9 November | Youth
«But through love serve one another.» Galatians 5:13
Years ago, a mother approached me at the church. She was desperate about her teenage daughter. She told me that the girl only wanted to wear long-sleeved clothes, even in hot weather. Then, I asked her what the reason was, and she replied: “My daughter spends many hours of the day cutting her arms with a knife, saying that she feels anguish and has lost the meaning of life.” After praying with that mother, I suggested that she urgently seek a professional therapist.
This teenager’s condition, although extreme, is similar to the reality of millions of people who see life as an empty, monotonous, and purposeless existence. This nihilistic vision has shown itself in the various dimensions of human relationships. There is a constant devaluation of self, people, and nature. After all, if my life is not worth much, someone else’s life is worth even less.
And if life no longer makes sense, what is the most immediate conclusion? It is hedonism, summed up in the phrase: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” (1 Cor. 15:32). In other words: “Let us enjoy life and enjoy all kinds of pleasures, before existence ends.” Is this the path for a young Christian – to seek pleasures as a way of filling the needs of the soul?
Certainly not!
We need to understand that life is more than food, drink, pleasures, or fun. Human beings are not the measure of all things, and the stomach is not our god (Phil. 3:19). We all have a noble purpose for existence, which is to glorify God and do good to other people. If I could summarize this purpose in just one word, it would be “service.”
In his extraordinary book entitled Man’s Search for Meaning, Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl described the horrors he experienced in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He observed that the prisoners who managed to survive so many atrocities were precisely those who found meaning in life by helping someone most in need. Many of them left their only piece of bread for the hungry and sick.
And you, have you found meaning in life by helping other people?