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Why are you here? There’s lots of answers people give to that question. Consider one given by an agnostic playwright named Samuel Beckett. His answer to the question, “why am I here?” was given in a 35 second play called “Breath.” You can watch it here. It begins with an infant’s cry. The curtain then opens on a pile of miscellaneous trash scattered on the stage. You hear a long, slow inhale. And then the curtain closes to the sound of a slow exhale, representing life’s final breath.

His point is obvious. Life is a vapor, bracketed between our first inhale and our final exhale. In between, it’s nothing but a pile of trash.

Now Beckett is right in one sense. Even the Scriptures call life just a vapor, a breath (James 4:14, Psalm 144:4). But is it meaningless? Is it nothing more than a pile of random trash?

In the worldview of one-ism, that’s all life can be.

If you’re a secular one-ist, you’re just a collection of atoms that comes together for a brief period of time before you fall apart and return to nothingness.

If you’re a spiritual one-ist, when you die you merge with the universal spirit. But there’s still no you left. You’re just a drop in an ocean of oneness.

But in two-ism, life has meaning and purpose!

The prophet puts it this way in Isaiah 43:6-7—Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I formed and made.”

You were created to magnify God!

That was Adam and Eve’s purpose. They were tempted by a serpent and they failed. Now all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.

In the worldview of one-ism, salvation must be an inside job. We’ve got to fix things ourselves! But if there is a Creator who exists outside of creation, He can step into creation and save us!

And that’s exactly what happened!

God promised there would come a Son of Adam who would perfectly glorify the Father and crush the serpent’s head.

That Snake-Crusher would also die on a cross, paying the penalty for those who repent and believe.

Now we can live our lives magnifying His name, not to earn God’s love but because we have it!

Genesis 1:1 teaches us that the Creator is distinct from His creation. And if we fail to recognize this distinction, we’ll forget who we are and we’ll forget why we’re here.

That’s exactly what happened to Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum when they were talking to the Queen of Underland in The Silver Chair, one of the books in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series.

Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum were looking to rescue Prince Rillian from the queen’s underground enchantments, but when they met her they found themselves succumbing to her enchantments themselves.

She tried to convince them that the underground world was all there was. There was no overworld. There was no Narnia.

But Puddleglum insisted that there was. After all, he had seen the sun.

The witch asked them, “What is this sun that you all speak of?”

They looked at a lamp and tried to explain to her that the sun was like a lamp, except it hung in the sky and it was much bigger and much brighter.

The witch laughed and asked, “When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing; the sun is but a tale, a children’s story.”[1]  

 

Brother, sister, friend, that’s exactly how our Enemy tries to enchant us. This world is all there is. Belief in God is a tale, a children’s story. The things we love about God are just copies, projections of the real things that we can see, smell, hear, and feel.  

But the reverse is the truth. God has always existed. And everything good that we see is just a reflection of His glory.

So don’t stop believing. Even when the tempter tries to enchant you. Christ will hold you fast.

 

[1] C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 187.