Meaning of Life: Session 3

The third and final session of this series on the meaning of life. Enjoy!

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Session Text

Bondage to Freedom

Last night, I mean this is the last night here, we were talking about the topic from bondage to freedom and one of the viewers after the lecture came to me and asked what does freedom look like? This is when some people might think, bondage to freedom, it just happens. No, this whole process probably continues until we all die. The difference is the whole spectrum here, but whatever you’ve been enslaved to before, you’re completely controlled by that. Then as you move along towards freedom, what used to control you, does not control you anymore. You know that.  You have better control over it than when you were being completely controlled by it. For example, materialism. Before people were completely controlled by materialistic attitude and if someone doubted you, you couldn’t survive. While having materialistic power, you might feel like you have control, but you actually start losing control, you lose freedom. You lose your freedom but if you start moving away from materialism you become freer. Once you become totally free, materialism doesn’t bother you anymore, and so that kind of movement from bondage to freedom does not give you full satisfaction. At one point you realize that you know that it doesn’t help you, but you do it anyway because you’re so controlled by it. So, in that way, little by little, after a while you have enough empowerment and freedom to be able to say no. At one point, you say “no, I’m not going to let it totally control my life”, but some sinfulness controls you. Same thing.

Meaning of Life

Do you understand? This is a process we are entering. If we go over the last two lectures a bit, the first one we said “The life you are, is who you are because of all the things that happened to you before. Every event, emotion and everything that happened in your life shaped who you are”. The meaning of life cannot be found in general terms. Meaning of life has to be understood in a very, very specific form. It is something that is being formed, made, shaped and it’s continuously being shaped until you die. The meaning of life is not finished, you will discover the meaning of life much more deeply as years go by and the purpose will become clearer and clearer. That’s what’s happening in your life, meaning it is important for you to really pay attention to everything that is going on in your life, even though that can scare you.

Negative Value

Sometimes negative events make you believe that even the negative events will not crush you to the point of being destroyed. I believe that God who began good work in you will bring it to completion. I believe that even the negative things, will help the meaning of life be shaped and formed within you. So no matter what kind of events happen to you, that itself does not have value, but what it does in the future changes the value. For example, something very negative happened to you and you feel that “oh, this really destroyed me”. You feel that you’re not going to go any further in life because of this. At that point, if you don’t go anywhere, yes, that negative thing that happened to you has a negative value and it really destroyed you, but let’s say because of the negative things, you were turned around. Then later, you use the negative events for new realization, understanding and transformation. Then the value of the negative things change, it helps you become a better you. I believe that whatever happened to you, you are not just passive victims of it. You can turn it around and then you are the agent of creating new life within you.

Your Story

So the first night we studied different stories, everybody writes a different story. We are not on a conveyor belt. We all make different stories, we all write different stories. We examined Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, all Bible figures, but their life is radically different from one another. We recognize how unique each person’s life is, in that same way everyone’s story is different, and you’re the only one who can write your story. You don’t need to follow other people’s story. Each person has a unique story, but there is a common thread in each story, and that common thread is all the stories move from bondage to freedom. That’s the story of God. All your stories move from bondage to freedom, and I pray that it becomes your story, and I hope that you continue to work towards that.

Suffering in Life

In between from bondage to go to freedom, there must be suffering. For example, you’re on this mountaintop, but you see another mountaintop and you think “I want to go to that mountaintop”, but the thing is you must go down the valley without going down the valley. Meaning you can not go to that mountain top. So, this suffering is necessary and an inevitable part of human life. If you define human beings without explaining the suffering aspect of human life, you cannot define what human beings are like. So that’s why when God becomes a human being, Jesus took the form of suffering. Gospel Mark says, “suffering servant”, meaning suffering is very much a part of who we are. When suffering comes to us, suffering strikes us at the core, that’s why it’s scary.

Suffering does not just hurt you, it really hit the core and every aspect of our life, but suffering also strikes something else. What does it strike? It strikes the compassion of God. The grace of God is released and that’s what suffering does. So, when you experience suffering, you also experience God’s grace and you’ll become compassionate. Compassion is a unique kind of love, it is not romantic love, it is suffering love. compassion is suffering.  So, when you suffer from somebody and have compassion for somebody, that’s what compassion is. That suffering makes us compassionate in some ways.

Three Elements Within a Meaningful Life

For life to be meaningful, there must be at least three elements. One, there must be something you’re passionate about. For life to be meaningful, there must be something that your passionate about, whatever it is. Two, not only do you need to have a passion for it, you must also actively engage in it. You must do something about it. In other words, It does not matter if you have a great passion for something but don’t do anything about it. That’s not a meaningful life. Third, while we pursue something, we must have an objective value. In other words, it needs a value not just for yourself, but for more than yourself. It must be of value to other people. These are the three elements that meaningful lives look like. I want you to reflect on that.

Elbert Camille, in his book The Myth of Sisyphus, described the absurdity of human life in this way. The myth of Sisyphus says that “A man rolls a stone up to the top of the mountain. When he reaches the top, the stone rolls back down to the bottom and then he rose back up again, struggling and goes up to the top and it rolls back down”. Not just once or twice, but perpetually, he does that. That was his punishment. He describes human life like that. Sisyphus continuously rolls up the stone, but at the end what we see is the stone at the bottom of the mountain, meaning he needs to go down again. I think he critically assessed the meaninglessness of modern life well. A meaningful life is not just fulfilling our function in a given system. Just because you do very well in fulfilling the function in that given system, doesn’t mean you are living a meaningful life. Other people may praise you, your coworkers praise you, but that itself is not a meaningful life. A meaningful life is not just fulfilling given function in a given system.

My mother used to work for Tillys Wallet Factory. All Day she stands in front of the conveyor belt every day, the same thing, nothing changes. Monday she goes to work at 8:00 and stays there until 4:00 in the afternoon, then comes home and the next day she goes there again. Same thing, same place, same people doing the work. That’s not really a meaning life or a meaningful job.

On Thursday I went to see a doctor about the retinal tear I had. More sophisticated job, but it was much different from the assembly line. People are waiting in the waiting room like a product on a conveyor belt and I was waiting there too until the doctor calls me in. He puts eye drops and goes out for 20 minutes saying, “I’ll call you”. So, I’m left with my pupils big and he calls me back two minutes later, he sees me and says “You’re fine”. Cool, that’s a more sophisticated job, but not much different. A meaningful life is more than work. We must find something we are passionate about. It can be work, but it doesn’t have to be. We must think about what we truly value in our life.

Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”. If you have a why to live for you can bear almost any how. I believe that. Oh yeah, when I looked at biblical figures, I realized one common thing, they all had a very clear why to live. For example, when I see Saint Paul, he had a clear why for a living. You may not necessarily like the life of Saint Paul, but he has a clear why. These are his words, “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as the law, a Pharisee as a persecutor of the church as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of knowing Christ Jesus”. Paul was describing the most ideal person at the time. It would be like describing a very successful graduate of Harvard University with many credentials to his/her name.

He’s narrating, and he says that whatever gains I had, I have come to regard this loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as a loss because of the surpassing value. He found the value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for his sake. I have suffered the loss of all things and I regard them as rubbish. I want to know Christ, the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death. If somehow, I am able to attain the resurrection from the dead. Why I’m saying that I’m not going to explain today, is because from July when we have power study, we are going to study Philippians. I am going to explain all that later, but at least hear what I want you to see. He has a clear why. You may not understand why he has that, why? but he has a clear why. How about Jesus? When you look at Jesus’ life, do you think that he had a clear why? He said this, “I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly”. Therefore, he came to the world to give us abundant life. That was his why, “I have come to the world to give your life, and life abundantly”. Jesus came to give people this why Nietzsche was talking about. To do that, he even chose death. A person who has a good reason to live also has a good reason to die for. The person who has a good reason to live has a good reason to die for.

What Controls Human Life?

Freud and Adler were two very famous individuals who mentioned two important factors that control human life. Freud said that we human beings are living for sex. We are obsessed with sex. Everything relates to sex. Even your hard work for a job is to do with sex. Everything he explained either unfulfilled sex or sexual desire, are oppressed and repressed. All these things come out because of your desire for sex, I see some point there. When you look at the modern world, we are obsessed with sex. Any commercial you see, even for shaving cream displays this. But the ridiculous thing is, it promotes the message that “if you have this, you’ll be sexy”. You know everything is about sex, I understand that I see that in the world. Alder said, “no, not just for sex”. Human beings basically pursue power, that’s what they want. Power, that’s what we want, that’s what we need, but they are connected. If you have power, you can have sex too right? I mean, I’ll always see the two as connected. So, they both correctly understood it in their own ways.

Though I believe that people do not just live for sex and power, people live for meaning. People search for meaning. I said the meaning can’t be general. It is different for each person, for each person the meaning of life is unique. We must find that unique passion for our own lives. As you look back, what have you struggled so much for? Maybe when you look at that theory carefully, maybe there’s something that you tried to achieve and that is the something that you want to achieve? You might have never articulated what that is, but I think it is important that you try to articulate it even though it is difficult. Little by little, articulate what you truly value, what really gives you energy, excitement and makes you passionate. What is that? What is one thing that you want to do in your life? At the end of it, you may not say my life is robbed. You might not have had the chance to think about it lately, because you’re so caught up in your work or too busy or even too lazy to think, but I think it is helpful for you to sit down and reflect on what it is that you want to do with your life, that makes your life unique. Robert Frost said in his poem, “The road not taken is the end part. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by and that made all the difference”. The reason he took the road less travelled by, was what? What is he talking about? suffering? challenge? He took it because it is the road only he could take, not the road that everyone else takes, but the road that he must take. That’s what he means, I think, but I don’t really know. I’m interpreting it for myself, it makes sense doesn’t it? The road less travelled by, he didn’t follow the popular road but followed the road that he had to take. It’s something unique to him.

Jesus said something very similar, What did he say? Take the what road? Narrow road. He’s not just talking about a difficult life. He’s talking about the road that You need to take, and I call that authentic life. We are called to live an authentic life, not just a popular life, not just the life that other people are taking. I want to take my life, I want to take my road. That’s what authentic life is and we need to take that authentic life that is less travelled by and that is narrow, and find meaning, you can find it there. They’re within general life, you can’t find it. We don’t walk the road just because it’s there. We don’t walk the road because everybody else takes that road. We take our road and we intentionally choose which road to take. There are roads that come off as beautiful and glamorous, but may not be your road. If you take the road that is not yours, you will become miserable.

Life’s Potential

There’s a Korean movie called pacemaker, how many of you have seen the movie? It’s the movie that moved me, it may not be the most well-made movie and some scenes are a little cheesy, but it’s still the movie that moved me. The first time I heard the word pacemaker, I found out that in a marathon they are the people who make the pace for the main runner-up to 30 kilometres. After 30 kilometres they don’t need to run, their job is done. Their job is running for the main runner and after 30 kilometres they don’t even run, some don’t even finish the race. They don’t run for themselves, they run for the main runner. The main character in that movie is a pacemaker. He never lived a passionate life, even though he was very talented. He just had to do his best up to 30 kilometres and that’s it. His younger brother though hated the fact that his brother could do much better but didn’t. He knew that his brother had so much talent from when they were young and poor. So there was a scene where there was a running competition. The first place prize was expensive items, they didn’t really care about that. The second place prize was multiple boxes of ramen. They were so poor and so hungry and thought that they must win the boxes of ramen. They wanted the ramen so they agreed to sign up. So, the man runs, he can’t run too fast, nor can he run too slow, meaning he had to make the perfect pace, and so he made a sign. When his younger brother opens the umbrella, he speeds up, when the umbrella closes, he slows down. That’s how in the end they won the race and earned the ramen. Finally, at the end of the movie, the older brother runs in the London Olympics as a pacemaker. The younger brother, however, was so disappointed that he said he could not come to the competition to see his brother running. After running 30 kilometres, it was time for him to stop, but somehow this time he wanted to run for himself, not for anybody else. So, he continued, but his body condition was not fit for more than 30 kilometres. So, he ended up falling and struggled to get back up, but in that state of struggle he saw his brother standing in the crowd and all sudden he was energized.  At that moment, the younger brother opened the umbrella, that is when I cried. You know, as I got older, I started to cry a lot. Anything a little cheesy, makes me cry. Anyways, so he opened the umbrella and started running and won the race.

My friends, how often do we live our lives like a pacemaker. Instead of living life fully to it’s potential, we set our boundary and don’t even think about going further. This is good. If I have a secure job, I can eat. I can die, have enough money and live a mediocre life. Moses refused to respond to God’s call. How many times do you live life as a pacemaker? Not running for yourself, but running for you. When you have something you’re passionate about, find it. When you don’t know what it is, find it. What makes you excited? If you don’t have something, what is life? If you don’t have something you’re passionate about, what is life? Second, not only do you need to find passion in life, you must actively engage in it once. Do you know it? Once you know what you’re passionate about, do something about it. Don’t just sit on it.  

Last week, I decided to start something, I took out the flute again and decided to learn jazz flute. I don’t have time to take lessons, so I bought a book with a CD, and then going from one chapter to another I practiced. I’m not good, but I’m doing something about it. You get up and do something about it. We keep ourselves to do something about it, decide and act on it. Endless effort never gives up.

Having Courage and Faith

I believe that courage and faith, they go together. The disciples, after finding the true meaning of life, they threw away their net concretely. They did something that was courageous and faithful. Abraham, when he was called, he left his hometown. That’s courage and that’s faith. Moses, when he was called, he was ridiculed by old men to go into Egypt with the staff and fight against the organized systematic army, he did something about it. David with a stone, went out to fight against Goliath. Martin Luther King Jr. went out on the street to protest the racism. They all did something, that’s faith and that’s courage.

Courage is not the absence of fear. Faith is not the absence of doubt. Having courage and faith is not about living in denial of reality or living in a fantasy. We always stand before the reality that makes us fear and doubt. Do you think courageous people never feel fear? They always feel fear. Do you think that those who have faith, never doubt? They always doubt. But the crucial difference is, when they see fear and doubt, instead of turning their eyes away, they head straight into the face of fear, refusing to be intimidated by it. That’s what true courage is. Yes, when you enter fantasy, you don’t even see the fear, you don’t even feel the fear. Yesterday, Lily sammonim asked about the definition of faith. Canadian theologian, Dr. Halls seeing God in human suffering said, “Faith is not a shallow optimism which closes his eyes to the data of despair to maintain itself intact. Faith is not on the other hand, on equally shallow pessimism which refuses to perceive even mystery let alone meaning and beyond the fate of mortal flesh whose beauty face, whose life withers the grass”.

Jesus saw the reality of this world as naked as it is. It’s absurdity, Jesus saw and observed. Jesus clearly saw the absurdity of human behaviours. In contradiction, he saw hopelessness and pain, but he didn’t fall into pessimism. He was sad, he was in agony and was angry, but he never ran away, never escaped into fantasy. He embraced the world, the world full of thorns, trusting in God’s mystery. He embraced the world full of thorns. Faith encourages and even embraces failures. Embrace despair, embrace powerlessness, embrace uncertainty and embrace our doubts. Always hope, always wait and pursue while embracing all that, and you will never lose hope.

Do you have the courage to embrace yourself not because of the great achievements you make, but because of the many failures you made? I’m saying something very important here, not because of your great achievement, but because of your failures. That’s the good news, God embraces you not because you’re perfect. God knows that you are not, but God still embraced you, although you’re broken in many ways. These two are very, very different. We embrace our life not because everything is going well, although there are many problems and difficulties we must resolve. We embrace our life not because we see clearly the bright future, but it’s part of the fact that your life is uncertain. If you embrace your life because of something, when that something is taken away, you have no more life. If you are happy because you have lots of money, if that money is taken away, your happiness is gone with it. But if you are happy although you don’t have money, even if that money is taken away, you are still happy. Embrace yourself not because you made it perfect, but because of the fact that you made many failures. That’s what God did and that’s the gospel. That’s the good news.

Among the books I read, I have encountered this title, I’m well apart from the fact that I have cancer. Interesting book title. Her name is Hattie Carroll. She’s a philosopher who went to the doctor and was told “You only have 10 years to live”, and from that point on she started reflecting on her life and she wrote that book. Despite the fact that, I have only 10 years to live, I’m not going to let that crush me down. I’m going to live happily although I have only 10 years to live. If you learn to live your life despite anything, then you’re very strong. Engage life’s pursuit of what you have a passion for. It’s not easy my friends. That’s why people don’t do anything about it, even though they have passion, it’s not easy. There are many frustrations, doubts, failures and even despairs. Through those times, we may feel like giving up, that is why we need faith and courage.

Life Full of Appetite

Gerald’s Jensen introduced another interesting Hebrew word and that is nephesh. You read it as “net fish.” The meaning or the original word means life. It also has the meaning of appetite. When the scripture says the “Job lost everything because of his life”. He uses the word nephesh here. He had a physical life, but he lost a nephesh. It’s very interesting because the Korean language has two words for it too. For example, moksum (목숨) and sungmyeong (순면). Moksum is a physical breath or physical life. Sungmyeong is nephesh. When you look at Genesis Chapter two, verse seven, “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils. The breath life and the man became a living being”. It is nephesh. It’s not just I’m alive, it’s a living being with full of appetite, life without nephesh, is not real life. Life without full of appetite is not real life. I see a lot of people living their lives without appetite, without nephesh. Lives without nephesh should be restored.

Do you know Naomi? You know, Naomi, right? A Bible figure. She was an immigrant woman, who immigrated to another country, Moab. She’s an Israelite who had lost her husband, two sons and lost everything in her life. She had to come back to her homeland and this is what she said, “Call me no longer Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty, has dealt bitterly with me”. Naomi is sweet, Mara is bitter. Naomi lost her appetite, but at the end her nephesh, she was restored through Ruth. I believe that God can restore our nephesh. That’s when we become more than a mechanical being. Not only do you have a passion, but you fully engaged in your life, living out your passion.

Finally, while we pursue it, passion must have an objective value. No matter how passionately Hitler might have engaged in what he believed in, I can’t say his life was meaningful. No matter how successful you may be, if it is only for your own selfish greed and glory, I can’t say that it is a meaningful life. What we pursue must be for more than me. Jesus Christ did not die on the cross for his own glory, he did that to give us the abundant life. Real meaningful life is possible only when you go beyond your self-absorption. We must find something that we are passionate about, but that’s something that must be more than just for myself, my family and friends. For example, helping at Evangel hall, it’s more than myself leading BOM, serving at Teasdale. It doesn’t have to be just church work. Even in your career, you can build a meaningful life. Help the younger ones or help the new immigrants.

I can’t tell you specifically what meaningful life is, but I told you generally about three categories, having passion, active engagement and having an objective value. As you look at these three categories, how would you see your life? You may have all the resources already. You just need to be more mindful of constructing a meaningful journey of your life. If you have money, then use it for a good purpose. If you have talent, use it for a good purpose. If you have time, use it for others. Meaning of life is not out there for you to go out and grab it. Meaning of life is made, formed and shaped within your life. You may not need to change anything, or maybe a simple attitude adjustment is needed. God does not move our story from bondage to freedom for ourselves. God does that so that you may help others move from bondage to freedom. When God first called Abraham, what did he say? “I will bless you so that you can live happily ever after”, but He said, “I’ll bless you so that you may bless others”. That’s the meaning of life. God blessed you so that you may bless others, as we live our meaningful life.

Our Story

You know, our stories will be weaved together, shaping the liberating story of life from bondage to freedom. The present structure of life will not blindly dictate our life, but our stories together will create a new pattern of living from bondage to freedom. We are creative agents of creating life with the help of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We don’t do that alone, we do it together. We don’t need a hero, we need each other. We need to share our stories with each other, and these stories will empower us. Among you, I hope that wonderful stories may come out. God has blessed you with so many talents and resources. I hope that you may be creative agents using your resources to bless others so that we may hear the story from bondage to freedom not only in you but through you, in other people. God bless you and live a meaningful life. I hope that this has helped you all to reflect upon the meaning of life.