The Christian view of life

My idea is that one finds a more nihilistic description of the human condition in many religious works (I'm speaking specifically of Christian works) than in most books by "freethinkers," as they used to be called. To see this, all we have to do is take out the religious parts. What's left over are some very correct nihilistic comments.This is from William Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728): http://www.worldinvisible.com/.../law/seriouscall/scch17.htm or from Pascal's Pensees: IIS 8.5 Detailed Error - 404.0 - Not FoundHere's a similar idea from Samuel Johnson's Rasselas. The thesis of this book is that human happiness is impossible. It's not obviously religious, but anyone familiar with Johnson knows what he's getting at: forget happiness: do your religious duty. It's about this rich prince that travels around the world trying to find out what mode of life will make him happy. This passage is about a Pyramid in Egypt: Prince of AbyssiniaMoving along in time, we find T. S. Eliot in the 1940s writing in his deeply Christian (and modernist) poem Four Quartets, http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/coker.html
Being terrified by "nothing to think about" is not only quite amusing; it is also a very accurate depiction of the psychological condition of humans, who are purpose-oriented, being lost in a purposeless world. Here we have the tedium vitae, the "vacuity" of life, to use Samuel Johnson's term.I would conclude, therefore, the following: the depiction of the human condition as described by Christian writers (if we omit references to God) has a nihilistic flavor to it.There might be two issues here:1. Is the traditional Christian view of life as depicted above?2. Ought it to be the view of life for a Christian? [Promoted by AdminNWR from The Christian view of life]Edited by AdminJar, : shorten overly long link

Of them all I find the nihilist position to be the most honest of all the non-God arguments I have heard. The nihilist cuts to the chase, exludes all illusionary attempts at pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps (w.r.t. manufacturing 'purpose' for ourselves). He says it as it (a non-God world) is.The Christian position in dealing with an unbeliever will vary depending on who it is they are talking to - but the precursor-end it hopes to lead a man to, is the nihilist one - the most honest one that a man can occupy, whilst still rejecting of God. There is a method in their madness.I am struck by how each of your quotes is really the book of Ecclesiastes by another name. It is the view of the life that Christians believe all men who do not believe must occupy if they are to be brutally honest with themselves. It is the view a Christian feels a man must arrive at were he only to truly consider his condition. It is not at all the view the Christian has of his own life - for a Christian has come to knows what lifes purpose is. The mournful tones of such writing (should they be Christian writings) are attempts aimed at rousing non-believers from their slumber - to underscore, for the unbeliever, the nihilst conclusions he must draw from his unbelief. If, on the other hand, the writer is a non-Christian then he has awoken from his slumber and has realised nihilism to be his actual state. The mournful tones simply reflect the agony that faces a true nihilist. They reflect a God-shaped hole that aches. If they are evangelists then yes. Propogate that message so that unbelievers might arrive at the conclusions it contains. And they should applaud unbelievers who propagate that message.Take a bow Robin.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Thanks. I like this PNT.

You're welcome. You are literally the best non-believing, evangelist of God I have ever had the pleasure of encountering.Heaven help EvC should you ever become a Christian.

Yes, definitely, you have put your finger on a major Christian theme, our fallen condition without God. It's fascinating that you find this nihilistic view of human existence more in Christian writers than in what you call "freethinkers" and I wonder if that can be shown more as the thread progresses.As NWR said in the PNT thread, I hope you feel like playing teacher some. I'm not very familiar with either T.S. Eliot or Samuel Johnson. I gather their Christian beliefs stay in the background of their work. Pascal and William Law, on the other hand, are both known for their Christian writings.{By the way, one of your URLs is long and is distorting the page width. Here's how to neaten it up using HTML code. Use the Peek button to see how I did it: Title of your choiceUse the Preview button a lot until it looks right.Never mind, I see jar cleaned it up}Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

GREAT post, Iano. Straight to the point. Right on.Sorry, that was meant for Iano's post #2.But I love your OP too. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I wouldn't think it would be necessary to know anything about them to get the point of the OP. Now Eliot, being a modernist, wrote obscurely--but not THAT obscurely (not that I understand it all--I don't). There's no question about the Christian nature of Four Quartets, as revealed in the following stanza from that same section of the poem: I'm not sure who the "dying nurse" is. Christ?

Dying nurse? Sinful flesh I reckon. Our crumbling, decaying bodies and minds. Seems to fit with the whole anyway

That's the thing about Eliot. One reads this stuff, and one has no idea what he's talking about, and yet one is deeply moved. Like this: What is this "deeper communion"?Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.

Speaking of "Four Quartets," if one were to try to take up this poem and read it, one would be baffled, unless one has a particular affinity for this sort of thing. Let us take, for example,the opening lines: Now, what the hell does this mean? Well, as you read along, you get the idea that Eliot does not believe that the time-bound world (our world) is reality. Reality is eternity. However, there's a problem: "Human kind cannot bear very much reality."That idea is the heart of this poem. Man cannot bear very much reality, but every once in a while, we get a little glimpse of it. Eliot describes it in various ways, in one instance as "the music heard so deeply it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts."I don't know what that means, but that is the idea anyway. But despite the modernist obscurity, there is no doubt about the Christian theme: Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.

This can be read from either perspective: from the Christian perspective the message is loud and clear - it is putting in a nutshell a fairly obvious message from the Bible. The clarity of the unbelieving perspective will depend very much on the persons position along a continuum - one of which heads towards nihilism. The nearer the clearer.The Christian perspective:The pictures used in the Bible are given in order that we can glean the actual position which exists between man and God in a way that makes sense. Take the picture of a person being "born again"; initially feeding on spiritual milk with the goal being them graduating on to being fed on spiritual meat.When a person is born again, they are as weak as newborn babes. They need total assistance and are unable to fend for themselves. An alternative picture of this period is described by Christians as the 'honeymoon' period. God pouring out his love and care on a new born babe - all the babe has to do is enjoy, its every need catered for - all without it so much as lifting a finger.But Gods purpose is relationship. God intends us to relate to him personally. Not just as a parent does to a baby though. The intention is that we would grow and mature so as to relate as a parent does to a child - as a father and son (another picture) would.But sin remains in our sinful flesh, we still have a sinful nature which operates in the realm of the flesh which we spirits (the essential essence of a person) still inhabit. Sins aim is to destroy and one of its techniques (if I may so personify it - for it is a person who pulls its levers) is to busy us and distract us with the day to day which goes on all around us. For if we are kept busy with work and hobbies and church activity and friends then we will not hear his still, soft voice which seeks to communicate and relate to us in order to deepen the relationship.

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Psalm 46:10 "Be still, and know that I am God

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If we are still, if we set aside the temptation to be busy and hurried for busy-ness sake, then we can hear God speak to us. And when he speaks to us we can hear his will for us, his advice and guidance and his reassurance. We can experience him relating to us and can relate back. We can experience his love for us and love him back. For, as in life, it is spending time with a person that causes the relationship to deepen. Still time, meaning the focus is on them alone.Being still, so has to hear him, results in us moving into deeper relationship, to a more intense union. A deeper communion.The non-Chrisian perspective:But one doesn't have to be a Christian to utilise 'busy' to drown out his quiet call urging a person into communion with him. Eliot possibly aimed this at the unbeliever. So try it for yourself. Take a considered look in the mirror - really look yourself directly in the eyes. Thoughts will arise. Uncomfortable thoughts. You probably won't last more than a minute even if you try very hard. You will desire to go back to busying yourself elsewhere. You will look away with relief. But resist! Be still and look and lets the thoughts wash over you. The draw to communion with him will (evne if through a glass darkly) become apparent.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Firstly, apologies to various admins for opening up seemingly endless unnecessary threads about this topic; I didn't realise I was being a pain at the time.With reference to the topic, I think that for a Christian, a life without purpose in the form of Christ has to be depicted as fairly godawful, in order to justify the amount of time and effort expended in being Christian. Clearly, this isn't the whole issue, but I think its part of it. I think this is the direct equivalent of the tendency of theists in arguments about morality without an omnipotent god to say "but I could just kill babies without Christ!"There has to be the opposition of an awful pointlessness and a brilliant reason for it all to make sense.Thats just my gut reaction.I'm sure many more examples of such apparent disquiet could be found in Christian writings. I guess its tricky with poetry or fiction to understand the writer's relationship with the nihilistic voice (for want of a better term).I'll have a think about any 18th century writers that might be applicable here. I suppose there is something appropriate in the Laputia section of Gulliver's Travels with those senile immortals. I'll have a look.

Without studying the poem more carefully I'd say you are right, it represents Christ. But when I first read through it that didn't occur to me. I took it as saying we are all dying, even the healthy ones, and the ones who do the healing and helping of those who are dying more immediately, all dying from the day we are born, and that idea may even be in there.But I think you must be right about its main meaning being Christ. I looked up some Amazon reviews of the poem and one reviewer complains that it's too "Jesusy" for him.

Since I've been doing some reading around in Tolstoy lately I started noting his nihilistic statements. His character Levin in Anna Karenina has some definite nihilistic moments, and it turns out Levin is pretty much himself if you read his Confession as I've been doing lately.I haven't yet carefully studied his religious conclusions, but I have the impression he ended up somewhere that isn't very much like Bible-believing Christianity but includes some Christian ideas, such as from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.But on the way there he went through a crisis of meaning that is like what you are talking about. It was his sense of how all his success and happiness was simply in the great scheme of things meaningless that drove him to seek God. So here are some excerpts from the Confession.

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From Chapter 3:

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So I lived; but five years ago something very strange began to happen to me. At first I experienced moments of perplexity and arrest of life, and though I did not know what to do or how to live; and I felt lost and became dejected. But this passed and I went on living as before. Then these moments of perplexity began to recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They were always expressed by the questions: What is it for? What does it lead to?

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... I understood that it was no casual indisposition but something very important, and that if these questions constantly repeated themselves they would have to be answered. And I tried to answer them. The questions seemed such stupid, simple, childish ones; but as soon as I touched them and tried to solve them I at once became convinced, first, that they are not childish and stupid but the most important and profound of life's questions; and secondly that, occupying myself with my Samara estate, the education of my son, or the writing of a book, I had to know *why* I was doing it. As long as I did not know why, I could do nothing and could not live.

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I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet. What I had lived on no longer existed, and there was nothing left.

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From Chapter 4:

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My life came to a standstill... If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfill my desires I should not have know what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. I had as it were lived, lived, and walked, walked, till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction. It was impossible to stop, impossible to go back, and impossible to close my eyes or avoid seeing that there was nothing ahead but suffering and real death - complete annihilation.

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...And all this befell me at a time when all around me I had what is considered complete good fortune. I was not yet fifty; I had a good wife who loved me and whom I loved, good children, and a large estate which without much effort on my part improved and increased. I was respected by my relations and acquaintances more than at any previous time. I was praised by others and without much self- deception could consider that my name was famous. And far from being insane or mentally diseased, I enjoyed on the contrary a strength of mind and body such as I have seldom met with among men of my kind; physically I could keep up with the peasants at mowing, and mentally I could work for eight and ten hours at a stretch without experiencing any ill results from such exertion. And in this situation I came to this - that I could not live, and, fearing death, had to employ cunning with myself to avoid taking my own life.

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...The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so do not think about it, but live," I can no longer do it: I have already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day and night going round and bringing me to death. That is all I see, for that alone is true. All else is false.

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From Chapter 5:

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"But perhaps I have overlooked something, or misunderstood something?" said to myself several times. "It cannot be that this condition of despair is natural to man!" And I sought for an explanation of these problems in all the branches of knowledge acquired by men. I sought painfully and long, not from idle curiosity or listlessly, but painfully and persistently day and night - sought as a perishing man seeks for safety - and I found nothing.

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I sought in all the sciences, but far from finding what I wanted, became convinced that all who like myself had sought in knowledge for the meaning of life had found nothing. And not only had they found nothing, but they had plainly acknowledged that the very thing which made me despair - namely the senselessness of life - is the one indubitable thing man can know.

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...From early youth I had been interested in the abstract sciences, but later the mathematical and natural sciences attracted me, and until I put my question definitely to myself, until that question had itself grown up within me urgently demanding a decision, I contented myself with those counterfeit answers which science gives.

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Now in the experimental sphere I said to myself: "Everything develops and differentiates itself, moving towards complexity and perfection, and there are laws directing this movement. You are a part of the whole. Having learnt as far as possible the whole, and having learnt the law of evolution, you will understand also your place in the whole and will know yourself." Ashamed as I am to confess it, there wa a time when I seemed satisfied with that.

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...If one turns to the division of sciences which attempt to reply to the questions of life - to physiology, psychology, biology, sociology - one encounters an appalling poverty of thought, the greatest obscurity, a quite unjustifiable pretension to solve irrelevant question, and a continual contradiction of each authority by others and even by himself. If one turns to the branches of science which are not concerned with the solution of the questions of life, but which reply to their own special scientific questions, one is enraptured by the power of man's mind, but one knows in advance that they give no reply to life's questions. Those sciences simply ignore life's questions. They say: "To the question of what you are and why you live we have no reply, and are not occupied with that; but if you want to know the laws of light, of chemical combinations, the laws of development of organisms, if you want to know the laws of bodies and their form, and the relation of numbers and quantities, if you want to know the laws of your mind, to all that we have clear, exact and unquestionable replies."

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From Chapter 6:

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Inquiring for one region of human knowledge, I received an innumerable quantity of exact replies concerning matters about which I had not asked: about the chemical constituents of the stars, about the movement of the sun towards the constellation Hercules, about the origin of species and of man, about the forms of infinitely minute imponderable particles of ether; but in this sphere of knowledge the only answer to my question, "What is the meaning of my life?" was: "You are what you call your 'life'; you are a transitory, casual cohesion of particles. The mutual interactions and changes of these particles produce in you what you call your "life". That cohesion will last some time; afterwards the interaction of these particles will cease and what you call "life" will cease, and so will all your questions. You are an accidentally united little lump of something. that little lump ferments. The little lump calls that fermenting its 'life'. The lump will disintegrate and there will be an end of the fermenting and of all the questions." So answers the clear side of science and cannot answer otherwise if it strictly follows its principles.

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From such a reply one sees that the reply does not answer the question. I want to know the meaning of my life, but that it is a fragment of the infinite, far from giving it a meaning destroys its every possible meaning.

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CK made a necessary distinction on the thread Robin, Catholic Scientist and CK Discussion: That is, atheists may certainly find meaning in life and avoid a nihilistic attitude. But as you've said, one can be a nihilist too and still find one's own private purposes. Most people seem to live that way. But nihilism is the recognition that there are no ULTIMATE purposes, and an honest atheism should recognize this.It seems that Tolstoy had found plenty of meaning in his life, with his success as a writer, even great fame, a thriving farm and a happy family life, as he himself says. Even appreciating the ultimate lack of purpose in it all in the great scheme of things might not have provoked a crisis. People live with that sense of meaninglessness more or less it appears, making their own meanings, but in his case it did provoke a crisis. The ultimate purposelessness of all of it started haunting him and drove him to seek God. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.