Does life have a purpose?

I grew up with a dad who was, and is to this day, an atheist. There was never any talk in our home of God, or even the possibility that there might be a God. Religion was for the weak and feeble minded – science could explain everything. My dad trained and worked as a biologist, so Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest went unchallenged as the principle by which the world operated.

Making sense of the world

Part of my journey to discovering God was a girl at school who I fancied, who invited me to church. But beneath that apparent superficiality, lay a teenage heart and mind which were trying to make sense of the world.

One of my big questions at the time was whether my life had any purpose. Given the framework I had grown up with, the answer was a resounding no. I was just the result of a whole load of random mutations, with no more worth or value than a rock or a tree. And my life had no meaning beyond playing my part in the improvement of the gene pool of the human race.

I may as well just live my life for myself, seeking to extract as much fun and enjoyment out of the world as I could, without a care for anyone else and how my choices might impact them. Ultimately my life was meaningless and without any purpose.

Questioning my belief system

Yet deep down I knew that didn’t seem right. The world was far too beautiful a place to not have some creative force behind it all. Sunrises and sunsets, mountains and oceans, the moon and the stars all to me pointed to order and structure in the world. 

It also seemed that I had an innate sense of what was right and wrong. To murder people someone would be wrong. To treat people kindly would be right. Exploiting the vulnerable would be wrong. Sacrificing in order to bless others would be right. 

None of this made any sense if ‘survival of the fittest’ was supposed to be the basis of my moral code. I didn’t feel like an accident of nature without meaning or purpose, but everything I had been brought up to believe told me that I was. 

My journey of discovery

That first invitation to church set me on a journey of discovery. What I found was a way of seeing myself and the world which made far more sense than the one I had grown up with. I discovered that behind the beauty of our world is a creator. 

That love is the greatest force at work in the universe – not survival of the fittest – and that my life does have value, purpose and meaning. 

I discovered a whole load of things alongside that, but that discovery of meaning and purpose in my life was transformational. Suddenly my life made sense, the world made sense and my place in it made sense. 

An invitation to you

I’m going to write in my next blog about the purpose I discovered, but for now I want to challenge whether you are living life with a sense of purpose. 

Maybe you are like the eighteen-year-old me, looking at a world which seems meaningless and random and wondering if this is all there is. Or maybe you feel like you once set out on that journey, you had a relationship with God and meaning in your life, but you’ve now lost your way… 

If that’s you I’d strongly encourage you to go on the journey of discovery I went one, asking the big questions of life. Is there a God? Can I know him? Does my life have any value? Does my life have a purpose? Why not consider doing an Alpha Course, coming to church on a Sunday or talking to a friend who already knows God. 

Starting on a journey of discovery such as this is not always the easiest path, but I can promise you it really is a journey worth taking. That journey that I began at age eighteen has led me into a life with more joy, deeper friendships, greater peace, a clearer identity and more purpose than I could have ever imagined. I pray that you, whatever age you are and whatever stage of life you are at, would find yourself on your own version of that journey. 

Credits: This blog was edited by Wild SEO Agency. Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash.