Created with a Purpose
I have a brilliant friend who is a devout Orthodox Jew. Many years ago, I was privileged to be invited to light the Menorah Candles at his family’s Hanukkah celebration and he came to my parent’s house to help decorate our Christmas tree. The story of how he came to his faith is a moving and fascinating one, but I’m not going to tell it in this post. He and I have always shared a mutual respect for each other’s beliefs. This friend recently recommended that I read The Great Partnership: Science, Religion and the Search for Meaning by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Once I started reading it, I had difficulty putting it down. The book is beautifully written and therefore any summary cannot do it justice.
To summarize the first part of the book, Rabbi Sacks contends that Science and Religion are compatible because they have different purposes. Science, like the left brain, primarily breaks things down into their parts, while Religion, like the right brain, primarily joins people together in relationships to tell a story and give meaning. “Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.” Interestingly, if you read my last post, which I authored before I read Sacks’ book, I described the actions taken by God in Genesis: God separated, then gathered together and gave purpose. The emphasis on stories also reminded me of the need for human beings to tell stories described by G.K. Chesterton in his book, The Everlasting Man.
Sacks sets forth two views of the human situation, one in which life is meaningless and the other that claims that life is meaningful. The facts he gives are the same in both scenarios, but one view says there is no “Why?” while the other view answers the question of “Why” by saying that someone, not part of the universe, created the universe, out of a selfless desire to make space for others. Sacks describes humans as meaning seeking animals. Yet the search for meaning has nothing to do with science and everything to do with religion, since science studies the systems of nature while meaning must come from outside the system. Without God, humanity is left with unending despair. Yet we can’t prove life has a meaning. Two people may be looking at their lives, and one will tell a story with a connecting thread, where every decision has meaning that relates to a calling, while the other describes a series of events with no purpose. Neither can be proven. People may agree about the facts, but disagree about their interpretation.
All of this reminds me of one of my all time favorite passages from any book, the speech Puddleglum gives after stepping on the green witch’s fire to momentarily break her spell in the underworld in The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis:
“One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”
This weekend I had the privilege of hearing part of a conversation my younger son was having with my father about his experiences during World War II. After being drafted, my father’s first major decision was to join the Navy. Then once he completed basic training, he was told that his testing showed he should become a rear gunner and navigator on planes off of aircraft carriers in the Pacific. My Dad’s response was that he would “rather put people back together than take them apart.” which led to him being offered the option of going to Hospital Corps training in San Diego. He chose the Hospital Corps. At one point, a line was drawn on an alphabetical list and all the men above the line were deployed into dangerous missions with the Fleet Marine Force. Dad’s name was the first one beneath the line. (Many people do not realize that the Navy supplies the medics for the marines. In the Pacific during World War II, Japanese snipers were trained to shoot medics first). Next, in 1945, he chose to attend Operating Room Techniques training in Corpus Christi, Texas, which lasted for six months. On August 6, 1945 the bomb was dropped and the war ended, just before his training would have been completed and he would have been deployed to the Pacific Theatre.
After hearing his story, my son and I were both struck by the same realization. The decisions my father made when he chose the Navy, and at every junction thereafter, and such seemingly random actions as the line drawn above his name all could have meant the difference between life and death for my father. If things had happened differently, we might not have ever been born. My father did not tell his story as a random set of events, but as a story with meaning. It made us feel like we were here in this world for a purpose. Now we could conclude differently, we could interpret it all as a set of coincidences without meaning. It is our choice. I choose to believe I am here for a reason and that my life has a purpose.
