What is Your Raison D'Etre?

When answering the question of whether or not God exists, there are plenty of arguments in the area of science and history and even modern day miracles. One can look to life, death, and events following the death of Jesus Christ. The historian can also discuss Joan d' Arc, the American Revolution, or the history of the Jewish people. The scientist can talk about the laws of nature, the position of the earth, the mathematics of evolution. But all of these things are spoken of mostly by those who have only read about the studies and the digs and the testimonies. And with the exception of some scientific arguments and stories of miracles, even the researchers and historians and scientists were not there. And beyond even that, even if those who did perform those ground-breaking experiments or record those historical events that they themselves had seen or bore testimony to the miracle of God were not really first-hand witnesses. What they saw were the results; the thing itself (the scientific principle, the act of God, the whatever) remained intangible. It is for that reason that I choose to discuss something that is in all of us, something that we can see and testify to first-hand. For though everything we see and hear and feel is only an effect, there is something else within us that is more. Something that is tangible precisely because it is intangible.

Human beings are very opinionated creatures. Its what happens when something is given free will. Deprived of an existence of simply following our basic nature, we must have a reason for doing whatever we do. We can't simply act out of self-preservation because that doesn't take enough time and even if we did, we are still aware of the fact that death will eventually coming for us anyway. We also can't do what we want because eventually we realize that we "want" something in the long term or in a moral way and then we have to decide whether to follow the temporary want or this other different want. We must have meaning and if we are to have that we must have a standard of right and wrong. More importantly, we must have something central to our morality. Our existence must have one reason that is the source of every aspect of our moral code. We must have a raison d' etre.

Today, the raison d' etre that our culture loves to throw at us through all manner of books, movies, and songs is love, particularly romantic love. Consider how often falling in love is considered the most important part of a person's life and how love itself is so often considered the greatest source of happiness a person can have. We also view love as being something that simply comes over us and is beyond our power. It is considered to occupy an existence higher than us but the problem is that it does not. Love is something that is imbedded in our own minds and the feelings of it are as fleeting as any other feelings. And when those feelings change, we may do a great many cruel and evil deeds if we allow ourselves to change with them. The greater love, the one that is in great part an act of will is even more clearly within and subject to us than its emotional counterpart (or rather, aspect); it dies when we do.

Of course, there is also the belief that everyone has their own different raison d' etre. This view holds that everyone has a different "good" and that no one has any right to impose their morality on anyone else. This is probably the most ridiculous worldview ever conceived of. To begin, this idea is self-defeating in claiming that we can't impose our values on others since that itself is a moral belief. As far as the claim that different people have different raison d' etres, there is some level of truth. However, this is because while people all people have the same reason to exist, which must by nature be very broad, they may still have different reasons to live (this work assumes that one can exist after ceasing to live), which may be much more narrow and is an extension of the person's raison d' etre based on circumstance, skills, and personality. However, upon analysis one finds that even those who take this position believe in an ultimate raison d' etre which is either to have a "complete" and diverse universe or for everyone to be happy. Even if this were admitted, this idea is doomed by the same fact as that which spells the death of our next specimen.

This third idea is secular humanism, the belief that human beings are the highest things in existence, that our future is to reach a state of moral, biological, and technological perfection, and that morality is defined by what brings progress toward this great future. Evil is defined by what this future utopia does not hold and goodness is defined by what it does. The claim that something that is only an in the future cannot be a raison d' etre is countered by the fact that if this future is ever realized, it may very well be of a higher state of existence than anything we currently know and therefore if the potential for it exists then that alone is solid enough for now. After all, energy (which can be neither created nor destroyed) can be transferred into a potential form based on how far and fast a rock might fall if it were to drop or how much energy were to be released if a chemical went through a reaction. So why doesn't this work? Why can't this utopian future be our raison d' etre?

The answer is one provided ultimately by science, the thing that secular humanism hold so highly. It has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by mathematics, cosmology, and physics that this world will end. One day every star will be extinguished, the gravity that holds our universe together will be defeated, and all life will be snuffed out. Not only is all human life destined for death but so is humanity itself. Our existence in this present universe will cease forevermore and beside that vast eternity, our brief reign (however long it may seem to us) shall literally count for nothing.

The conditions for a true raison d' etre are permanence, a state of existence higher than us (it must be in its own way more real than us), and perfection since if it is not perfect then morality itself cannot be perfect. The final conditions means little since if something is a raison d' etre, that automatically makes it perfect since perfection is based upon a moral code that is in turn based on it, however it is enough to prove that we cannot be our own raison d' etre due to the fact that we are so utterly imperfect. The second is important because in order for morality to mean anything, it must be somehow real. At the same time, it must be somehow be real in a way that is related to physical reality due to the fac that we inhabit both the moral and physical realities and morality focuses mainly on physical actions. This higher state of being must therefore be above not only our spiritual selves but also the physical world. The first condition affirms the second because our whole physical universe will perish and is vital because that also means that the true raison d' etre must not inhabit the physical realm.

God is the only thing that fulfills all of these conditions. God is eternal; not only will He always be, but He also always was. We know that God is above us not only morally but also physically because He created all that is physical just as all that is moral is derived from Him, in fact the Bible holds that even the existence of the physical is sustained continually by Him instead of simply originating in Him. All theistic religions today hold that God is perfect. Alone, out of everything that anyone has ever dedicated themselves to, God is complete.

And now, as I come to a close, I must answer one final objection. This challenge is that all that I have discussed is philosophy. It can't be tested in any lab known to man and is based entirely upon the supposition that we are not simply delusional. If there really is no moral truth and only the physical exists then this argument falls apart. However, C.S. Lewis once wrote that we can know such things exist because we find a corresponding longing in ourselves just as the fact that we may be hungry proves that food exists. If that is not enough for my skeptics then I must ask you to consider the following situation. Two countries are at war. One of these two has sworn that if it is victorious it will completely obliterate the other along with any evidence that it ever even existed. In the other nation, all plans made for the future must assume victory because plans that do not are absolutely pointless. Philosophy is the same way, we must assume that there exists purpose and right and wrong because there is no point thinking as if they do not. In fact, if they do not, there is no point to thinking at all or even living.

Finally, there is the matter I discussed in my opening. Our soul is the only thing that we have been allowed to really see into. In this case alone, we are allowed to experience not only the effects, but the thing itself. And the thing itself bears the unmistakable thumbprints of God.