Who are you and why are you here?

It seems like a lot of heavy things have been happening lately in the world. Or maybe it’s just me getting older more irritated at the idiocy and indecency of humanity. I’m so weary of the complete lack of justice, dignity, and ethics.

After-birth abortions. Flagrant misuse of funds and power by government officials. Scandal after scandal–personal, racial, political. Widespread hatred toward any number of cultural groups: Blacks, Jews, Christians, homosexuals, immigrants, women, Muslims, the mentally handicapped. It goes on and on. Always, there’s racism, hunger, genocide, human trafficking, child abuse. It’s just too much.

My head and my heart ache.

Are parents really transferring the burden of choosing sexual orientation onto their little children? Children who used to worry about what they wanted to be when they grow up must now decide if they want to be a girl or a boy or neither. Seriously? Has child psychology and common sense taught us nothing? It appears that nothing helps people understand who they are.

Are people in our culture actually debating whether racism still exists? Whether Black or brown Americans have less opportunities and endure greater mistreatment than upper middle-class white people? In an age when you can be well-read without the influence of a right-wing or left-wing propagandist machine, why do people still refuse to learn and grow? It’s unconscionable.

We spend endless hours categorizing people and problems, and we avoid the real issue: us. We don’t now who we are and why we’re here. Perhaps we don’t want to know. It’s so much easier to point the finger at someone else and blame others for everything that’s wrong.

After thousands or billions of years (depending on your view), we’re still asking the same questions. Keep reading to find out why we we’re confused about identity…

Who am I and why am I here?

These are the biggest questions of all time, other than Is there a God? (This question, in my opinion, could settle the other philosophical conundrums.)

Here are what the major philosophies have concluded about the human experience. I think you can see how much they have influenced our present turbulence of thought and belief–

• Aristotle: happiness is the highest good
• Plato: the meaning of life is the highest form of knowledge
• Confucius: purpose for life is found in the collective moral rule of the people
• Epicurus: pleasure is the highest goal because there is nothing after death
• Antistheses (Cynicism): self-sufficiency produces happiness; conventions produce suffering
• René Descartes: the meaning of life is in my existence and my ability to think
• Classic liberalism (John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith): the meaning of life is achieved through labor, property, and freedom
• Zeno (Stoicism): freedom is achieved by overcoming emotions and enduring suffering
• Jeremy Bentham (Utilitarianism): consequences of an action determine whether it’s right or wrong
• Frederick Nietzsche (Nihilism): life has no meaning
• Pragmatism: the meaning of life is experience, and whatever you experience is true
• Humanism: every individual determines his own meaning for life through personal rationale and fulfillment
• Pantheism: the meaning of life is found in natural reality, which is divine
• Theism: God created the world and each person in it for a purpose

You can choose whichever philosophy/religion you want. But only one brings actual peace and hope.

How and where do I find my calling?

Certainly, you can believe whatever you want. We all do. To some extent, we believe according to our own shaping influences, experiences, and religious/non-religious beliefs. But still, we must consider it all.

If there exists a purpose for living with a high and noble calling, it must exist for me and everyone else in the world. And if such a calling exists for each of us without our philosophies and moral frameworks colliding, then it must exist outside of myself and outside of everyone’s self. Because if something is actually true, it must be true for everyone; therefore, it cannot be produced by any one person (otherwise, it would only be true to him/her).

There must be an outside source and an outside reason for the human experience. There must be a God, and He must be a single and multi-faceted individual, or else deity would be in conflict with itself (aka the Greek gods). And God must have created individuals with specific and intricate designs so that no two people would be the same (or what would be the point?)—and therefore, no two people would have the same purpose. The people of the world would each be unique yet interconnected by the human experience.

If there were one God who made all people, the world could be big and wide enough for every personality and every race, and we would be strengthened by our differences and inspired by our varied contributions. And throughout the course of history, we could live in harmony and fulfillment because there would be no need to subdue, control, or annihilate one another, since we were each created to contribute something unique and necessary for all. If we were all created to bring glory and honor to a single source, there would be no reason for us to quibble over our own honor.

Each of us could find peace in acknowledging that the meaning of life (and therefore, the fulfillment of purpose) comes from an outside source full of love, wisdom, grace, and truth, (That’s what we all want to believe, anyway, isn’t it?) That’s where we will find fulfillment and purpose.

And if we found purpose and belonging, no one would wonder who they were or what they should be or why they are here.

That’s when peace would happen, internally and externally. That’s when an individual spirit settles within itself. And everyone would live in the world we were meant to live in and experience the life we were meant to live, something grander than each of us and grander than all of us put together.

We are unique, creative, beautiful, worthy, important, and redeemable.

That’s what God says about us. That’s what he says about me, whether I believe in him or not.

Listen to Lauren Daigle sing “You say”–