when appealing to laws of logic.

Reject God’s Word as foundational (as the Mormons do) and lose laws of logic with it.

However, the Mormon won’t stop appealing to laws of logic and reason because they can’t while living in God’s world. They will borrow from what they can only truly have in a biblical worldview all the while denying the God Who provides the foundation and meaning to those things. So when the Mormon says, “I believe we should appeal to Scripture and reason” it needs to be asked:

“How do you justify any appeal to logic and reason as a Mormon who rejects Scripture as the principium (Mormon revelation is supreme), with a god and worldview that cannot provide the foundation for those things, and who tells us that the god of Scripture is a ‘monster’ (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 372)?”

What is a Worldview?

by James Anderson (original source here)

Abortion. Euthanasia. Pornography. Same-sex marriage. Transgender rights. Embryonic research. Genetic enhancement. Christians surveying the cultural landscape in the West have a clear sense that things are headed in a destructive direction. While most believers can easily identify the symptoms of decline, few feel competent to diagnose and address the root causes. There are many complex factors behind these developments, but one invaluable tool for better understanding and engaging with our culture is the concept of worldview. The sociological quakes and moral fissures we observe in our day are largely due to what we might call “cultural plate tectonics”: shifts in underlying worldviews and the collisions between them.

What is a worldview? As the word itself suggests, a worldview is an overall view of the world. It’s not a physical view of the world, but rather a philosophical view, an all-encompassing perspective on everything that exists and matters to us.

A person’s worldview represents his most fundamental beliefs and assumptions about the universe he inhabits. It reflects how he would answer all the “big questions” of human existence: fundamental questions about who and what we are, where we came from, why we’re here, where (if anywhere) we’re headed, the meaning and purpose of life, the nature of the afterlife, and what counts as a good life here and now. Few people think through these issues in any depth, and fewer still have firm answers to such questions, but a person’s worldview will at least incline him toward certain kinds of answers and away from others.

Worldviews shape and inform our experiences of the world around us. Like spectacles with colored lenses, they affect what we see and how we see it. Depending on the “color” of the lenses, some things may be seen more easily, or conversely, they may be de-emphasized or distorted—indeed, some things may not be seen at all.

Worldviews also largely determine people’s opinions on matters of ethics and politics. What a person thinks about abortion, euthanasia, same-sex relationships, environmental ethics, economic policy, public education, and so on will depend on his underlying worldview more than anything else.

As such, worldviews play a central and defining role in our lives. They shape what we believe and what we’re willing to believe, how we interpret our experiences, how we behave in response to those experiences, and how we relate to others. Our thoughts and our actions are conditioned by our worldviews. Continue reading

Star Wars and its Worldview

visionDr. Peter Jones is executive director of truthXchange, a ministry that exists to recognize and respond to the rising tide of neopaganism. He has authored several books and is the teacher on the series Only Two Religions. At the ligonier website we can shrug our shoulders, since Star Wars is old news. Or we can enthusiastically introduce our grandchildren to what we might think is a beloved, harmless yarn. Or we can—and should—discover in the series an occasion to sharpen our presentation of the gospel message and help our children and grandchildren, and anyone else who might be interested, to understand the culture in which they live.

In this famous and creative saga, which we must respect for its artistic value, we find many positive ideals—bravery, friendship, love, and spirituality, and others—which help explain the success of the series. However, in examining Star Wars’ account of the mystery and nobility of human life, the Bible’s answer, in comparison, emerges with incomparably more convincing power.

The Star Wars Phenomenon

Answering questions of morality and spirituality was the goal of George Lucas when he created Star Wars. In the 1970s, in the heyday of secular humanism, people were hungry for spiritual truth. Lucas realized that stories were more powerful than intellectual theories—especially for children. He intended to produce a children’s fairy tale set in outer space as a “teaching tool” for the re-creation of “the classic cosmic mysteries.” In so doing, he influenced audiences young and old and deeply affected the last few decades of Western civilization. The new films will no doubt extend that influence into the next generations. Continue reading

The Two Religions

If you survey the religious landscape of modern culture, you will encounter an astonishingly diverse range of views. But beneath the surface, these seemingly disparate spiritualities share a common worldview, one that is radically opposed to the Christian faith. In the final analysis, there can be only two religions—worship of the Creator or worship of creation.

On September 30, in a Google Hangout, Dr. Peter Jones, the Executive Director of truthXchange, discussed his new Ligonier teaching series, Only Two Religions. You can watch this below.

Ministry in South Africa

Dr James White was in South Africa the past weekend where he held a Biblical worldview seminar addressing topics which are very appropriate for our time.

Session 1 – Homosexuality: Choice or Wired?
Session 2 – Sovereignty versus Free Will
Session 3 – What Every Christian Should Know About the Qur’an
Session 4 – Q and A

You can download the messages at the link here.

The Most Offensive Verse

The most offensive verse in the Bible by the Bible and You. In the second lesson of the series, I brought up the subject of secular talk shows and how they like to try to beat up on Christians of any size, shape, and significance about whatever topic they think is most embarrassing and controversial. Of course, at the moment it’s “gay” “marriage,” or the topic of homosexuality at all.

In the course of the lesson, I remarked that I think — from the comfortable quiet safety of my study — that I’d take a different approach.

When Piers or Larry or Tavis or Rosie or Ellen or The View or whoever tried probing me about homosexuality, or wifely submission, or any other area where God has spoken (to the world’s consternation), I think I’d decline the worm altogether. I think instead, I’d say something like,

“You know, TaPierRosEllRy, when you ask me about X, you’re obviously picking a topic that is deeply offensive to non-Christians — but it’s far from the most offensive thing I believe. You’re just nibbling at the edge of one of the relatively minor leaves on the Tree of Offense. Let me do you a favor, and just take you right down to the root. Let me take you to the most offensive thing I believe.

“The most offensive thing I believe is Genesis 1:1, and everything it implies. That is, I believe in a sovereign Creator who is Lord and Definer of all. Everything in the universe — the planet, the laws of physics, the laws of morality, you, me — everything was created by Another, was designed by Another, was given value and definition by Another. God is Creator and Lord, and so He is ultimate. That means we are created and subjects, and therefore derivative and dependent.

“Therefore, we are not free to create meaning or value. We have only two options. We can discover the true value assigned by the Creator and revealed in His Word, the Bible; or we can rebel against that meaning.

“Any time you bring up questions about any of these issues, you do so from one of two stances. You either do it as someone advocating and enabling rebellion against the Creator’s design, or as someone seeking submissive understanding of that design. You do it as servant or rebel. There is no third option.

“So yeah, insofar as I’m consistent with my core beliefs, everything I think about sexuality, relationships, morals, the whole nine yards, all of it is derived from what the Creator says. If I deviate from that, I’m wrong.

“To anyone involved in the doomed, damned you-shall-be-as-God project, that is the most offensive truth in the world, and it is the most offensive belief I hold.

“But if I can say one more thing, the first noun in that verse — beginning — immediately points us forward. It points to the end. And the end is all about Jesus Christ. That takes us to the topic of God’s world-tilting Gospel, and that’s what we really need to talk about.”

I mean, why quibble about minor offenses, when we know how to take them right to the mother lode of all offense — that God is God, and we are not?