Ask this question to a friend this week: “would you rather a life full of meaning yet the possibility of much pain, or a life that is without pain but also without meaning?”

See how they respond.

My hunch is that most people are indeed experiencing pain while having no meaning in their lives.  The short end of the stick eh?

I don’t know that much about Dietrich Bonhoeffer but I know he is a man quite respected. For some reason the Boundless Line blog keeps referencing a lot of great articles from the past on Boundless. Because today is the anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s death in a concentration camp, they linked to this article about Bonhoeffer’s perspective on pacifism, marriage, and loving one another completely. Here is an interesting quote of Bonhoeffer:

Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal — it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. As you gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

How does a man facing imminent death have such a grand and deep view of God’s gift of marriage!? Recently as I was reading through A.W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy, I started understanding a fine balance of life that was a bit hazy before.

If one has a proper perspective that God is eternal and outside of the bounds of time, we realize that our life spans are very short and limited compared to God who is not bound by time. To a Christian, the fleetingness of life provides no threat since our hope is entirely in Christ, who has saved us and provides eternal life. He also provides meaning and sustenance for each and every short day.

However, for one with the improper perspective that there is no God, every day goes by slowly and slower, since there is nothing to look forward to for tomorrow. There is nothing after this life. A day without meaning or purpose becomes strikingly and painfully slow. And then five years, ten years from now even pleasure itself will lose its appeal. The only way to end the meaninglessness is by ending life.

Do you think this is realistic? Is this how people view life? How else can we view each and every day of life as precious and appreciate each moment unless we realize how quickly it goes by?