The Secret of Life

So many people are yearning to know the secret of life. If they were told that it is contained on an ancient tablet recently unearthed on a Tibetan mountainside, or that it is contained in messages being decoded from outer space, they would be thrilled to hope that there are some real answers to the fundamental questions of life. In fact, many people search down many avenues for meaning, only to come up empty.

Most of us operate under the assumption that life does have meaning, that it's not just a purposeless exercise for a short period of time, after which we cease to exist. Indeed, we have an innate sense that there is more to it than that. We know there must be a Creator, despite all of the modern, intellectual efforts to discount Him. And if there is a Creator, we assume also that He has some degree of concern for His creation (us), to the extent that He would not leave us entirely clueless about our reason for existence.

As well as a reason for existence, we also inherently long for immortality. The fact of our own mortality is the muse of many poets, though for many the only solace comes in quiet resignation to fate. Yet we instinctively long for immortality, and hope that there is some solution to this common human problem. Could it be that there is no hope, that we can only quietly despair of our own mortality? Surely the issues of our mortality and our reason for existence are intertwined, with a common answer.

If we make an attempt to ascertain that answer, the secret of life, through our own intellectual reasoning, philosophy, or logical deduction, we can came up with many answers. And this is precisely the reason that so many religions and philosophies exist: man's attempts to figure it out on his own. But that's a faulty approach, because if there is an original reason, then it originated from the mind of God, and any amount of attempts to deduce it on our own are futile. This is something that He would have to reveal to us, something outside of our own intellectual capabilities.

Yes, it does stand to reason that if God made us, and if He made us for a purpose, that He would not leave us without any assistance in determining what that purpose is. The good news is that He has provided such assistance, a communication of what we need to know about Him and about ourselves. This supernatural revelation of His message to us was conveyed through His special group of messengers called prophets, and it is contained in the Bible.

As good as that sounds, that God has indeed provided the answers to the secret of life, He went one step better. He came down to earth Himself to communicate to us. The Bible puts it like this, "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of God's being, sustaining all things by his powerful word."