Meaning

“…I believe that for just about everybody the most fulfilling thing we can do, in the long term, is to focus on our work. By “work,” I’m not just referring to a nine-to-five job. It could be parenting. Or serving on a board. Or volunteering. Many possible things. Anything that contributes good to others is work, regardless if we’re getting paid for it.

And what distracts us most from that kind of work? One of the biggest things is work’s opposite: leisure. Or better put modern society’s infatuation with leisure.

…I’m not against rest, relaxation and fun. I just don’t want you to miss out on the things that matter to you because you’ve unthinkingly bought into our cultural notions of leisure. What I’m against is making leisure your objective. Because if leisure is your objective, it will inevitably displace your higher priorities. That’s a very common problem in our society.

Let me put it this way: Leisure make a great booster to long-term productivity in our pursuit of meaningful goals. But leisure makes a terrible goal in itself.

Leisure doesn’t provide meaning. It provides renewal for other things that do provide meaning.

Preaching Angles: Leisure: Mk 6:31, Ex 20:10, Ecc 3:13, Ps 118:24; Work: Col 3:23, Pr 16:3, Gen 2:15, Pr 18:9; Purpose: Jn 6;27, Col 3:17, M 6:33 Source: Joshua Becker, Things That Matter, Waterbrook, 2022, Page 146-147

A New York Times interview with Yale “happiness professor” Lauri Santos, exemplifies the ways in which the happiness studies movement lets us down. Santos’s research focuses on cognition and cognitive development in dogs and monkeys. But she has been teaching a popular course on human happiness since 2018, and producing podcasts about happiness with millions of downloads.

At the end of the interview, the Times asks, “So what’s the answer? What’s the purpose of life?” Santos answers: “It’s smelling your coffee in the morning. [Laughs.] Loving your kids. Having sex and daisies and springtime. It’s all the good things in life. That’s what it is.” In other words, she doesn’t know.

Here's an additional comment from the article: “Santos says some good and important things. But when she reaches her positive prescriptions, we find we can gain equally useful insights from greeting cards and embroidered samplers—in fact, better. At least the platitude “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade” responds to the problem of suffering. “Have all the good things” doesn’t. What is the secret to enjoying the good things? What shall we say to the people who have them all, but find they aren’t enough? Between 1999 and 2019, suicide rates increased by 33 percent—and that was before the pandemic. I suspect that a lot of the people comprehended by that statistic smelled coffee, liked sex and daisies and springtime, and at least tried to love their kids.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

It turns out the true happiness is not found in circumstances but in our relationship with our Creator. Only He promises “fullness of joy” (Ps. 16:11; Isa. 55:11).

They're colorful, valuable, and make the most delightful noise shaking around in their box … and to the trained criminal eye, they glitter nearly as valuably as uncut diamonds. What are they? Humble Lego sets.

Recently, thieves have begun targeting Lego sets as (relatively) high value and nearly untraceable goods. Why? The brick toys are in massive demand, can be instantly resold, command high prices for hard to find or mint condition sets, and are extremely difficult to track as stolen goods. Over the years, Lego sets have become more elaborate — for example, Lego recently released a kit of the Millennium Falcon, comprising 7,541 pieces and, notably, retailing for $849.95. An unopened Lego Star Wars Cloud City set from 2023 will set you back $7,000.

A Lego crime ring was recently busted in southern California where police said they found 2,800 boxes of Lego, with individual values ranging from $20 to “well over” $1,000. They included Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Marvel sets. In similar recent cases thieves smashed their way into stores and made off with around $100,000 worth of Lego kits.

“Ten years ago, I just couldn’t have imagined it — I did not think our little hobby was the kind of thing that would attract that kind of crime,” said Graham E. Hancock, editor of Blocks, an enthusiast magazine.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Value - It's a fascinating case study in value—sometimes the easily overlooked things right under our noses are more interesting or valuable than we think; 2) Greed; Temptation – The sinful desire for wealth can lead to sin, destruction, and judgment; 3) Meaning; Purpose - The Bible often speaks of the emptiness of material possessions and the search for true meaning and purpose in life. People’s obsession with Lego sets might reflect a deeper longing for something more.

Christianity is not [currently] declining in America. At the New York Times, journalist Lauren Jackson has been doing some searching, thorough reporting for a new series “Believing.” Apparently, 92 percent of Americans say “they hold a spiritual belief in a god, human souls or spirits, an afterlife, or something ‘beyond the natural world.’”

Jackson reasons that people haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion. She reports that for the last few decades, much of the world has tried to go without God, a departure from most of recorded history. More than a billion people globally and about a third of Americans have tried to live without religion. Studies in recent years have offered insights into how that is going. The data doesn’t look good.

Actively religious people tend to report they are happier than people who don’t practice religion. Religious Americans are healthier, too. They are significantly less likely to be depressed or to die by suicide, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular illness, or other causes. In a long-term study, doctors at Harvard found that women who attended religious services once a week were 33 percent less likely to die prematurely than women who never attended. One researcher on the study said, that because “they had higher levels of social support, better health behaviors, and greater optimism about the future.”

Religiously affiliated Americans are more likely to feel gratitude (by 23 percentage points), spiritual peace (by 27 points), and “a deep sense of connection with humanity” (by 15 points) regularly than people without a religious affiliation.

Religion can’t just become another way to optimize your life. Some have tried. Jackson describes secular community gatherings with pop music, morality talks, free food — but “None of us became regulars.” Going for any reason other than faith itself leaves you with little reason to stick around.

For young professionals today, work is no longer just something they do for a paycheck; it has become one of the primary spheres of meaning in their lives. For those who pursue a vocation, work is a way of leading a purposeful life and making a mark on the world. For those still going to the office, work is where people find others to talk to and, if they’re lucky, people who care about the same things that they do. Often, it’s where people fall in love.

Above all, it’s how many people in the middle and upper-middle classes define their value and sense of purpose: it is against the standards of their professions that people measure their level of success and personal growth. And it is in a large measure on the social status of their professions that they base their self-worth.

Because work has become so central to people’s identities, self-esteem, and social lives, it is easy to lose sight of its many dry demands. For full-time employees, work takes most of our waking hours. And for whole swaths of highly skilled white-collar workers, the willingness and ability to give more and more time to their careers has become a professional virtue in itself.

The US is battling an epidemic of sad, anxious young women. Despite the surge in women’s opportunities and freedoms over the past 50 years, it appears they are more depressed than ever. According to Harvard University research, this is particularly apparent in the 18-25 age group, 41% of which are said to suffer anxiety. In addition, the number of women reporting depression increased from 26% in 2017 to over 36% in 2023, according to a Gallup poll.

Dr. Wendy Wang at The Institute for Family Studies, says, “With 20 years under my belt as a sociologist…I believe I have stumbled on one possible explanation for this sea of sadness. It might appear a controversial take: too few women are getting married.”

According to US census data, only 47% of women ages 18 to 55 were married in the US in 2022, compared to 72% in 1970.

Despite the scientific data, social media is doing its part to malign marriage. On TikTok, videos that jokingly depict marriage as a fast route to domestic chores like washing dishes, caring for a newborn baby, and cleaning the house, go viral. As a result, only 24% of women under 30 believe that women who get married and have kids live fuller and happier lives than those who don’t.

But the uncomfortable truth is women who aren't married are worse off, health-wise, compared to their married counterparts. Proven scientific studies have shown that married women are less likely to die from heart disease and have longer lifespans than non-married women.

Marriage is not a cure-it-all magic wand, but the data tell us that the average American woman who is married with children is markedly less lonely and living a more meaningful and joyful life. Surveys show that 40% of married mothers aged under 55 reported that they were 'very happy' with their lives, compared with 22% of single, childfree women.

Admittedly, taking care of children is an exhausting job. But extensive research has shown that the rewards outweigh the negatives.

Editor’s Note: When using this illustration, let’s be mindful of the single women who long to be married, but are not yet, and the wives who would love to have children but have not been able to conceive, and those who have lost children through miscarriage.

Governments around the developing world are worried that the birth rate is declining at a troubling rate. Birth rates in the United States have been trending down for nearly two decades, and other wealthy countries are experiencing the same. Among those proposing solutions to reverse the trend, the conventional wisdom goes that if only the government were to offer more financial support to parents, birth rates would start ticking up again.

But writing in The Atlantic, writer Christine Emba notices the need for something deeper, something governments cannot provide—meaning. Emba writes:

That need is for meaning. In trying to solve the fertility puzzle, thinkers have cited people’s concerns over finances, climate change, political instability, or even potential war. But in listening closely to people’s stories, I’ve detected a broader thread of uncertainty—about the value of life and a reason for being. Many in the current generation of young adults don’t seem totally convinced of their own purpose or the purpose of humanity at large, let alone that of a child. It may be that for many people, absent a clear sense of meaning, the perceived challenges of having children outweigh any subsidy the government might offer.

20-year-old James Clarkson works as a gas engineer trainee in North England, and has no plans of stopping. Of course, it would be unusual for any person to consider retirement at 20. But Clarkson has options many people don’t have, because he recently won a lottery jackpot worth £7.5 million (about $9.2 million in U.S. dollars).

Clarkson is from Carlisle near the Scottish border. He was staying at his girlfriend’s house when his phone notified him via the National Lottery app that he’d won the UK National Lottery Christmas Day drawing.

Clarkson said, “News spread fast and we all ended up celebrating later at my grandma’s and grandad's with a roast beef dinner and champagne.”

But by Monday morning, he was back at work as usual. He said, “I need to have a purpose in life, plus Dad wouldn't let me not work anyway.” Clarkson believes it’s important to have a reason to get up in the morning. “I know people might think I'm mad to still work, but I want to. And, of course, there'll be some nice holidays in between.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God designed us to find meaning and purpose in our work. An occupation is much more than just a means for earning a living.

The billionaire Elon Musk has recently been invoking Christianity as he discusses core beliefs. Raised Anglican in South Africa, young Musk got an early taste of differing religious views attending a Jewish preschool. “I was just singing ‘Hava Nagila’ one day and `Jesus, I Love You’ the next,” he jokes.

As he grew older, Musk has said, he turned to the great religious books—the Bible, Quran, Torah, some Hindu texts—to deal with an existential crisis of meaning. And he looked to philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.

But not until the boy discovered science fiction, he says, did he begin to find what he was looking for. In particular, he says, it was the lesson he took away from the “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” that the purpose of life wasn’t so much about finding the big answers but asking the right questions.

“The answer is the easy part,” Musk said during a public event. “The question is the hard part.”

Recent tweets have included: “Jesus taught love, kindness, and forgiveness. I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak & foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom.”

And: “While I’m not a particularly religious person, I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise.”

Describing himself as “cultural Christian,” Musk indicated his guiding belief goes back to that of seeking greater understanding. “That is my religion, for the lack of a better way to describe it, it’s really a religion of curiosity,” he said. “The religion of greater enlightenment.”

Yale psychologist June Gruber has confirmed the many positive physical, social, and psychological benefits of human happiness. But while working at the University of California-Berkeley she also started to see a dark side to happiness—or at least the pursuit of happiness.

In her clinical language she put it this way: “Happiness serves a specific function, and happiness may not always be adaptive” (that is, happiness might not be the most appropriate or helpful response).

Pursuing happiness is not always a good thing. Paradoxically, studies reviewed by Gruber and colleagues in their recent paper show that people who place the highest value on pursuing happiness tend to be less happy and more prone to depression.

Gruber says,

Setting your sights on happiness as the end goal may inadvertently be setting yourself up for disappointment. If you want to live a rich and happy life, it might be better to stop pursuing happiness so aggressively. Instead, engage in meaningful activities especially those that promote deep connections with others, while trying to [accept] your current emotional state, wherever it is.

Best-selling author Arthur C. Brooks is an expert on happiness research. But he also honestly shares about his own struggle with finding true satisfaction in life:

I have fallen into the trap of believing that success would fulfill me. On my 40th birthday I made a bucket list of things I hoped to do or achieve. They were mainly accomplishments only a wonk could want: writing books and columns about serious subjects, teaching at a top school, traveling to give lectures and speeches, maybe even leading a university or think tank. Whether these were good and noble goals or not, they were my goals, and I imagined that if I hit them, I would be satisfied.

I found that list when I was 48 and realized that I had achieved every item on it. But none of that had brought me the lasting joy I’d envisioned. Each accomplishment thrilled me for a day or a week—maybe a month, never more—and then I reached for the next rung on the ladder.

I’d devoted my life to climbing those rungs. I was still devoting my life to climbing—working 60 to 80 hours a week to accomplish the next thing, all the while terrified of losing the last thing. The costs of that kind of existence are obvious, but it was only when I looked back at my list that I genuinely began to question the benefits—and to think seriously about the path I was walking.

And what about you? Your goals are probably very different from mine, and perhaps your lifestyle is too. But the trap is the same. Everyone has dreams, and they beckon with promises of sweet, lasting satisfaction if you achieve them. But dreams are liars. When they come true, it’s … fine, for a while. And then a new dream appears.

How's your fantasy team shaping up? A recent Statista article takes stock of the United States' growing fantasy sports phenomenon. ESPN, DraftKings, and Yahoo, have spearheaded the growth of the online market, with the overall number of fantasy sports platforms increasing to 651 in 2023.

Between 2015 and 2022, the number of fantasy sports players in the US grew steadily. As of 2022, the total number of US fantasy sports players reached 50.4 million who spent $9.48 billion US dollars.

All that money goes to a booming fantasy industry—filled with scouting reports, insider magazines, draft conventions, and even entire cable channels dedicated to the pastime. Think for a moment of the sheer magnitude of this collected time, energy, research, and money. Cumulatively, there are entire human lifetimes—incalculable hours and moments—and vast fortunes going toward a particularly abstract form of entertainment.

Stats like these are a powerful reminder that our lives are supposed to be about more than dreaming about imaginary draft picks. What could we do if we directed all that energy in a more productive direction? What does it say about our sense of collective stewardship? What does our entertainment say about our hearts?

(Editor’s Note: Stats are the most current available as of 10/24)

People today may say that it shouldn’t matter what other people think about you. All that matters is what you think of you, that you live up to your standards and do what you think is right. I propose that that is utter nonsense. We are utterly dependent on others to name, bless, and affirm us.

Imagine a poet who says, “You know, I've been writing poetry for 10 years and I've let 3,000 people read my poems. Everyone has hated them. Everyone says, ‘This is stupid, this is terrible, this is bad. You must get another job.’” But the poet says, “It doesn't matter what they think. I know I'm a great poet.”

Would you say, “Well, there's a person with a great self-image?” Of course not. You’d probably say, “That’s a person on the verge of insanity. They are not functional.” And you know the reason why? Because we cannot bless ourselves. We cannot feel beautiful just because we keep saying I'm beautiful. You cannot bless yourself. You cannot name yourself. You cannot say I'm somebody. Somebody from outside has got to tell you you're beautiful. Somebody from the outside has got to tell you you're a good poet. Somebody from the outside has got to bless you. Somebody from the outside has got to name you. You can't do it yourself.

And that means you are completely dependent, or you will be completely dependent on somebody else, spiritually. Your whole being is going to rest on somebody, whether it's the critics, your parents, somebody you hope to marry, somebody you have married, or somebody else. Like sheep, we are dependent on others for our survival and flourishing.

The decline of the church in America is posing tremendous cultural problems. And sociologists are beginning to sound the alarm.

Once upon a time, America was a land filled with churches, dotting the leafy streets of small towns and major cities alike. In 1965, churches affiliated with mainline denominations, such as Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians, claimed around 50% of the American population. However, by 2020, this number had dwindled to a mere 9%. This dramatic decline is one of the largest sociological changes in American history, impacting institutions that were once central to the nation.

The result is undeniable. We are living in an age of spiritual anxiety. Some mainline Protestants left for Evangelical churches and others for Catholicism. But much of that decline came from the people who simply felt that their politics gave them the moral satisfaction they needed.

As a result, people are desperate for meaning, latching onto fleeting political movements and slogans in search of purpose. And now their children are in the street—without any satisfaction at all. Spiritually anxious, they react to each short-lived bit of political hoopla as though it were the trumpet of Armageddon.

Desperate for meaning, they latch on to anything that gives them the exciting pleasure of seeming revolutionary, no matter how little they understand it or perform actions that meaningfully affect it. Shouting slogans, they ache for the unity of a congregation singing hymns. What Protestantism once gave, they have no more: a nation-defining pattern of marriage and children, a feeling of belonging, a belief in Providence, a sense of patriotism.

The danger in all this comes from the fact that the apocalypse is self-fulfilling. If everything in public life is elevated to world-threatening danger, if there is no meaningful private life to which to retreat, then all manners and even personal morals must be set aside in the name of higher causes—and opponents quickly come to feel they must respond with similarly cataclysmic rhetoric and action.

Suffering and struggles can open the door to discovering true meaning in life. This is what Celine Dion learned after her diagnosis with Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS).

When Dion first discovered her diagnosis, it was a devastating blow. The rare condition, characterized by severe muscle spasms and rigidity, began to take over her life, causing both physical pain and emotional distress. Most significantly, the disease affected her vocal cords. Dion, who is passionate about performing, was forced to cancel performances and take a step back from the public eye, which added to her sense of isolation.

Despite the physical and emotional toll of the illness, she found new purpose in her journey. Dion shared:

No one should suffer alone. A lot of people are going through things alone for many, many, many years. If I would have just stayed secretly behind, my home would have become a prison, and I would have become a prisoner of my own life. Today I live one day at a time. The fact that I found the strength to communicate my condition with the world makes me very proud. Maybe my purpose in this life is to help others, and that is the greatest gift.

An insightful Aperture video reveals the sad reality that our happiness, or lack of, is always at a regular baseline. It only fluctuates slightly despite all our attempts at bliss and euphoria.

You wake up in the morning and go to work. You spend eight hours working away at your desk on a job you once loved but now kind of just tolerate. It's 5:00 p.m., you go home, eat dinner, and watch TV, only to do it all over again the next day. You play sports or catch up with friends on the weekend and life's good, but you still feel like something is missing.

Now imagine you get that well deserved promotion and a healthy raise and suddenly you're going on those vacations you once dreamt of. Driving a nicer car, receiving more status and respect in the workplace. Your quality of life has been significantly upgraded and finally you feel like you're fulfilling your potential. Fancy restaurants, rubbing elbows with influential people, your life feels new and almost foreign compared to where you came from.

Yet in a year or so your once brand-new Porsche just becomes your daily driver. All the imported sushi starts to taste the same and while you still frequent white sandy beaches and pristine ski slopes, these places have lost their allure.

You've completely changed your life but you're still in the same position you were in before you got the promotion. Those things that used to excite you have become stale, mundane, and boring. The reason why you'll never be happy is called “hedonic adaptation.” Hedonic adaptation is the tendency to return to a base level of happiness even when undergoing profound periods of positive or negative change.

A Gen Z journalist named Rikki Schlott wrote an essay to explain her generation to parents of Gen Z children. She called the essay “her best shot to explain the malaise of my generation.”

Gen Z has inherited a post-hope world, stripped of what matters. Instead, we have been offered a smorgasbord of easy and unsatisfying substitutes. All the things that have traditionally made life worth living — love, community, country, faith, work, and family — have been “debunked.”

“These are the sentiments I hear often from peers”:

• Love — “Monogamy is so outdated.”
• Community — “I have enough friends online.”
• Country — “I’m embarrassed to be an American.”
• Work — “I’m quiet-quitting.”
• Family — “I’m not bringing kids into this melting world.”
• Faith — “My parents are such naive Bible thumpers. By the way, what’s your star sign?”

Everything that matters has been devalued for Zoomers, leaving behind a generation with gaping holes where the foundations of a meaningful life should be. They’re desperately grasping for alternative purpose-making systems, all of which fall short.

I’m not saying all Zoomers should become church-going office drones who churn out babies and never question their country. But our dismal mental health records and the scars on our wrists seem to indicate that becoming faithless digital vagabonds is just not working out for us.

Gallup once polled people in 142 countries to respond to a series of statements designed to measure employee engagement—involving matters like their job satisfaction, whether they felt their work was important, and whether they had opportunities in the workplace to learn and grow.

What the polling firm found was that engagement is the exception, not the rule: Worldwide, 13% of employees were engaged at work, while 63% were not engaged and 24% were “actively disengaged,” meaning they were unhappy and unproductive. Engagement rates were highest in the United States and Canada, and lowest in East Asia.

Gallup noted, “About one in eight workers … are psychologically committed to their jobs and likely to be making positive contributions to their organizations. The bulk of employees worldwide ... lack motivation and are less likely to invest discretionary effort in organizational goals or outcomes.”

Some years ago, a frozen pizza company was trying to figure out an advertising campaign to bring attention to their product. They designed a series of humorous commercials where an individual was about to lose his life in some melodramatic fashion—in front of a firing squad, about to walk the plank, or a teenager who’d had a party while his parents were away for the weekend. In each case, they were asked, “What do you want on your tombstone?” to which the answer was “pepperoni and cheese” or some other pizza topping.

It was a risky ad since Americans don't want to hear about death. The company was trying to be funny with their name: Tombstone Pizza Company which originated in the Tombstone Tavern in Medford, Wisconsin. The tavern was across the street from a cemetery.

But seriously, if you requested a stone to be placed over your grave, what would you want on your tombstone?

For example, Ruth Bell Graham, the wife of evangelist Billy Graham, died in 2007 and had this chiseled into her tombstone, "End of Construction -- Thank you for your patience." She didn't pick a favorite Bible verse or a lofty quote from a famous leader. She humbled herself and admitted that her life had been "a work in progress" until she died.