Truth and Meaning

I just finished reading a great new biography of C.S. Lewis by the always brilliant Alister McGrath. I've been really loving McGrath's historical theology work (see "Christianity's Dangerous Idea" and "The Twilight of Athiesm") so I was excited to see that he had put out a Lewis biography.

I find that one of the effects of reading biographies is that they remind me of the brevity of life. They help bring perspective. No matter how great a person was, no matter how great of a legacy they left behind, their life comes to an end.

I need to be reminded of this. I get so blissfully ignorant of the mortality of life. I like to pretend that I'll go on just as I am indefinitely. Those of us in our 30's can still hold on to some faint hope that our bodies aren't failing us. But they are. It's only a matter of time.

Most of us don't like to consider our own mortality. We put so much stock in things that death will take away. But remembering the shortness of life is a practice that brings needed perspective to our lives. It helps us to see which things are really valuable and deserving of our time and effort and which things we could probably stand to worry less about.

Reading biographies is one of those things that forces you to look at life through a different set of lenses. It's as if you were removed from your present location in time and space and given the opportunity to see part of the bigger picture. For a moment, the lesser concerns of life fade away and you are hit with the big questions: What the heck am I doing in this life? Is my life of any worth? To what ought I to devote my fading time, energy, and resources?

While C.S. Lewis was certainly interested in finding truth, he was more interested in finding meaning. In one sense, he devoted his life to finding the synthesis of reason and imagination. And that search led him to Christianity. He found that Christianity engaged both his mind and his imagination more convincingly than anything else.

In these times when we are forced to consider the mortality of life, I find it helps to consider, as Lewis did, the grand story of which our lives are only a small part. Lewis saw Christianity as the great, true "myth." Our lives find their purpose as part of a story, a great drama that is bigger than ourselves, but in which we are invited to play a part. Despite our inclinations otherwise, we are not the heroes of this story. Neither are we the creators of this story. But the wonderful news is that a hero and creator both exist. This means the story has both direction and resolution.

I have found that when I live my life in proper relation to the grand storyteller and his great hero, I discover both truth and meaning.