The Absolute for Meaning

I sat across a restaurant table from a highly educated former agnostic who had just crossed the border into full belief. Remembering my own conversion, I assumed that, like most of us, this man decided to become a Christian because of the beauty of creation or the promise of heaven or perhaps the threat of judgment. But he insisted that it was none of these things.

“The thing that drew me to God,” he explained, “was the sense of meaning and stability that having a God brings to the universe. It was something I had longed for all my life. I appreciate all the personal advantages that come with belief in God. But I would have believed in spite of the promise of heaven or the threat of hell; I can see that without God, the universe has no possible meaning. Without God I was adrift in a sea of ‘whys’ that could not be answered.”