Making Sense of God: Finding God in the Modern World

At the end of his book What Does It All Mean? philosopher Thomas Nagel wonders if the “Meaning-capital-M” question comes from too great a sense of our own importance.1 He proposes that since “the grave is [life’s only] goal, perhaps it’s ridiculous to take ourselves so seriously.” It should be enough to simply take life as it comes and enjoy it as

If you see a large sailboat out on the water moving swiftly, it is because the sailor is honoring the boat’s design. If she tries to take it into water too shallow for it, the boat will be ruined. The sailor experiences the freedom of speed sailing only when she limits her boat to the proper depth of water and faces the wind at the proper angle. In

The promise of the Resurrection, however, promises much more than justice, as great as that is. In his great essay “On Fairy-Stories,” J. R. R. Tolkien explains why people spend so much money and energy to consume movies, plays, and books that are fairy tales. The audience for what we call “fantasy” literature is vastly larger than that for realist

The ephemeral nature of all satisfaction makes us long for something we can keep, but we look in vain. However, this is not the whole problem. We do not only want a satisfaction that lasts longer but also one that goes much deeper.

Nagel agrees that if you have this expectation that there ought to be meaning, then you might experience life as absurdity. But if you stopped railing at the world for simply being what it is, the sense of angst and absurdity would go away. Life is meaningless only if you insist it be meaningful, he concludes.16 In fact, say some, “only by breaking

Augustine taught that we are most fundamentally shaped not as much by what we believe, or think, or even do, but by what we love.

Philosopher Simon Critchley, who is not a religious believer, has written a book titled The Faith of the Faithless.34 In it he asks, “Is politics conceivable without religion?” and he answers yes, because there are many secular political theories, including Rawls’s. However, then he asks, “Is politics practicable without religion . . . without any

So, contrary to our cultural narrative, we must look outside ourselves and connect to something else first, before we can descend into ourselves and make any assessment.

You are what you love.