Recently, I watched an episode of Star Trek Voyager that aired in the mid-1990s. It was called “Death Wish,” and it recounted the tale of an immortal, omnipotent being who wanted to die but was condemned to go on living forever. He explained his dilemma to Voyager’s Captain Janeway as follows:
Because it has all been said. Everyone has heard everything, seen everything. They haven’t had to speak to each other in ten millennia. There’s nothing left to say. Captain, you’re an explorer. What if you had nothing left to explore? Would you want to live forever under those circumstances? You want me to prove to you that I suffer in terms that you can equate with pain or disease. Look at us. When life has become futile, meaningless, unendurable, it must be allowed to end. Can’t you see, Captain? For us the disease is immortality.
Star Trek Voyager, season 2, episode 18: Death Wish (February 19, 1996).
As I reflected on this exchange, I began thinking about the purpose of life. The question is not so simple as it may first appear. In this episode of Star Trek, the chief end of all creatures is to learn, to grow, to acquire knowledge and experiences. That road, of course, has an ending. Once all knowledge has been acquired and all experience has been tasted and all places have been known, what then? In the words of Wallace Stevens:
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning (1923),” Cleanth Brooks, R. W. B. Lewis, Robert Penn Warren, eds., American Literature: The Makers and the Making, Vol. II (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 2154-2155.
In Christian teaching, the acquisition of knowledge and experience is not the chief end of existence. In fact, the Christian Bible begins with the cautionary tale of the deception of the first humans by a spiritual being called, in Hebrew, the nachash, translated usually as “the serpent.” It was humanity’s thirst for knowledge that the nachash exploited in Genesis, chapter 3 as he enticed them to eat from the Tree of Knowledge—a tree God forbade them from eating from.
But, if not exploration, knowledge, experience, what then is the purpose of life? Christians have long pondered this question. Perhaps one of the more oft-cited responses in recent centuries has come from The Westminster Shorter Catechism, which was published in A. D. 1647.
The first question addressed therein was:
“What is the chief and highest end of man [sic]?”
And the response was:
“Man’s [sic] chief and highest end is, to glorifie [sic] God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”
“The Westminster Shorter Catechism, A. D. 1647,” Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom with a History and Critical Notes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1983), 676.
Whenever I’ve heard this response, I’ve assumed that the enjoyment of God implied here is a road of perpetual discovery. I’ve imagined serving God, worshipping Him, and exploring creation in proper relationship to God and to all He has made. And until recently, I’ve been content with those assumptions. After all, if God is infinite, then the journey to glorify Him and to enjoy Him forever would be eternal, as well.
However, in reflecting again on the purpose of life this week, I was reminded of Paul’s discussion of hesed—of love (translated from Hebrew into Greek as agape)—in 1 Corinthians 13.
1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13, NRSV.
In these verses, Paul seems to agree with the character of the immortal being in Star Trek Voyager. Prophecies will end, speaking will cease, and knowledge, too, will find its conclusion. All these roads are finite. But, then Paul speaks of three aspects of reality which will abide, which are eternal, which define a road without end: faith, hope, and hesed (love)—the greatest of which is hesed.
Now, as Paul’s description of hesed in these verses makes clear, this is not love as an experience, or as infatuation, or as unconditional acceptance, or some other contemporary conceptualization of love. This is not an experience reserved for lovers or for family relationships or even for close friendships. Hesed, as Paul has explained it, is the incarnation of patience, kindness, contentment, humility, unselfishness, and purity. Hesed is loyalty, longsuffering, steadfast endurance, which is why Paul explains it as bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, and enduring all things.
In other words, hesed—love—is not a road, but something more akin to character—a way a person is irrespective of circumstance. The part of life that endures is the engagement of life itself. The purpose of life and the permanence of life is one and the same—hesed (love). The following exchange from the life of Jesus may help to strengthen this reflection:
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Matthew 22:34-40, NRSV.
“What is the chief and highest end of humanity?” When the question is put to us, how might we, as Christians, respond?
Perhaps, it is as simple as it is profound… The chief and highest end of humanity is to embody hesed first to God and secondarily to other creatures in all circumstances, thereby embracing our creation as beings made in the image of God—a God Who is hesed (1 John 4:6).
~ J. Thomas ~