Meaning from Despair

Finishing up the book Anna Karenina today, I read the final pages in which Levin, one of the main characters of the story, comes to grips with his belief in God. Later on, I was watching an episode of the television show Family Ties in which Alex Keaton has to grapple with the same subject. Both characters' defining moments come as a result of the death of a loved one and the resulting meaninglessness of life. Alex Keaton and Levin are both men who are very analytical and down to earth, believing only in the things they can see, feel, and analyze. They bury themselves in their work. For Levin it is in managing a farm and caring for his family that he spends his time and energy, while Alex's work is his economics, business, and all around financial studies. It isn't until they see through the deaths of their brother and best friend, respectively, that the tangible things that are the center of their lives are devoid of ultimate meaning. The resulting despair and depression causes them both to admit that there is a miraculous aspect to the world and a being higher than themselves looking out for things. A god who is good. It is through this realization that their lives take on new meaning and hope.

Working for the sake of work itself and survival in life is utterly meaningless as it all ends the same: in death. In Ecclesiastes it says, "Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun." What has been done once will be done again. The technology may change, but it is all basically the same and nothing is accomplished that will remove the fact that, one of these days, each and every person, no matter what their status or accomplishments in life, will meet there end in some way. To merely go through the motions of life can be very depressing if one stops to think about what it all means.

God is the one thing that can give life complete purpose. He is the hope that there is more than just working day in and day out, with that work ultimately resulting in nothing. If death is indeed the end and the natural world is all there is, what is the purpose of life?