A Cry For Significance

Main Idea: In a world deeply longing for personal meaning and significance, we have an opportunity to proclaim significance and gospel hope.

I was on my phone recently when a video came up. It was a reaction video, the kind that goes viral nowadays. It started with a young woman singing a popular children’s tune. She remixed the words of the rhyme to communicate in a catchy way that it’s rude not to use her preferred nouns. 

Suddenly, a rough-looking man with a thick beard and thinning hair came on the screen with his own tune. Singing a different children’s rhyme, he proceeded to mock her song, using witty phrases to show the flaws in the demand that others adjust themselves to her self-expression.

In just 30 seconds, this video captured the tone of much of our modern dialogue about the important and fundamental aspects of what it means to be human. 

Ministering in this kind of landscape can be challenging or even frustrating. The clear lack of logic can also tempt us to respond with mocking. But I’m convinced we have an opportunity in the challenge. In a world profoundly longing for personal meaning and significance, we have an opportunity to proclaim significance and gospel hope.

The Assessment

Our culture is where it is today due to the convergence of several factors. Since the Enlightenment, we in the West have adopted an emphasis on the value of the individual. Gradually, this emphasis has matured and shifted to create a world in which we see ourselves as the final determiners of truth and meaning. Our culture has now arrived at a place in which truth and meaning are solely found in the expression of our ‘true selves.’ While the Enlightenment recovered a focus on individualism, we now live in a culture far downstream - a culture more akin to the Enlightenment’s radical grandchild. 

Consider the weight of being your own self-reference point, without any objective measure outside of and greater than you. That is the way most people now live their lives. Belief in the existence of God or the existence of an objective standard set by a deity is now itself considered oppressive - a belief employed by those who would benefit by controlling others. 

We see the effects of this radical individualism in many areas of modern life. We see it in the siloing effects of technology. We see it in how we think about religion or faith. Many have what I’d call ‘Frankenstein faiths,’ a hodgepodge of picking and choosing from many different places according to what feels good. We certainly see it in the conversation on gender and sexuality. 

Without objective truth and communal reference points derived from anything objective, we end up with a generation in search of meaning. However, we often miss that this self-determination is, in fact, what drives gender confusion and the tendency to find identity in sexual orientation. And we miss that it is really a cry for meaning. The plea of our age is “I matter because I am ______.” While this is undoubtedly a result of sinful rebellion, it is simultaneously a cry for significance.

There is a great irony in our day. Our culture longs to find meaning by self-determination, saying that even our bodies cannot restrain our true selves. Yet, in doing so, we put ourselves outside of where our true significance is actually found.

The Gift of Not Being Self-Sufficient

The scriptures are clear that only God is self-sufficient and self-determining. God alone exists in himself, completely independent of anything outside of himself that might sustain or fuel his existence. Luke writes in Acts, 

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” (Acts 17:24–25)

God does not need anything to sustain him. The God of the Bible is not in process; He is unchanging. We might strive to be something other than what we currently are, but God exists in perfect joy, in perfect purpose, and in the beauty of his perfections. He is the one who appeared to Moses in a burning bush, proclaiming himself the “I AM.”

The beauty and significance of being human is that we are made in God’s image. The glory of humanity is that we are dependent on our maker to be our reference point. To be made in His image is to function like a mirror that reflects who He is. Because of this, men and women have great meaning and significance simply by existing. What it means to be human is to be the image of God, and though sin has marred that image, it does not erase the dignity of every human being. In order for that dignity to no longer exist, a person’s humanity must be somehow stripped of them.

My point is simply to say that of all the people in the world, Christians are the best equipped to share with our world why humans have meaning. When we have opportunities to address visitors to our churches, colleagues, or neighbors, we should be ready to do more than argue with them about the flaws of their views. Rather, we should address this beautiful truth that they are made in God’s image. In submitting to this, they can find their greatest ability to thrive.

The Opportunity 

When we take advantage of this opportunity to ground our conversations in the imago Dei, we also create highways to the gospel in ways that have the potential to be understood. Humanity is broken in that we have failed to represent what God is like in every sphere of our lives. Instead, in a great act of rebellion, we have attempted to replace God and say that we can determine right and wrong ourselves on our own terms. This act of rebellion left Adam and Eve with a corrupted nature, along with every child of theirs since. As such, we deserve God’s judgment. But God the Father is merciful and sent His Son. This Son took on full humanity so that through His death and resurrection, we might be forgiven - and have His image again restored in us.

We have an opportunity to redeem our culture’s longing for meaning and significance by sharing where meaning is found in the hope of the gospel of Jesus, the God-Man.