Monday, January 23, 2023

 

Monday, January 23, 2023

Psalms 54; 55:1-12

Genesis 13

Luke 1:1-12

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.

When I was very young, a schoolmate came to class one day full of confidence because he had a very important message to pass on to us. He must have heard it from his parents, because no nine year old boy has ever thought about such things: he announced to us all that no one has ever been able to define the meaning of life. Because critical thinking is not something they teach children, I took this ground-breaking piece of information home to my mother, ready to rock her world too. She looked at me with a mix of disdain and disappointment, scolding me that of course there is a meaning to life, and quoted the two great commandments as taught by the Lord Jesus.

The philosopher who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes knew all about the existential crisis: “God has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” We humans are immortal creatures: our bodies will die and decay, but our spirit will continue on, either in eternal life in the presence of God (with a resurrection of the body), or eternal death in the place where the worms always eat. Everyone has the sense that there must be a meaning to our existence, that there must be something more than eating, sleeping, partying, and procreation. But we are also rational: the meaning has to be real; it has to actually exist.

This is why Christianity is true. This is why we can be confident to take our religion from blind faith to absolute trust. The God revealed in the Bible provides the framework for a grand, unifying theory of everything. The God revealed in the Bible cannot be false, because existence by any other explanation is impossible.

One theory about Luke’s Gospel (and his sequel the Acts of the Apostles) is that it was written and submitted in defence of Paul at his trial in Rome. The title “Most Excellent” means that Theophilus was someone of very high standing, at the very least. But the core of Luke’s intention is to demonstrate that the incarnation of Jesus, His life, death, and resurrection, was an event that happened in space and time. This movement of Jesus-followers that was taking the Empire by storm was not a fanciful philosophy dreamed up by some goat herders out in the desert. This was a series of historical events that drastically changed the course of human history, and more than that, answered the question to the meaning of life. If you reject it, you are rejecting reason itself, and what the apostle John wrote is true: that people reject the light because they prefer to keep their deeds in the darkness. If you accept it to be true, your life will change, you will be born again as a new creature, and everything you had done up until that point, and everything you do from then on will be infused with divine meaning. The mystery has been solved: the meaning of life is answered in the Source of Life, Jesus Christ, our God and King.