Tools for Monday: What is the Ultimate Purpose of Life? (Part 1)
Have you ever worked hard on a difficult project or decision and thought, “Why am I doing this in the first place?” There are many times when we seem to run on instinct, or we just go through the motions of an activity merely because that’s what we’ve always done. If we don’t have an overarching purpose for even our most mundane daily activities, then we obviously can get frustrated. Aimlessness can easily lead to anxiety and even depression.
Over the next few Mondays on the blog, we’ll be talking about goals and how to accomplish them. The hope for this blog series is that you would gain some handy tools for discerning and enacting right goals in light of God’s will and ultimate purposes. This means that we will examine what God has revealed us about the chief ends of life. In other words, our daily goals should be put under the microscope of God’s big purposes as revealed to us in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. When we understand God’s big purposes, then we can make great daily goals!
Let’s start this series by examining some overarching purposes offered by popular philosophies. Sometimes these philosophies are called “speculative” since they speculate about how we should construct our lives based on our desires, compulsions, or reasonings. For instance, Socrates speculated that the chief end of life is knowing good and beautiful things. He taught that the only way to achieve this good is through rational, prudent self-mastery. Goals are to be calculated rationally and coldly, without any regard to personal happiness. To “know thyself” is the main goal under which all other goals and decisions should be evaluated.
Yet other speculative philosophies, like that of the ancient Epicureans, said that the highest purpose in life is to find and feel some sort of happiness—happiness being a feeling of pleasure. In this way of life, there is no such thing as right or wrong. Right is simply defined as that which we mutually agree with others as being right because it feels good. Rationality or reason can therefore be thrown out the window, especially if it doesn’t benefit our pleasure or ability to feel good.
From a Christian perspective, we can see some glaring holes in the speculative philosophies just mentioned. God is the God of truth, not of mere speculation. It is obvious in the life of Jesus that God purposes for human beings both to experience pleasure and to use our minds and rationality for a greater purpose than knowing ourselves. If we could move beyond speculative mindsets and see God’s revealed intentions for us, then our goals would certainly be more well-rounded and subject to what God wills and desires for us.
But how do we know God’s will? How do I set goals in light of God’s ultimate purposes for us? Let’s talk more about it next Monday.