A father went into a toy store to buy his son a Christmas present. The salesman showed him a new educational toy. It came unassembled, but no matter how the child put the pieces together, they wouldn\u2019t fit. You see, the toy was designed to teach the child how to deal with life.<\/p>\n
Such is the predicament of man without God. He is never able to put his life together. A life without Christ is a life of futility.784<\/p>\n
\u201cThe universe is merely a fleeting idea in God\u2019s mind\u2014a pretty uncomfortable thought, particularly if you\u2019ve just made a down payment on a house\u201d (Woody Allen).785<\/p>\n
G. N. Clark is reported to have said in his inaugural address as president of Cambridge University, \u201cThere is no secret and no plan in history to be discovered. I do not believe that any future consummation could make any sense of all the irrationalities of preceding ages. If it could not explain them, still less could it justify them.\u201d786<\/p>\n
In the introduction to his A History of Europe<\/i>, H. A. L. Fisher writes:<\/p>\n
One intellectual excitement has been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discovered in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. But these harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following another, as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalization, only one safe rule for the historian\u2014that he should recognize in the development of human destiny the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.787<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly religion is able to answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly go wrong in concluding that the idea of a purpose in life stands and falls with the religious system\u201d (Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents<\/i> [New York: Norton, 1963], p. 26).788<\/p>\n
Andre Maurios said, \u201cThe universe is indifferent. Who created it? Why are we here upon this puny mud heap spinning in infinite space? I have not the slightest idea, and I am quite convinced that no one else has the least idea.\u201d789<\/p>\n
Socialists usually offer an optimistic view of mankind, and so Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/i> ends surprisingly pessimistically\u2014evil conquers.<\/p>\n
Some have suggested this pessimism came because Orwell was dying as he wrote. Actually he was merely expressing a dilemma he had seen for some time. He knew that man\u2019s central problem was the death of Christian belief. In 1944 he wrote, \u201cSince about 1930 the world has given no reason for optimism whatever. Nothing is in sight except a welter of lies, hatred, cruelty, and ignorance, and beyond our present troubles loom vaster ones which are only now entering into the European consciousness. It is quite possible that man\u2019s major problems will \u2018never\u2019 be solved.\u2026 The real problem is how to restore the religious attitude while accepting death as final. Men can be happy only when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before then, in 1940, he had written of Europe\u2019s rejection of God\u2014which he approved\u2014this way: \u201cFor two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded, and down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little mistake: The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all, it was a cesspool full of barbed wire \u2026 It appears that amputation of the soul isn\u2019t just a simple surgical job, like having your appendix out. The wound has a tendency to go septic.\u201d (Cited in Christianity Today<\/i>, January 13, 1984, pp. 25\u201326.)790.<\/p>\n
Do the events of history make any sense? Or is life, as Shakespeare had Macbeth describe it, \u201ca tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing\u201d? (Macbeth<\/i>, Act V, v).791<\/p>\n
A greatest possible impact a non-believer\u2019s life can have on eternity is on the order of a large ship\u2019s impact on the ocean. It leaves a wake, which may be very impressive for the moment, but which is gone without a trace within a few moments more.792<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A father went into a toy store to buy his son a Christmas present. The salesman showed him a new educational toy. It came unassembled, but no matter how the child put the pieces together, they wouldn\u2019t fit. You see, the toy was designed to teach the child how to deal with life. Such is … Continue reading “LIFE\u2019S PURPOSE (FOR UNBELIEVER)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}