OUR OPTIONS
What are we to do in this predicament? As I see it, there are four options.
1. Commit suicide. Faced with the absurdity and meanness of life, one ought simply to end it now. This is not so outlandish as it sounds. The French writer Albert Camus considered suicide to be the only serious philosophic question. Is it worthwhile to go on living? Hamlet asked the same question when he mused, “To be or not to be; that is the question.” Occasionally one hears of persons who answer Hamlet’s question in the negative. The student riots in France in 1968, for example, were triggered when one young man, fed up with his materialistic society, walked into the basement of a university building and hanged himself in protest. But most of us would answer the question as Hamlet did: suicide is not worth it. The fear of the unknown and the pleasures that life does afford constrain us to go on living.
2. Ignore the whole thing. Use any number of escape mechanisms to avoid asking the question of the meaning of life. Easton comments on modern man’s means of escape:
It is easier to sink into an intellectual sloth, to put aside, if he can, his worries, and either be entertained or undertake a mindless escape in the many ways provided for him by an industrial economy—drugging the mind with alcohol, speeding over the highways and waterways, talking idly with friends and acquaintances, pursuing a golf ball in an electrically propelled cart and occasionally exercising his muscles by hitting it. Then the persistent thought that he is a human being and that he is not developing all his human potentialities will not come up to plague him.6
And do not think this escapism is confined to the bourgeois middle class. The student generation also tries to escape—through drugs. Drug taking may not be an ideology anymore, but it is still a popular escapism. It is simple to blow your mind on acid rock and marijuana in the privacy of your own dorm room.
The problem with this option, however, is twofold. First, it cannot bring man fulfillment in life. Easton remarks, “It remains incontestable that the simple pursuit of his various forms of enjoyment does not lead to happiness, but leaves him both sated and dissatisfied.”7 Second, the risks involved in ignoring the problem are too great. For what if God does exist and life does have meaning? One runs the risk of losing everything by avoiding this question. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. That is doubly true when the question is the existence of God and life after death. The question takes on added urgency because death’s grinning face threatens to meet us around every turn, when we least expect it.
The great Russian author Leo Tolstoy exclaimed, “Death, death, death! Your whole life passes in the presence of death!” Yet he points out in his story The Death of Ivan Illyitch that we always think of death in terms of the other person—never ourselves. Then suddenly it is too late. Anglican minister David C. K. Watson reports, “As a minister I am constantly visiting bereaved people, and I find that the outstanding reaction is always that of shock. Death, although vaguely expected at some future time, nearly always takes the relatives by surprise.”8 “Yet,” he continues, “we have so many vivid and personal reminders of the shortness of life and the suddenness of death.” Probably all of us know of friends or relatives who have been unexpectedly cut down by accidents or disease. The question of God is too important to put off until it is too late.
3. Affirm the absurdity of life and live nobly. I think this option has a certain appeal. Here we get the picture of the noble humanist who recognizes his situation but laughs in the face of it. As he walks unblindfolded to the gallows, his step is unfaltering. He lives bravely and dedicates himself to the service of his fellow man. He needs no God, as weaker people do, for he is the captain of his soul. He is a freethinker. No antiquated morality prevents him from acting as he wishes. His only standard is love for his fellowman.
But there are two things disastrously wrong with this stance. First, it is totally inconsistent. If there is no God, then neither oneself nor one’s fellowman has any value. As Easton states, “There is no objective reason why he should be moral, unless morality ‘pays off’ in his social life, or . . . makes him ‘feel good.’ There is no objective reason why man should do anything save for the pleasure it affords him.”9 It is impossible to found a humanist morality on an atheistic philosophy. It is very doubtful whether any atheist has ever lived consistently with his philosophy.
But second, it is a noble picture only if there is no God or immortality. If there is a God and immortality, then the humanist is not brave, noble, or strong—he is pathetic, pitiful, and deluded. He is like the man who stood up in Hyde Park Corner in London and said, “People tell me that God exists; but I can’t see him! People tell me there is life after death; but I can’t see it! People tell me there is a heaven and hell; but I can’t see them!” After he had finished, another man struggled onto the soap box. He began, “People tell me that there is green grass around us; but I can’t see it. People tell me there are trees nearby; but I can’t see them. People tell me there is a blue sky above; but I can’t see it. You see, . . . I’m blind.”10 If there is a God and immortality, then the humanist is not the noble figure he paints himself to be; rather he is blind and rebellious toward God.
And who is to say that there is no God or immortality? Humanists just seem to take it for granted. The fact is, no philosopher has ever been able to construct a sound disproof of the existence of God. And science cannot disprove God either, since it deals only with physical realities. The religion of science glorifies one aspect of reality as though it were the whole of reality. Neither biology nor astronomy disproves God. God could have used evolution as His means of creating man; indeed, the notion that a tree shrew evolved by chance to a personal being who journeys to the moon appears at face value rather preposterous. And astronomy in demonstrating that the universe had a beginning a finite number of years ago (about 9 billion according to a recent estimate) actually points to the existence of a Creator of the universe. So how can humanists be so sure that there is no God or immortality? I suspect that it is because they simply do not want God to exist, since that would mean that they are not, after all, the captains of their souls.
4. Challenge the world view of modern man. If it is affirmed that there is a God and immortality, then man is not the Cosmic Orphan after all. Life has significance and value. Modern man has no proof that God and immortality are illusions. So could they not in fact be realities? That is the position of biblical Christianity. It affirms that a personal Creator God does exist. It also affirms personal immortality for man. This is the wonderful promise that it holds out to man: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
But it is important to understand what sort of immortality the Bible affirms. Biblical Christianity teaches immortality in the form of resurrection from the dead. Jesus said, “For this is the will of My Father, that every one who beholds the Son, and believes in Him, may have eternal life; and I Myself will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:40). We need to define this notion of resurrection more closely.
First, resurrection is not the immortality of the soul alone. The view of ancient Greek philosophy was that the body is the prison of the soul. When the body dies, the soul is at last released from its bondage to dwell in heaven. By contrast, the biblical view is that the body is good and is an integral part of man. Though the soul can exist without the body, it is in such a state incomplete and a mere shadow of what a fully human person is. To be a man is to be a body and soul in unity.