Why Not?

As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,
Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
For soon it is gone and we fly away.  Psalm 90:10  NASB

Pride – “For if there is no meaning inherent in the world, on what basis can we determine the value of our actions?”[1]  Let me put it another way.  If the world is a neutral place of existence, then how can you tell if what you do is good or bad?

Picture the Greek idea of the world.  It’s a stage.  We are actors upon the stage.  But the stage is neutral.  It is simply the place where we act.  It does not come with its own moral prerogatives.  It’s just the boards and drapes and furniture on the floor.  Our actions determine what is good and what is bad.  And how do we know that?  Because we decide to make morality according to our own interpretation of the play we are performing.

In the Greek idea of the world, most of us sit in the audience.  We observe others acting on the stage.  We pass judgment on their performance according to our customs and laws.  There is nothing materially important about the stage itself.  It could be anywhere.  It’s just the accidental frame of our opinions.

Now consider the Hebrew idea.  Adam is intimately connected to adamah.  He is the stage and the stage is him extended into the world.  What he does affects everything on the stage, but the stage is not a neutral playing ground.  It is his skin stretched into the universe.  Everything is connected.  That’s why God must destroy the vegetation along with the human population in the flood.  Human sin polluted the earth.  Everything had to be cleansed.  In the Hebrew view, no one is in the audience, not even God.  Everyone is involved.  Everyone affects the outcome.  But even though the world is not neutral, it does not provide its own meaning for living.  Meaning must come from outside the world because meaning has eternal consequences.

In the Greek view, we make up the rules of good and evil as we go.  In the Hebrew view, the rules concerning good and evil are given by God.  In fact, men without God’s revelation of good and evil literally have no idea what they are doing and no basis for doing one thing as opposed to another.  They are driven by desire, custom and social circumstances.  In the end, life is summarized by labor and sorrow.  It ends with nothing to show for it.  Without a basis of meaning that stretches beyond the world, there is no ultimate purpose.  Consequently, meaning decays into praxis.

Meaning must be eschatological.  It is a function of ultimate purpose and ultimate purpose is determined only by God.  In other words, a man without God’s instructions is a man who has no ultimate basis for his choices.  He might as well roll dice.  Unless God tells me how I am to live, I have no idea what life is really about.

Topical Index:  pride, labor, sorrow, life, meaning, ethics, Psalm 90:10