Quotes about Meaning

He had been absolutely right in his devotion to Israel and the Torah, but absolutely wrong in his view of Israel's vocation and identity and even in the meaning of the Torah itself.

Knowing the truth has meaning only as a first step to living the truth day by day.

if there is no God, and life is a chance product of blind material forces, what purpose does human life have? Is it just a chemical accident on a rock flying through the cold, empty reaches of space?

When people commit themselves to a certain vision of reality, it becomes their ultimate explainer. It serves to interpret the universe for them, to guide their moral decisions, to give meaning and purpose to life, and all the other functions normally associated with a religion.

Humans are not self-existent, self-sufficient, or self-defining. They did not create themselves. They are finite, dependent, contingent beings. As a result, they will always look outside themselves for their ultimate identity and meaning. They will define human nature by its relationship to the divine—however they define divinity. Those who do not get their identity from a transcendent Creator will get it from something in creation.

Nearly all that we call human history … [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy." C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

if everything is historically relative, then so is the idea of historicism itself.

The biblical worldview fulfills both the requirements of human reason and the yearnings of the human spirit.

Today religion appeals almost solely to the needs of the private sphere—needs for personal meaning, social bonding, family sup-port, emotional nurturing, practical living, and so on. In this climate, almost inevitably, churches come to speak the language of psychological needs, focusing primarily on the therapeutic functions of religion. Whereas religion used to be connected to group identity and a sense of belonging, it is now almost solely a search for an authentic inner life.

Christianity is the key that fits the lock of the universe.

Because wholeness and meaning in life are not the products of what you have or don't have, what you've done or haven't done. You are already a whole person and possess a life of infinite meaning and purpose because of who you are—a child of God.

Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living.