Why? Part One

Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

Have you ever felt small?

I have. But I don't think we spend nearly enough time thinking about just how small we really are.

Supercluster. Credit: NASA, ESA, and Johan Richard (Caltech, USA)
Acknowledgement: Davide de Martin & James Long (ESA/Hubble)

You and I are tiny. And we would probably be pretty open about that. But when it comes to our daily lives, how about your nation? We'd normally see it as a pretty big deal. However, your nation is merely a small fraction of the Earth, and is only one of thousands upon thousands of civilizations throughout history.

But how about the Earth itself? Earth is massive! Every human that has ever lived has existed on this planet. Even then, Earth is tiny in comparison to the vastness of our Solar System, or even some of the other planets in it.

So the Solar System must be at least of a decent size, right? Not in comparison to the Milky Way Galaxy in which we find ourselves. In this galaxy, scientists have currently found 2,500 solar systems, although with the roughly 200 billion stars in our galaxy, there may be many more solar systems we haven't found.

The Milky Way itself is too ridiculously huge for our puny mammal brains to comprehend. And yet we haven't even scratched the surface of the vastness of the observable universe. There are galaxy clusters that contain 100 to 1,000 galaxies each, all the way up to superclusters like the Laniakea Supercluster that contains roughly 100,000 galaxies!

If you don't start to grasp the seemingly infinite scope of the universe by now, don't worry, you probably can't entirely. But what I am getting at is this:

You are puny. 

In a cosmic sense, you and I are like insignificant particles trapped on a speck of dust. If our species ceased to exist, it truly seems like the cosmos would take little to no notice of it, and the universe would continue as before.

Yet I don't think that we fully understand that. 

Perhaps it is a survival mechanism, but whatever the case may be, we yearn to have meaning, objective purpose, and importance in our lives. "Why am I here?" is perhaps the most widely asked question by humans the world over.

As far as I have seen, although I am no universal arbiter of truth, the universe exists. And by that, I mean it only exists. There is currently no sufficient reason to think it was created or designed with any purpose. Rather it and the descriptive rules governing it seem to just "be". No reason, no rhyme. Existence does not require purpose.

We are products of this universe. You and I are particles, arranged in a specific way. We are products of the same natural processes that make up the rest of the universe.

We exist because we are the result of how the universe works.

Really take that in, think about it. You and I are just as much a product and part of the universe as gravity, rocks, and supernovae. And our lives in essence are governed and determined by the same forces that rule the rest of the cosmos.

In spite of all this (and in one sense, as a result), humanity since its inception has crafted innumerable stories in an attempt to imbue our lives and our world with meaning and purpose. The purpose of disease is to punish sinners, the purpose of rain is to water our crops and the sun to make them grow. Oddly enough though, the majority of things in this world were seen as being "for us". Certain animals were made to become livestock to eat. Certain plants were made to be crops that we tended to. Plagues were made to show us our sins and make us repent. For the longest time, nearly everything in our world supposedly revolved around us.

This tendency is seemingly written in our very DNA. Thus, as science begins to show us just how insignificant we are, who can blame us for recoiling at it? We seem to crave objective meaning. We are important. We are special. We are the apple of the divine eye, the special objects of its salvation and attention. We are made in the very image of god.

But as we are finding out, the world doesn't look like it was created for us, or even with us in mind. Your existence is an infinitesimally puny portion of this vast universe. One might even argue that your life has less impact on the universe, and is far less impressive, than an exploding star.

Credit: Jonathan Daniels

How does this address the "why" question? 

It does this in a seemingly harsh way. There is no objective "why". There is no objective meaning and purpose. You, your life, your goals, your dreams, they are all a product of the inner workings of the cosmos, and are just as objectively purposeful and meaningful as a black hole.

Unsurprisingly, our brains recoil at this. Many of us have been sent whirling into depression when we first recognize this. Especially if you have been raised to think that you are the object of eternal attention and love from god, it is rather difficult to let go of that and not go mad.

Nevertheless, all isn't lost. It is still possible to let go of our notions of objective meaning and survive. Not only that, we can find our own purpose, our own reasons to live this beautiful life that we have.

Lonely Solipsists

"The Creator surely made this world too large. This is inconvenient for us small, fearful humans. For all the world’s vastness, we can’t measure the distance between ourselves. There’s six billion of us, yet still…everyone is all alone."
 -Kou Ichinomiya from Arakawa Under the Bridge

I've often heard it said that man is a "social creature", and I agree. Man was by no means created to be a lone-wolf or a hermit in perpetual solitude. One of his deepest needs and desires is to have close relationships with other humans. In order to mature and learn, he needs those who will come alongside him, building him up and joining him in this grand marathon of life. In his deepest being, he requires the friendship of his fellow man. And even more importantly than friendship itself, he requires a helper, a lifelong companion with whom he has the most intimate of all relationships (so intimate in fact that the Scripture declares it to be the uniting of two persons into one).

When the Lord created the world, all was good as He was creating it. The stars dotting the skies were good, the dry land was good, the hills and the valleys were good, the great beasts of the field and birds of the air, from the fragile beauty of the lilies to the awesome might of the supernovas, all things were good. 

And then He created a man, named Adam. And for the first time in the history of the world, something was not good. Did God make a mistake? Of course not. Nevertheless, something was not good. Out of all things God created, the only thing that was not good was the loneliness of man. Man was alone, without human relationship, and specifically without a life-companion. It was this status of loneliness that was not good, and this alone.

Therefore, God created the woman from man's own body, and brought her to Adam to be his wife. Hence the first and most important inter-human relationship was realized. No longer was man alone, a solitary spirit left to wander and work the Earth for all eternity. Now, the Lord God could say that everything He had made was good. But not only was it good, it was very good.

Several thousand years after this declaration of the super-goodness of the world, mankind is once again alone. As was said above, there is an innate distance between us all*, and no matter how hard we try, we cannot bridge the gaps between us. There are billions of us, and yet we are each living in solitude.

How is this possible?

Ever since man fell, it has been his nature to be a practical solipsist.** Man in himself is a selfish creature, and tends to see himself and his own welfare as the primary purpose of life. Even the wisest of us must fight the tendency to seek after his own interests rather than seeking after the interests of others.

And therein lies the problem. Intimacy in a relationship requires love. The more you love someone, and the higher the form of love, the deeper is your relationship. Of course, a relationship is not a one-way street, and no matter how much you love someone else, you may still be held at arm's length away from them if they do not love you in return. Nevertheless, a relationship is based upon love for one another at its core.

God declared in His Word that love is not self-seeking/self-centered. Rather it is self-sacrificing. Instead of asking others to give something up for your sake, love demands that you give all of yourself up to others without even considering the idea of getting something in return.

In our flesh, there is no good thing. Love (which is the highest of all that is good) is foreign to man's fallen nature, and when love is found anywhere (be it in Mother Theresa, an atheist husband to his wife, or from St. Paul to the Corinthian Church), it is by the grace of God. Again, we are practical solipsists by nature, and we tend to live for ourselves.

This is where our loneliness comes from. Being truly alone when you are in the midst of billions of other souls requires that you be forced into literal, physical solitude, that you be separated from all persons that love you, or that you be spiritually confined in a mental prison of your own making.

For most of us, and in most circumstances, we live in a prison in our minds. By our selfishness, we separate ourselves from the rest of our fellow man, living unto ourselves. We walk down the crowded streets, go from store to store, house to house, school to school, always seeking for someone who will bridge the gap and release us from our solitude. The longer we are left alone, the more desperate we become. We take lover after lover, throwing aside each when they don't fulfill that desire which we have (hence the rise in the divorce rate). In their mad search for someone with whom there will be no distance, some give in to despair and end their lives. 

And the loneliness continues on. Man as a whole has still not been able to end their spiritual confinement. For all their vain striving, the answer to their problem is simple: love the Lord with all your being, and love your fellow man as much as you do yourself. And this love comes only from a complete sacrifice of yourself unto God and the good of others.


*Note: I am speaking of the fallenness of mankind and the brokenness of his relationships. By the grace of God, some relationships still grant men the closeness that they inherently need with others (for example, there are even happy and close marriages among the most avid atheists). Nevertheless, man's relationships have been fully ravaged by the consequences of sin, and unless the Lord mitigates this problem, they render each man alone in this world. 

**By solipsist, I mean the person that believes their mind (or whatever they consider to be the core of their selfhood) is the only reality, and that all things which seemingly exists outside their minds are merely outward representations of their minds. Thus he believes that he is the only thing that truly exists. I am not referring to all persons who hold to any form of philosophical solipsism.