The Meaning of Life
2025-11-25
I held off writing a bit today, mostly due to distractions and socializing. But I'm back to the grindstone sharpening the proverbial blade. I have been circulating back to my thoughts on this post and I believe that I have found the meaning of life. So today's entry will be a somewhat verbose explanation of this new revelation.
I have made the claim that people are fundamentally evil in the past, but felt that there was a lack of justification of this claim when I've discussed it in the past. What makes people fundamentally evil? I think that in order to best answer that question, it's important to understand what is good. There has been great discussion on what the Good is. Most believe that it is inherently altruistic in nature, even selfless. It is one thing to Socratically understand what the Good is, but the best way to find it is through theology.
If we look at Christianity and take the whole biblical story into account, the whole essence of that narrative is to attempt to explain what God is. There are many instances where God is described as love, justice, and of course, the Good. So with that, we can come to an understanding that a true look into the Good can be made through the life and resurrection of Christ. Of course, it is completely fair to say that the Good, like other Platonic forms, is an essence that is difficult to classify as a singular category. To me, that's why we have not just the biblical story to understand it, but stories in general.
Another major biblical theme is the idea of sin. Sin is defined not as being "bad" or "wrong" in our cultural context, but is better defined as "missing the mark," and that mark is Christ. There is a clear tendency for humans to sin, which is shown in every biblical story. That is, humans miss the mark as a facet of our nature. So, if we miss the mark of the Good, what does that make us? To me, there is a clear indication that for reasons we cannot understand, there is some unexplained part of us that tends towards evil, or more specifically, a movement away from God.
Yet there's an interesting facet of humanity that makes us different. Through our metacognition, we have the ability to self-examine and choose against this tendency. That is to say, we are evil but have the chance to do good things. It's not that we are good inherently, but we have the ability to see it and act on it if we so choose.
So with that, the meaning of life comes down to making that choice in spite of our nature. The fact that we have the chance alone to pursue something better is all we need to understand why we need to live. Many of us make the choice to stay evil every day, but through repentance, we have the chance to at least go towards the Good, even if we can't fully embody that ourselves.
So many people delude themselves into thinking that they're good people, but the truth is that we cannot trust our inner selves at all. Instead of relying on our own understanding, we have to do what we can to work towards discerning what the Good is and making the even harder choice of acting towards that instead of the evil that sits inside all of us. That discernment can only come through prayer and good works.
I pray that I can overcome evil and walk the narrow path, God willing.