QUESTIONS TO ASK OURSELVES:
WHAT CAN I KNOW?
WHAT SHOULD I DO?
WHAT CAN I HOPE FOR?
WHY AM I HERE?
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 19, 2014
WHY AM I HERE? OVERVIEW
Perhaps the last
question is the most perplexing if not equally the most controversial one in
these times of secular philosophy. Ergo,
we will consider it first.
We didn’t choose to
come into the world and we don’t choose to leave it if you exclude the fact
that some of us are killing ourselves not very gently every day of our lives by
life style and dietary excesses.
If at an early age,
you were taught how to think for yourself instead of being rote educated, the
added advantage would be the ability to focus on a subject and truly learn
it. The ancillary benefits would be acquiring
the discipline and structure, which would inevitably give you a sense of
purposefulness.
The Sister of St.
Francis of the Roman Catholic Church cauterized such programming into my soul
for which I have never escaped or been inclined to shred. Yet, while being a devout Irish Roman
Catholic into my thirties, now in my eighties I no longer attend Catholic
services, and when I go to church, such as at Christmas time or other Christian
Holy Days, I am as likely to attend a Protestant service as not.
This is one personal
data point to explain why I have always had a sense of purpose, and although I
have often misstep, faltered and failed, I have never doubted why I am
here. Some may see this as the raving of
a fatalist. I see it as my belief in God.
While my catholicity and
belief in traditional religion has waned my belief in God has not. If anything, I am more spiritual today than
when I was routinely robotically attending Mass and Communion on a regular
basis. Moreover, I am more empathetic to
faiths other than Christian. As
fatalistically as it may sound, I feel my life has a design that I consciously
and subconsciously work to fulfill.
* * *
Individualism and
freedom of choice are part of our culture.
This means that everyone at some point in their lives tests limits be
they of parental programming, the ritual and regimentation of school, church
and career, where the limits of individualism and freedom are somewhat
restricted.
A point is reached
either boldly or coyly, immaturely or sensibly when these limits and structures
prove neither necessary nor sufficient to our purposes, and therefore need to
be tested. Stated another way, when our
identity and motivation no longer is comfortable with where we find ourselves, we
need to change what we do not how we think.
If we are truly
interested in our subjective well-being, our mental and physical health, we should
move on, not stay in place. This takes
courage, God fearing courage.
Actually, the way we
think is not likely to change in any case, and so the alternative seems quite
obvious. We need to change our
experience.
To break this logjam
is not unlike that experienced by St. Paul, if not quite so melodramatic, on his
way to Damascus when a voice told him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute
me?” The reference was to the risen
Jesus, and the early Christians. Perhaps
in a more modest sense, a voice within you is saying, “Why, why do you punish
yourself so?” It is a voice we often
deny hearing.
It is at this point
you should go your own way, have the courage to go against the grain, and seek
out your own identity and purpose in life.
Instinctively, this is apparent to you, but you are not listening. Were you to listen, you would have broken
through and truly understood why you are here!
When we do rebel, when
we take responsibility for our personhood, we are certain to encounter push back
from institutional impediments that we have chosen to ignore, not challenge,
for we don’t want to embrace the aggravation or inconvenience of acting, choosing
instead to endure the pain.
It’s not God’s plan
that we remain in an abusive marriage or relationship because the church
doesn’t sanction divorce or we don’t want to embarrass our friends. Nor is it wise to remain in a job that is demeaning
or humiliating because the pay in good.
Masochism has many faces and the most common one is self-rejection.
We may come from a
household that discouraged eating fast foods, partying, smoking, drinking,
doing drugs, or other behaviors. So,
once we are free of that yoke, we defiantly do them all to excess because we
have the right and the freedom to do so, not realizing we have gone from one
prison into an even less forgiving one.
But how do these
considerations answer the question, “Why am I here?” How?
They introduce you to yourself.
*
* *
Theism and atheism
are the parameters relevant to this discussion of “Why am I here?” One deals with belief in God, and was does
not.
Many thinkers,
whatever their orientation, sense that we’re all out of sync with our
times. While they scurry hither and yon
for relevance, most of us fall through the cracks, either going to church and
getting little from the experience or not going to church and getting little out
of life, wondering why we are here, but not concerned enough to reflect on the
question and therefore do anything about it.
Having myself been
reared an Irish Roman Catholic, and familiar with the Adam and Eve story of
their disobedience, and being driven out of the Garden of Paradise, I am
equally familiar with being born with Original Sin on my soul, and the guilt
and shame that goes with it.
This was a lot to
absorb as a boy and to carry forward into my thirties before I experienced what
real sin was. It was international
colonialism and South Africa apartheid.
It was my heart of darkness, and for me, everything changed. Up to that point I took pleasure in my work
and thought myself involved with purpose, only to find it was at the expense of
others. Suddenly, I realized my life was
a sham.
The abrupt change I
made as a result of this new understanding was necessary to find subjective
satisfaction, which is another word for “happiness.” Conversely, when what I was doing didn’t make
sense to me anymore, or no longer brought satisfaction, I felt it was time to
make a change; for me, it proved a radical change. I left my corporate career, took a two year
sabbatical, and then went back to school to earn my Ph.D. Now I
live in my advance years motivated to effectively utilize my inherent ability
in the service of others as a simple scribbler.
Why Am I Here? - A
Perplexing Question
Why am I here, where
did I come from, what am I worth, do I have any intrinsic value, do I serve a
purpose?
These questions
denote a need for focus and structure, and structure denotes a culture, and a
culture suggests expected behavior.
These questions are likely to be seen in the abstract rather than the
concrete justifying a failure to address them.
Who has the time, right?
We leave these
questions up to religion and philosophy, and to the disciplines of psychology,
sociology, and politics when they are all about love, and therefore, they only
belong to us.
Observe the way those
who would think for us play musical chairs in their power struggles and
territorial imperatives motivated by survival at the expense of the missions they
espouse.
These fundamental
questions are meant to seem too big for us to solve! We are left to our own devices in how we see
the world and how we treat the world we see.
We are all part of the
same world that is clearly out-of-control, a world that could perish if we
don’t see ourselves as part of that same community with a consensus focus and
purpose, and common humanity that goes beyond the bounds of nationalities,
ideologies, ethnicities, politics, and common fears.
We are here to trust
each other, to help each other, to support each other so that history will not
stop with our generation.
There is an absolute
truth that is common to us all and it does not belong to a philosophy or
religion, but exists inside us all and is common alike to believers and
nonbelievers. It starts with how we see
and treat ourselves and how we see and treat others.
Before we are out of
the gates and into a common field of endeavor we are often bogged down with the
question, “Does God exist?” The irony is
not that God exists. It is that we are
too often adamant in our beliefs either as believers or nonbelievers found serving
and supporting false gods in our actions.
This is evident as
demonstrated by Christians and Jews and people of Islam who worship the same monotheistic
God but use their differences to justify warring with each other. Catholics war with Protestants in Northern
Ireland, Shiites war with Sunnis in Syria and Iraq, often to the death.
In our secular world
since the Enlightenment of the 18th century, when natural law and
objective truth took the game away from the Christian church, the whole idea of
truth became as tenuous and as abstract as the idea of God itself. Say what you will about Christianity, but it
developed a civilization in the West that has yet been unrivaled in the annals
of history.
When the church
proved too human an institution, attempting to protect itself from science, it
was nearly destroyed by its ignorance.
The Enlightenment in its clumsy eloquence put the church on notice with
Nietzsche’s misunderstood 19th century declaration, “God is
dead!” God hadn’t died. He just changed his wardrobe.
The continuity of
truth as it was once understood and truth as it was now defined was the same
truth as truth cannot be changed. It was
the same truth, and God was the same God.
God exists, even for
atheists in their protest, but in a form in which they choose not to
acknowledge Him. By doing so, they
construct a whole new set of paradigms with a rationale that strangely mirrors
that which they have rejected.
A Window to the Atheist
If we can assume that
with the existence of God, people have purpose, then if God doesn’t exist, then
life is catch-as-catch can, and lacks purpose.
In other words, we are here because we are here and our existence is
impersonal, unintelligible and unexplainable.
Life is an accident
and so are we. In the grand scheme of
things, we are here and then we are gone, and as we came from nowhere we go
back to nowhere where we will find nothing, and we accept that because in our
belief system that is all that there is.
Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, Heidegger and many others can relate to that
assumption.
Life is just an
accident and so are we. We’re here
because our parents either wanted us or found we were coming in the normal
expression of their psychosexual lives. From
an atheistic perspective, conception is not a life in its cellular form and
therefore abortion is not only permissible but a valid alternative to the
accident of a woman becoming pregnant with child. It is not murder. It is a medical procedure.
This has always
sounded depressing to me, but I know very successful atheists, and if they are
depressed, they aren’t sharing it with me.
I have often wondered what they think of the idea of the “pursuit of
happiness.”
If I am stating the
case for atheists unfairly, it is because I am not one, and only know atheists
from my limited exposure to them, and of course reading about this mindset. What you see here is my interpretation of that
exposure.
If life is a big
accident over which you have no control, in which life is seen to serve no
lasting purpose, in which there is no cause and so there can be no effect, then
I would assume everything is viewed as impermanent. Given this orientation, my question is how
can life be seen other than meaningless?
Granted, the idea of
a creator, personified for us to be in its image and likeness, yet quintessentially
beyond human comprehension, is a lot to swallow. But where atheists part from believers is not
that God can be explained, because He can’t, not that God’s existence can be
proven, because that is also not possible, but because God exists in our hearts
and gives us purpose, wholeness and our lives a sense of meaningfulness.
You may ask, then,
why are so many wise men and women atheists, so many scientists, intellectuals,
artists and authors, so many creative people of rare accomplishment with an
ability to see beyond what most of us see?
My sense is that they
have a prehensile sense of things and are guided by extrinsic and instrumental values
whereas believers are guided by intrinsic or terminal values.
God for believers is
not necessarily religion or church specific.
Worth for believers is on display in terminal values such as mature
love, world of beauty, happiness, inner harmony, freedom, exciting life, social
recognition, true friendship, and salvation.
Common instrumental
values are being active, altruistic, competent, concerned, courageous,
creative, efficient, forceful, honest, intellectual, idealistic, loyal, moral,
noble, patriotic, persevering, practical, productive, responsible, silent, and spiritual
with a strong sense of will.
You can see from
these instrumental values why so many atheists are highly successful, and often
are Noble Laureates. Obviously,
instrumental and terminal values are not mutually exclusive with individuals of
all orientations and/or persuasions displaying some of both.
Without God, we don't
actually have an intrinsic value system, at least not an objective one. Our
worth is ultimately subjective or extrinsic. You might think you're worth
something but someone else might not. Without God as the Final Transcendent
Assessor, there is no one that can dictate what is right or what is wrong, or act
as the arbiter of your success or failure other than your relationship to your
God. Without God, there's really no such
thing as right or wrong.
John Dewey (1859-1952), the famous 20th century
atheist explained,
"There is no God and there
is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion.
With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is also dead and buried.
There is no room for fixed, natural law or moral absolutes."
Philosophers
generally agree: without an absolute God to make the rules, there is no such
thing as a moral absolute; there are only preferences. You don't actually have
a right to live; you just prefer not to die. Someone else on the other hand
might want to kill you regardless of how you feel about it, and who is to say
that they're wrong? In the absence of absolute morality, power reigns supreme;
the strong survive and the weak get exploited.
Thankfully most
governments see it as their duty to uphold what they see as your God-given
right to live in peace and freedom. It
is why governments also happen to be the strongest institution among men (which
means they can enforce morality upon those who don't necessarily agree with
your right to live).
The Founding Fathers
in writing the Preamble to the Constitution put it well when they declared,
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, that to secure
these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed…"
Unfortunately, some
governments don't share that inclusive view and their people suffer terribly
for it.
A Window to the Theist
As I’ve already
indicated, the theistic view is wrought with contradictions as is the atheistic
view. The fact that we have cognitive consciousness
and discriminating intellects has not saved us from making life uncomfortable
if not difficult to the point of holy terror for people who differ with us.
You would think if God
does exist for us, and that He is our ultimate reality, we would naturally be
generous of spirit and tolerant to the point of accommodation of those who
differ with us, but of course we know that is not true.
If God did in fact
create us for a reason than that reason in and of itself is the reason we are
here rather than not.
Likewise, if we are
valuable to Him, that ultimately describes our worth. What He says to us through the medium of our
church, or directly to us through our introspective awareness of His presence is
not only right, but absolutely right to us and for us. And the corollary to this, what He says is
wrong is absolutely wrong to us and for us.
Before the rise of
secularism, the church and organized Christianity through the auspices of their
ordained clerics were our intercessors in most if not all matters of God and
the absolutes of right and wrong. The church
was the final authority and indisputable interpreters of factors of morality. That is no longer the case. Morality appears to be in the mind of the
times.
The recently elected
Pope Francis I of Roman Catholicism seems to realize this as he appears to have
an open mind to having gays joining the church, divorced couples receiving the
sacraments, giving women a larger ecclesiastical role, giving parishioners a greater
role as well, reducing the pomp and circumstance, the rites and rituals to be
less arcane, and allowing wayward Catholics to return to the fold without
preconditions.
This has however
disturbed Doctors of the Church as they see, correctly, their powers being dissipated. Pope Francis has reason for his concern.
While fully 87
percent of Americans believe in God, less than 50 percent of believers attend
church on a regular basis.
We have become
essentially our own free moral agents with the freedom to make moral decisions,
but that doesn't mean we can choose what is right or wrong. It means we're capable of choosing to be
right or wrong. God makes the rules.
Where it gets dicey
in this secular age is this: Will God enforce the rules if the church and its
acolytes cannot? Will God hold us
accountable for our moral decisions? The
evidence is that He will.
The prevailing
instinct among the majority seems to be that, yes, God will hold us
accountable. We recognize this when we
find we pay for a profligate lifestyle, promiscuous behavior, and
self-indulgence excess in disease, debility, depression, anxiety and early or
untimely death.
Terrible sexually
transmitted diseases are rampant across the globe, natural enemies to
longevity, good health and purposeful behavior.
We as individuals in
freedom know instinctively that we get a report card every day of our lives
which tallies up our behavior. It
records the good things and the bad things that we do to ourselves and others,
which we know as believers stack up in term of moral absolutes that we
instinctively believe to exist.
Atheists may not be
shackled with such moralistic baggage but Christians, especially Catholics live
in guilt, often when it is only a mirage but nonetheless felt. As Belgian theologian Edward Schillebeeckx
(1914-2009) puts it:
Jesus breaks with the idea that suffering has necessarily something to
do with sinfulness … It is possible to draw conclusions from sin to suffering,
but not from suffering to sin.
With believers,
earthly salvation is an inner compass making justice and purpose and structure
and morality not abstract notions, but a purposeful guidance system. It is why He made us. It is His system and
the reason He’ll see justice prevail.
That's a comforting
thought to some, but terrifying to others.
“Why am I here” is
the right question for believers in God, but pointless for those who are
not. Everything is ultimately pointless
if He does not exist. Schillebeeckx puts
this all in terms of the Christian response to evil, listing seven coordinates,
which relate to human nature and lead to divine salvation. These seven factors relate to the reality of
experience in this life for each of us.
Schillebeeckx claims
we must embrace (1) our human bodiliness; (2) natural laws of nature; (3) the demands
and limitations of our ecological environment; (4) the social nature of being men
and women in a society; (5) humanity’s need for institutional (political)
structures to maintain order, dispense equality and preserve society; (6) human
conditioning by time and space, which calls for international solidarity and
universal concerns to prevent catastrophic destruction of the planet and
civilization; and (7) humanity’s utopian religious consciousness, which is the
happy combination and irreducible synthesis of all these factors.
Schillebeeckx is a
thorough modern theologian and philosopher who answers this question quite
emphatically, Why am I here? You are
here to be engaged in the reality of experienced contributing to the survival
of this planet for the honor and glory of God.
Atheists may have a different take on this but they, too, are energized
with the same objective.
*
* *
NOTE:
These other questions (in the caption above) will
be taken up at a later date.
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