A biblical perspective on Life’s Purpose in the age of Postmodernism

Any nation, whose governing laws were founded by God-fearing people with a basic understanding of Christian outlook on moral values and life's principles, can set the course to establish and maintain the freedom and justice. Undoubtedly, the United States of America is such a kind of nation, albeit, not all the founding fathers were Christians but they truly acknowledged the significance of biblical truths and incorporated them into legislative process and judicial systems for enrichment of life. Utilizing the freedom of religion, Christianity has flourished and churches increased in leaps and bounds. In fact, obeying the call of the Lords greatest commission in light of the gospel, America has sent many missionaries to proclaim the truth of Christ to many countries that are spiritually darken. Consequently, God has blessed the nation and indeed America has become a beacon of hope to the rest of the world. However, with the advent of dark agendas and advocating its shocking manifestos over the past few decades, the objective morality embedded with the absolute truths of the bible has been surrounded by the bodyguard of false assumptions, self-destructive philosophies and flawed theories through which we cannot able to define the meaning and the purpose of life defined by God.

Living in the world of foul language, violence and sensuality, understanding the reality of life and its purpose has become uncertain. Everyone is searching for something relative to themselves without knowing the absolute truth. Many people are tossed and blown by the ambiguous false belief systems that are most convincing and satisfying to their needs and circumstances. For instance, sex is seen as a pleasure seeking phenomenon outside the boundaries of marriage but not with an absolute truth that God designed sex as a blessing and with a purpose within inside the boundaries of marriage. The objective morality with absolute truth has become inaccessible to the human investigation. Man is merely considered as a social animal with his limited knowledge to be the social constructive. In postmodern world, the reality is determined based on what an individual or a social ethnic group demands or commands without a standard point of reference by which there is no place for Judeo-Christian values which are very root of America’s democracy.

Denying God in the postmodern world is not based on the lack of scientific evidence to prove the existence of God, but because their lack of faith to believe in the existence of God although the creation reveals Who God is and What He is. Consequently, the reality is viewed as a social, philosophical and psychological human thought process without giving any account to the universal truth whose origin is from the Bible. When man is believed to be constructed as a multiplicity of social selves such as race, culture, ethnicity, education etc in this postmodern world, one cannot define ―Who I am?‖ Nevertheless, the Bible gives a clear cut definition for man as an image of God, who is created in His own Being with an intrinsic worth, unified with Christ for a plan and purpose. When one cannot define the meaning and the purpose of being a human, it is absolutely imprudence to try to remove the core biblical principles and transcendent features integrated with the Western Law that grew with Judeo-Christian Enlightenment.

We have seen and heard people raising their voices asking intense questions on the problem of evil, pain and suffering, and conclude that God would pervert justice. The consequences of problem of suffering are being considered as the absence of God or that God is dead. Moreover, the concept of economics interventionism is believed to be a solution to assuage human suffering in the postmodern world. But, the bible presents the suffering, when it doesn’t always come as a result of sin, as a season to draw close to God and to understand His methods that are too wonderful to attain. Moreover, suffering in life is not to be feared, it is only to be understood. The book of Job in the bible explains the same theory although it resembles the nature of God more than the problem of suffering. When suffering can be used for higher good, it is hard to understand that God’s pruning is painful to make us fruitful.

Like most of the people, we have gone through the seasons of pain and suffering, but unlike some people in the postmodern world, who think that meaninglessness comes from the weary of pain, it is absolutely true that vanity and emptiness comes from being weary of worldly pleasures and does not come from being weary of pain and suffering. The purpose and the meaning of life is defined not when we have worldly things to take pleasure in it, but, when we don’t have anything except searing pain and agony in our lives. During those seasons we realize what is true love and true forgiveness which is found only on the cross of Jesus Christ. In the present era of postmodern culture, where people with their diluted mindset cannot define the life and its purpose with objective morality imbibed from absolute truths of the bible, this book has been written with deep compassion to present on how one could understand that Judeo-Christian values are fundamental and it is the only worldview that defines the value of human life and its purpose in the eyes of God.

Therefore, the purpose of the book is to revitalize the essentials of Christian living in a way God wants us to be especially when the bible based moral values and the absolute truths to establish the meaning of life were degraded and whitewashed in this postmodern world. At this juncture, it is a definite need to search for hidden and forgotten Judeo-Christian values that define the meaning of human life and its worth in the eyes of the Living God. Its sole purpose is to know Who God is and His standard of living when this world is influenced and reshaped by cultural darkness, revolutions and counter revolutions that are antithetical to the bible.

In this postmodern world, when it’s hard to understand the Creation and the fall of man, when the Gods covenant-relationship with man is seen as conditional, when we struggle to make choices and unable to perceive its dangerous consequences, when the commandments of God that serve as the solid foundation for the constitution is seen as a barrier, when the concept of sin and grace is seen as irrational, when the counsel and the wisdom of God is biased, and when it is hard to understand the only hope for the mankind is in the person of Jesus Christ who is the only way, the truth and the life, the need for Life’s Purpose in the age of Postmodernism is written to serve as a connecting tool to comprehend the plan and purpose of God in a comprehensive approach of seven chapters.