Thunderous Pointlessness

The search for significance in the 21st century

If Christ did not rise from the dead, then it is all a big game.

If the resurrection is fiction, then what does anything matter?

If the Kingdom of God is something we invented in our minds to help us deal with life on the planet Earth, then what an aimless ride we have all been on!

I have always been struck by the honesty of the passage above in 1 Corinthians. It level-sets everything, doesn’t it?

When I was in college, before I met Christ, I was convinced that life was meaningless. I even went to a psychologist who earnestly tried to help me with this question.

I remember a session that went, in part, like this:

“So, why ARE we alive?” I nervously asked him as I sat in his office.

He coughed uneasily and replied, “Well, I think that, given another 6 months of talking this through, we might start to make some progress with that question.”

BINGO. It was just like he had opened his wallet and showed me all the money inside, and it was empty. He didn’t have a clue on how to answer my question.

He did however manage to label me. “You have existential despair,” he weakly said.

I had a very esteemed philosophy professor at Vanderbilt to whom I posed the same question during one of his existentialism lectures. Why not?

“Uh, what is the purpose of life? You know, the meaning?”

He paused for a second. He looked perplexed.

“The meaning of life is … is that you are alive. That is the meaning of life,” he stated confidently.

At that moment, he slid into the same category as my psychologist — not a clue.

Not long after, I heard a young man on my college campus describing his relationship with Jesus Christ as if He was a reality. This blew my mind.

Existential despair was replaced with existential joy for me as I gave my heart to Christ that very evening. Hopelessness fell captive to living waters. The carpenter helped me see what the psychologist and the professor could not.

His resurrection infuses us with truth and hope so real and palpable, that at almost a molecular level, we can sing his praise continually.

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