WHY DID I BORN?

 

 How would you answer someone asking, “Does my life have any meaning, any purpose?” Maybe you’ve asked that! Can we find satisfying answers to these questions?

                     Every life has two bookends—the day we’re born and the day we die.
We enter this world weak and helpless, but each of us is born with tremendous potential. Our parents likely watched us and wondered: What will our baby do with his or her life? What kind of person will he or she become?

                     Ironically, we often end our lives much like we began—weak and helpless. As death nears, we typically ponder our past. What did I do with my life? What kind of person was I?
And, by the time life ends, most of us have brooded over the underlying, age-old question: What is the ultimate meaning of human life?

                      It’s a demanding question, and many dismiss it as simply unanswerable. Those who more seriously attempt to explore the meaning for life often settle on experiences, such as finding a fulfilling personal calling, accomplishing something emotionally satisfying, loving and being loved, or maybe just being a “good person.” But those stop short of anything beyond this life.
While nothing’s wrong with those thoughts, in our moments of deepest reflection, especially when facing our own mortality, do those answers really satisfy?

                      Is death truly the final bookend of life? Or does a greater purpose for human life exist, one that transcends this short, physical life? If so, what is it?
Those are the biggest questions of life.

Devising our own meaning for life

                      One of the more subtle effects of the theory of evolution and the philosophy of atheism is that fewer and fewer people consider whether we were created and designed with an ultimate purpose. After all, evolutionary theory eliminates, and atheistic philosophy rejects, the idea that any higher being ordained a meaning for our existence!

                       If life resulted from a random bolt of lightning hitting primordial slime and setting off a series of gradual mutations from simple to complex over time, does it have a purpose? If humanity rose to be the globe’s prime inhabitant only through natural selection based on survival of the fittest, can anyone conclude his or her life has a transcendent purpose? If not, we can find meaning only in whatever each of us settles upon as significant.
                      
                      Many said they had indeed devised for themselves meaning for their lives. They offered a variety of examples, such as:

• Having a positive effect on friends and family.
• Being kind, learning, sharing knowledge, relieving suffering.
• Squeezing as much happiness and fun out of life as possible.
• Focusing on the “here and now” and practicing the freedom to do as we want.

                      However, many conceded that even though they had created their own personal meaning, since they believe life randomly occurred, then, by definition, it has no common, overarching purpose, no grand master plan.

                       But are these ideas of limited, self-defined human meaning true? Or is this world and your life the result of a perfect Creator who designed and placed us on earth for a reason? Is there an answer to the biggest question of all—why were you born?
God answers, Yes! But in order to find it, we have to begin … at the beginning.