3.3 Meaning of Life is Realized when the Narrative for Suffering is Embraced
In the city where I live, electric vehicles on the roads have become notably commonplace in recent years. Some people obviously find ownership of such vehicles meaningful; others don’t. But even if those who have decided that investing in an electric vehicle is not personally meaningful to them, the reason is certainly not because they do not believe in the existence of a creator of such vehicles. That would be irrational. But then, just because they believe that there must be a creator responsible for the creation of such vehicles, and who has endowed them with functionalities and objective meaning, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they are going to find such vehicles as meaningful as the creator of these vehicles himself.
Likewise, just because we believe that God exists and that He has endowed human life with objective meaning, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we will find our lives as meaningful as God Himself.
This insight is paralleled in Scripture. Consider the Parable of the Servants told by our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 25:14–30. Many Christians are already familiar with this parable. Briefly, the backstory of this parable is about some servants entrusted with resources by their master who had to leave on a journey. Upon the master’s return to his servants some time later, he discovered that one of them had defiantly refused to put his resources to proper use, earning him the damnation of being thrown into the “outer darkness” (Matthew 25:30 NLT). The servant’s blatant display of defiance toward his master is indicative of a person who obviously could not believe in the meaningfulness of the given task. But why could he not believe in the meaningfulness of his task when the other servants could with theirs? It is indeed telling that the tasks for each and every one of them had been objectively defined by their master. And yet, the fact that not everyone finds his task meaningful enough to be undertaken suggests that even though meaning has been objectively given, it is not necessarily meaningful unless the person to whom it has been given is motivated to embrace it as meaningful.
Likewise, even though the meaning of life has been objectively given by our Creator, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we will embrace it as meaningful unless we can be motivated to embrace it as meaningful.
But what could cause one to embrace God’s ordained meaning for human life as meaningful while another rejects it as such? The answer to this question lies beyond the scope of this parable. Nonetheless, one thing seems clear: the meaning of life must not only be objectively given by the Author and Creator of life, but also be accepted by the subject to whom it has been given. Understanding both the objective and subjective aspects in our quest for the meaning of life is crucial. This is because the pertinent question we must ask next is this: just what exactly is objectively given by God and to be subjectively accepted by us, if it is not the biblical narrative for our existence in this world—a world that is filled with so much evil and suffering? Is the biblical narrative compelling enough to convince us to embrace our lives as meaningful despite the brokenness we see all around us? And if it is not, how then can we say with any confidence that we have found the meaning of life even if the narrative has been objectively given by God Himself? In short, what we need to ask is this: Does the biblical narrative have sufficient explanatory power to compel us to accept our existence in this world of suffering as meaningful?
Before we can address this question, we must first clarify what is meant by the explanatory power of a narrative. To do so, consider an analogy. Imagine a hailstorm that damages the roof of a building, prompting the owner to contact a team of roofing experts to address the issue. In response, the technicians propose various ways to repair the roof. These proposals are what we might call corrective measures, since their purpose is to correct and fix the problem of a roof that has been damaged. However, a diligent homeowner would not stop there; he would also want to know what preventive measures could be taken to prevent such damage in the future. What flaws in the original roofing made it vulnerable to the storm in the first place? Could the damage have been prevented with better design or materials? And after repairing the damage, how can he be confident that the new roof can withstand another hailstorm? Only when both corrective and preventive measures are properly understood can the homeowner feel that he has a satisfactory and meaningful solution to the problem.
In this light, explanatory power consists not only in implementing the corrective dimension of the solution to a problem, that is, fixing what has already failed, but in understanding the preventive dimension too, and that is, why the failure was not prevented in the first place, and how such failure can be prevented in the future. In fact, if I may add, implementing corrective measures to address a problem without understanding the preventive dimension leaves much to be desired as a solution to any problem.
Now, let us apply this framework to the problem of human suffering in our fractured world. What explanatory power does the biblical narrative offer in response to this problem?
For Christians, the corrective dimension is clear. We are well-versed in what was accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary to restore this broken world. And we also know that on the day of His Second Coming, this restoration will climax to a full completion. On that day, God will inaugurate a new world—a world in which there will be no more suffering. “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4). In short, sin and human misery will be decisively eradicated. This is indeed a fantastic corrective measure to the problem of human suffering in a broken world—one unmatched by any other worldview.
But what about the preventive aspect of the solution? Philosophers may pontificate about the best possible world God could have created to prevent suffering in the first place. But what we really need now is a scriptural narrative that includes a preventive aspect of the solution—not some philosophical speculation. After all, it is Scripture, not philosophy, that promises the ultimate eradication of sin and suffering, and thereby, facilitates our understanding of the meaning of life.
On this point, the biblical narrative appears to be notably silent. It devotes considerable attention to the corrective dimension of the solution, that is, how sin and suffering will ultimately be eradicated, but offers far less explicit detail—if any—regarding what preventive measures could have been taken to forestall the tragedy of the present age, or how the perfect, sinless world that is yet to come can be prevented from being ruined by sinful humans again.
As we shall see in Chapter 4, God was conspicuously hidden in Eden, implying that He did not, at least on the surface, prevent the fall of Adam and Eve, the ensuing global catastrophe, culminating in the loss of the meaning of life—a loss that has befallen every generation since. God’s hiddenness in Eden, coupled with the absence of a clear explanation, is the missing preventive dimension of the solution to the problem of suffering in this world. It weakens the explanatory power of the biblical narrative to explain suffering in a manner that could motivate one to believe that life can be truly meaningful.
Nonetheless, even though this preventative dimension is not spelt out in the biblical narrative—at least not explicitly—I am convinced that it can be discerned through careful inquiry—an inquiry that will shape much of the discussion in the chapters ahead.
Without further ado, let’s proceed to unpack God’s hiddenness in Eden in greater detail.