Pie Buddy: Shane Martin
Topic: Purpose of Life
There’s nothing like a casual Friday lunch chatting about
the meaning of life. So that’s exactly what Shane and I decided we’d do. We
went to the Adelaide Central Markets and walked around until we found a pie. We
ended up at Michel’s. I assume Patisserie is the French word for bakery or
pastry shop or something like that, so it’s an eligible contender. I got myself
a pepper pie and a chocolate éclair. Shane got a chicken pie, but passed on
dessert, being a healthy guy and all (clearly he read my previous blog post).
My pie was alright, not amazing, and not particularly large. The éclair was pretty
good – fresh, with lots of cream. Michel’s is more of a cake shop than a
bakery, so the variety of pies wasn’t huge. There was still an ok selection of
pies and sweet pastries though. The Asian couple behind the counter served us
with great politeness – certainly no customer service issues here. My order was
$8.50 all up – not cheap, but not over the top either. In conclusion, I
certainly don’t regret the venue choice, but I don’t think it will get anywhere
near number one on my list.
“I’ve been thinking about the purpose of life a fair bit,”
Shane began. “Discussing it is a good opportunity to talk to non-Christians
about faith. I think a lot of the point of our existence is lost on people
today, because people just want to get rich. There’s a big difference between
how Christians think about life purpose, and how the rest of the world thinks
about it. For Christians, our purpose comes from Christ. He’s our living water.
Jesus says that our fulfilment is in him. But then you look at the world today,
and most people will say there is no purpose for our lives.”
It’s a fair point. For there to be a purpose in anything,
there needed to be some being to come up with that purpose. If there’s a pie
sitting on my plate, it’s likely that someone made it with the purpose of
selling it and making money (mission accomplished). If humans came into
existence not by design but just by sheer coincidence, then there can be no
original purpose for our being. Sure, we can each come up with a purpose for
the way that we live our lives (helping people, doing well at our jobs etc),
but there is nothing we can claim that we were put on Earth to do.
Shane continued. “If there’s no purpose for our lives, I
believe we lose the ability to call something good or bad. How do you know that
without comparing it to its purpose? If my watch didn’t keep the time properly,
you’d say it was a bad watch, because it didn’t do what it was meant to do. But
if it couldn’t support the weight of a truck, you couldn’t call it bad, because
that’s not what it was intended to do. Was the Holocaust, for example, evil?
Pretty much everyone would say yes. But how can we justify that? It’s because
the actions that took place didn’t meet the correct purposes of people. And we
all recognise the evil that occurred.”
“So essentially then, the whole concept of morality is tied
in with our life purpose,” I said. “To act in a way that contradicts our life
purpose is immoral.”
“That’s right,” Shane replied. “And as Christians we find
our fulfilment in Jesus. Nothing else will satisfy. People who don’t know Jesus
are still looking for fulfilment, but they’ll look to other things, like money,
sex, stuff like that. And those things will never truly bring them fulfilment.
In Christ we’re forgiven, and our purpose is fully realised. And that’s why I
think this is such an important thing to talk about with other people.”
During these sorts of chats, I always try to put myself in
the mind-frame of someone who doesn’t believe the things that Christians do.
Comparing, for example, Hitler with someone who refused to believe the gospel
message, Christians would look at the comparison very differently to
non-Christians. A Christian would attest that both people were sinners who
stand condemned by God unless they seek forgiveness. A non-Christian would see
Hitler’s actions as being morally reprehensible, but would see no issue with
the person who rejected God. And the purpose of our life is the key in this
comparison. The Christian would see both people as being sinful and separated
from God, as they have rejected man’s purpose in life, which is to bring glory
to God. An unbeliever, who denies this purpose, would see that one of these
people has done a great deal of damage to humanity (immoral) while the other
has not, and may well be quite a selfless, kind person (not immoral).
“I guess some people would see it differently to us,” I
said. “They would see morality on the basis of doing what we can to further the
human race. Hence why treating people well is considered to be morally good,
and treating them badly is considered immoral. In that way, our purpose in life
is to improve the human race. But then if you took that all the way, then
surely it would be logical to kill all disabled, weak people, to kill all old
people once they turn 60, get rid of anyone who can’t make a significant
contribution to the human race. But anyone would see that as being extreme and
incredibly immoral. And that’s because we are made in God’s image, so we are
loving beings by nature. And our loving nature causes us to recognise something
like that as being evil. Love isn’t rational. It’s not something that we could
have obtained through evolution. It’s something God gave us a sense of, to get
a greater understanding of him. That’s the way I see it anyway.”
“Yeah, and I just don’t see how people can be happy to have
no purpose in life,” Shane said. “People have always looked for purpose in
life. The Greeks discussed philosophy, the Romans built bridges. Even the
Germans I guess saw it as being their purpose to conquer. Power was their
goal.”
“How do you think we best go about communicating our
purpose?” I asked.
“We have to be disciples, pick up our cross, follow Jesus. Through
him we have redemption, reconciliation, joy, life, satisfaction and ultimate
fulfilment. We need to trust Jesus, have a relationship with him – then we’ll
have all these things. Everyone’s looking for these things. You look at the
woman at the well who meets Jesus in John 4, she’s looking for fulfilment. But
she’s trying to use sex to get it, and that won’t work.”
“So ultimately, everyone is looking for fulfilment,” I said.
“But so many people are looking for it in the wrong place.”
“Yeah, and I think it’s really important that we communicate
that both to Christians and non-Christians,” Shane said. “As Christians, we
need to be constantly reminded of what our purpose is, or we become complacent.
We need to talk about these sorts of things more often. We need to talk about
faith, what it is, what it means. Faith is such an interesting thing – it’s
impossible, yet rational. The Bible says that faith is a gift from God. We
can’t obtain it on our own. And yet it’s so rational – there’s so much reason
and evidence behind it. And yet we can’t see that on our own, just like when
Jesus was resurrected, Mary sees him but doesn’t recognise him until he tells
her it’s him.”
“Yeah, it’s funny how that works,” I said. “Faith is ours by
grace, we don’t achieve it on our own. And yet there is so much weight behind
the gospel message. Given the evidence for and against it, it would honestly
take more faith for me to be an atheist than a Christian.”
“Yeah, we shouldn’t be scared about backing up our claims,”
Shane said. “And talking about things like faith helps us to understand God, to
praise God and to glorify God, which is our purpose.”
Everyone seeks some sort of fulfilment in their lives. As a
Christian, I believe that true fulfilment, true satisfaction in life, can only
be found in knowing Jesus. And the reason for that is that it is what I believe
we were created to do. Knowing Jesus, bringing glory to God and sharing in
eternal life through God’s loving mercy. That is our purpose in life. The Bible
is clear about what our purpose is, and why we should take great comfort in
this purpose:
We are God’s
handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in
advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)
We know that in all
things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called
according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
As Christians, we won’t always be happy. There will be
difficult times, and life will be unenjoyable at times. But we can always be
joyful in knowing what is to come, knowing that we are drawing ever closer to
the fulfilment of our purpose. For non-Christians, do you ever have a sense of
dissatisfaction, as though there was meant to be more to life than what you’re
experiencing now? If it happened to be that you were, indeed, created for a
purpose, wouldn’t it be worth your while investigating what that purpose is,
and perhaps one day enjoying the fulfilment to which it leads?
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