What’s It All About? – Part one

What’s It All About?

A few years ago, the curtain went up on a play by Samuel Beckett which Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser describes “as an eloquent statement on modern man.” There are no human actors in the play and the scenery is quite simple – just a pile of junk. Only two

sounds are heard throughout the play: the wail of a newborn baby off stage and then, after a period of silence, the groan of a dying man. It’s not difficult to get the point. Life begins in pain, it ends with a groan, and the bit in between, which we call life, is just a pile of junk.

I was saddened to learn that one of my boyhood heroes shared this dismal view of human existence. In his autobiography, Mark Twain (Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn) wrote: A myriad of men are born; they labour and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and figh

t; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other. Age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; shame and humiliations bring down their pride and their vanities. Those they love are taken from them and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, and misery, grows heavier year by year. At length ambition is dead; pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for release is in their place.

I think that the words of C S Lewis help explain the plight of many who share this distressing view of life. In an essay entitled Man or Rabbit, C S Lewis reminds us that “The Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe.” He continues: “They can’t both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe.” And the “real universe,” the one which fulfils the role for which it was created, is the universe which has one ultimate goal – the glorification of God. To get this wrong is to act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe. Creation has been designed to exult the Creator, and to get this wrong is to lose our way and to doom ourselves to an existence without real joy, real purpose and real hope. Consider a few scriptures on the subject of divine glorification. (See Part 2)