Those of us raised in Evangelical churches were told that the God of the Bible gave us lives with meaning and purpose. Without God, our lives have no meaning and purpose. Want an awesome life? Get saved! Or so the story goes, anyway.
However, when asked to provide evidence for this claim, none is forthcoming. Does religion give countless people meaning and purpose? Sure, but Evangelicals argue that only their peculiar deity actually gives life meaning and purpose. This means that billions and billions of people go through life living meaningless, purposeless lives. This claim, of course, is absurd.
Babies come into the world as a blank slate. Outside of what DNA gives them, babies have no religious or political beliefs. Virtually all of us begin life with the political and religious beliefs of others — our parents, grandparents, tribe, and church. It is not shocking in the least to see how parental and tribal influences affect how a child grows up. It is not surprising at all that I grew up as an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Christian and a right-wing Republican. It would be many years before I shook the indoctrination and conditioning of my parents, family, and church. And I should add, it was also years before I cast off the borrowed theology of my pastors and professors.
Evangelical children’s ministries push the idea that it is important to reach people with the gospel when they are children. The older people become, the harder it is to evangelize them. That’s why Evangelical churches have children’s programs that aggressively proselytize children as young as five.
Both my partner and I were saved at age five. We later made professions of faith as teenagers — a common experience in IFB and Southern Baptist churches. Both of us became what our parents and churches made us into. It would be years before we saw our way clear to embrace our own beliefs. I suspect this rings true for many Evangelicals-turned-atheists.
The most important thing parents can teach their children is to think for themselves. Parents have the responsibility to nurture, care, and protect their children. Evangelicals tend to teach their children what to think instead of how to think. From the time I was born, my parents and other influences taught me what to believe. No instruction was given in philosophy or world religions, outside of other religions being heretics or cults. For the first twenty-five years of my life, the goal of my influencers was to reinforce Fundamentalist beliefs and practices. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, these well-intentioned people withheld the truth from me. Maybe they were as ignorant as I was, having indoctrinated themselves in the “one truth faith.” No ground was ever given to other beliefs or practices. The IFB, and later Evangelicalism, was the one true faith. One lord, one faith, one baptism — ours.
Once liberated of past indoctrination and conditioning, I was free to reinvestigate my beliefs. I learned that despite five decades of having religion determine the meaning and purpose of my life, there is no inherent meaning or purpose. Life, then, is the slates upon which we write the parameters of our lives. Atheists are told they live meaningless and purposeless lives, but this is patently untrue. Only people who think God is the end-all make such a stupid claim. Just because I believe differently from Evangelicals doesn’t mean I am lacking in any way. My life has all the purpose and meaning it needs. I have a good idea of what I need, want, and value in life.
While our lives have no inherent meaning and purpose, they do have meaning and purpose — that which we give them every day of our lives. We alone decide what matters in our lives. Truly, to each our own.
As an ex-Evangelical, how do you explain purpose and meaning of your life? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Like you, I was brought up in conservative fundamentalist evangelicalism. I wasn’t really exposed to people outside the evangelical bubble. After grades 1-4 in public school (in a rural mostly evangelical town where all the students in the non-soecial-ed classes were white), I was sent to fundamentalist Christian school run by Bob Jones University and Pensacola Christian College trained teachers. It wasn’t until I was 16 and started working in University science labs that I was exposed to non-Christian people, mainline Christian people, and people from other countries. It was confusing that these were good, kind, principled people. That was contrary to what evangelicalism had taught me. But it was something that added to my journey away from evangelicalism.
I found in life that there are lots of things that give my life meaning. Friends, family, loved ones are at the top of the list. Working hard toward goals is another thing. Seeing beauty in the world is another.
I don’t need an invisible deity to give my life meaning.
Truly, life is what you make it
For me, the pursuit of beauty and truth are the only things worth living for and friends and loved ones are the only ones worth dying for.
Anyone who tries to please an invisible deity or defend a symbol or slogan is wasting his/her/their life.
Why we are here is an imponderable question only asked by those with the luxury to think beyond survival and avoiding discomfort. Once food and shelter are not at issue, human ego seeks purpose in existence. Coincidental combination of chemicals in an environment conducive to life is too futile and inconsequential for the human mind. Well, tough shit, humans. From dust and random chemistry you came and back to dust and chemicals you go when you leave. Far as is known or knowable anyhow. If an all-powerful father in heaven makes you feel like your life has purpose, at least don’t foist your fantasy on those who don’t need it.
There’s a problem in the title of this post, deliberately manipulated by religious apologists. The issue is that purpose and meaning, whilst possibly having overlapping definitions in some contexts, are actually entirely different. If I ask ‘what is the meaning’ of some or other passage in a Shakespeare play then I suppose it’s reasonable to change the word meaning to purpose, but even then not necessarily. The question might want you to distinguish the purpose of the passage in the play, what did Shakespeare seek to achieve by its inclusion, from what does the passage actually say in terms of its meaning. On the other hand if I ask ‘what is the purpose of a carburettor in a car’, then changing the word to meaning makes a nonsense of the question. So when it comes to the meaning of life I suppose we could concoct some sort of intelligible reply, but it’s nothing like as obvious as what is the ‘purpose’ of life: the purpose of life at base is to survive long enough to reproduce, but we can make so much more of it than this.
Ultimately Douglas Adams summed up the nonsense of meaning of life when he declared that the answer is 42.
Lots of good comments here. In the flavor of Christianity I was in, I was told that god had some big, good plan for me and all I had to do was ask what it was and agree to do it. I wanted to do it, whatever it was. So I asked. Didn’t get anything. So I asked more and thanked him in advance for showing me. Nothing. This went on for years. Eventually I fell into a really dark, depressed place. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting anything. But still kept asking. After eventually leaving all that nonsense behind, I no longer believe that there is an inherent meaning or purpose for my life. Well, there is the whole 42 thing. LOL At first, that freaked me out a little. But now, I’m enjoying making meaning, or not, out of whatever comes along or I decide to do or enjoy or whatever. Life’s not perfect, but I’m sure a lot healthier mentally and emotionally and happier than I was as a Christian, seeking god’s will and purpose for my life.