The Meaning of Life

One big question: What is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything?

Make your own

Aisling Tempany

The idea that we make our own meaning in life is probably harder to explain than any other philosophical idea. Our meaning isn’t always going to be the same. We don’t all have the same meaning in life. We weren’t born in the first place for the same reasons or at the same time, so how could it be?

This doesn’t mean that our lives have no meaning at all. The idea of making up your own meaning in life is often confused with ideas of existentialism, and postmodernists like Sartre. They, to be simple about it, largely believed it didn’t matter what we did, because there was no meaning to it.

But I would disagree. The meaning of our lives is constantly changing, and half the time we make it up as we go along. When I was 18, I thought the meaning of my life was to be an actor. When I was 20 I thought it was to help people. I’m nearly 22 and I’m not sure. But maybe that’s because my life keeps changing. Maybe the meaning of my life is to keep changing.

By the time most of us leave university, our lives will have a completely different meaning to what they did when we started. University is about change and transition, and, for some of us, how we make our own meaning in life.

Atoms in motion

Anthony Hobday

First of all, let’s assume there is a system of cause and effect in place, causality. If stimulus A is introduced, then that will definitely cause situation B to arise. If you roll a die with the same speed and force, while keeping exactly the same external influences, then it will always land on the same number.

Now, instead of dice, let’s look at atoms. If these atoms are all following a system of cause and effect (That is, they’re doing what they’re doing for a reason), then it stands to reason that everything ever in the universe has been ‘caused’ and will follow an exact path based on external influences.

Here comes the tricky part. If all of those external influences are also following a system of cause and effect, then logic dictates that everything is predictable, non-random, and following a set path. Indeed, our very thought processes, and actions, even our ‘free will’, they are all based on the atoms that make us, so it also follows that everything we do is set on a predictable path because of cause and effect.

This means that ‘fate’ is more real than you’d like to imagine. You may think you have control over your life; that the thoughts you’re experiencing are ‘free’, when in actual fact they’re just complicated to the point of unpredictability. Is there a meaning to this life? I wish!

Glory to God

Caleb Woodbridge

To glorify God and to enjoy him forever – that’s the ‘chief end of man’ according to one summary of Christian belief, or as we might say today, the meaning of life.

Everyone worships a god. Whatever we devote our time to, whatever we make our highest goal, whatever we take greatest pleasure in, that is the god we worship. For some it may be family and friends, for others it is money or success, or perhaps pleasure or knowledge.

Christians believe that God is the only one who should be worshipped. Those other things are to be enjoyed, but as gifts of God, as part of our enjoyment of him. But why God? Firstly, he’s the one who will give us greatest pleasure and satisfaction. Secondly, because he’s worth it, the greatest being in the universe. He doesn’t just happen to be morally good; he is the standard of goodness itself. He isn’t just reasonable, but the very reason and logos that underlines the universe. He is where Goodness, Beauty and Truth are one. Settling for anyone or anything less misses out on the greatest possible pleasure, and also does God the most terrible offence.

How do we enjoy God? He gives us himself, the greatest gift possible, through offering forgiveness and union with him if we depend on Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”