“Why do we need God, purpose & meaning in our lives? Why can’t we just enjoy ourselves and not worry about such things?”
Samuel Beckett is considered one of the first postmodernists and his 1969 play “Breath” offers us some insights into thinking about this. It runs like this:
The curtain raises & there’s the sound of an infant crying at birth. Then there’s an amplified recording of somebody slowly inhaling and exhaling accompanied lighting which brightens and darkens with it. There’s no one on stage but it is littered with miscellaneous rubbish. This goes on for about 25s, then there’s an identical cry to the opening one, the curtain falls and the play ends.
After spending your hard earned money on your tickets, getting dressed, going through the effort of getting out to the theatre and sitting among the audience expectantly, how would you feel after 25s of that? Would you not feel a little cheated & disappointed? At the very least, you’d be surprised and thinking that was all rather pointless.
But that’s the point if all is pointless.
Now amplify that from 25s to across your lifetime, to across all of existence. You now have insight into the depth of absurdity and despair you plunge into if you try to live your life as if it has no purpose.
There is a purpose, a meaning to life. Get to know it (Mark 12:30-31)
