THE PURPOSE OF LIFE [R, 5-11-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—THE PURPOSE OF LIFE [R, 5-11-23]

 

The purpose of life is to love.

To love perfectly. At least, eventually.

We love by living in God, who is the source of love. As I John 4:16 puts it, “God is love, and those who dwell in love dwell in God, and God in them.”

We dwell in love, and thus in God, by loving what God loves, which is all of God’s creation and its inhabitants. [Yes, snakes and spiders, too.]

It is John Wesley [1703-1791] who pushes us on this. He says that we are to “go on to perfection.”

Not perfection in knowledge or action, of course. No one can do that. But perfection in love.

Because love is a decision.

Wesley was an Arminian, meaning he thought Jacobus Arminius was right about life: we have choices. The other leading theologians of The Protestant Reformation—Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, Huldrych Zwingli –were predestinationists.

Predestination is different from fatalism. Fatalism says we have no choice about anything, i.e., “when it’s your time…” Predestination is not about everything, or about this life at all. It’s about whether you’ll go to heaven or hell in the next life.

Wesley did not believe that free will means that we have choices about everything. Random stuff happens all the time. But as Viktor Frankel pointed out in Man’s Search for Meaning, from his experience in the Nazi death camps, we always have some choice, at least the choice about how we shall respond to the random stuff that happens to us.

“Going on to perfection” in love means that our choice is love.

There are two movements to living in God, living in love: inward and outward. In Wesleyan terms, the inward movement is called personal holiness. The outward movement is social holiness.

Personal holiness is becoming aware of the presence of God so that God can direct us in our choices, direct us to love. Personal holiness includes prayer, Bible reading, individual and corporate worship, meditation, singing, paying attention to the witness of trees and flowers and birds and children.

Social holiness is about how we relate to God’s creation and creatures. That includes intentions as well as actions, since actions can be misunderstood or rejected. We can’t force others to accept love; that would be unloving. Sometimes the intention of love is as far as we can go, but it’s still our choice.

Wesley was so sure that the purpose of life is to choose to love that he made his preachers, including me, pledge to “become perfect in love in this life.”

I must be getting close.

John Robert McFarland

I have often preached that the purpose of life is to have a good time. My text is John 10:10, where Jesus says, “I’m here; let’s party.” The only way to really have a good time--not all those false good times of booze and dope and promiscuity and power and selfishness--is to love.