I pray (yes, pray) and hope that by the time this book comes into print, this assault on our lives will have lifted, and that we will have behaved like the biblical Job rather than like Zeno the Stoic. And that we will learn from this.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to acknowledge his indebtedness to Matthew B. Schwartz, Michael Shapiro, and Paul Cantz for their many profound insights and their historical acumen, and to Daniel Algom, David Goldberg, Isabelle Proton, and Michael Zimmerman for giving me the opportunity to bounce ideas off of them.
And of course to my colleagues, Shlomo Shoham of the Buchmann School of Law and Amiram Raviv of the Psychology Department, both of Tel Aviv University, and Anand Kumar and Martin Harrow of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, for providing me an academic home over the past fifteen years and for my illuminating conversations with them.
Thank you.
Introduction
Three of the most influential books over the last century have focused on meaning, the search for it or the lack of it. The 1942 book The Stranger, by the French existentialist Albert Camus, stresses the essential meaninglessness of life because of the inevitability of death. The protagonist, Meursault, is psychologically detached from the world around him. Seemingly significant events for most people, such as his mother’s death or an upcoming marriage, have no meaning for him. Because Meursault seems unable to grieve, he is seen as an outsider, a threat, even a monster. At his subsequent trial for a senseless murder he has committed, the fact that he had no reaction to his mother’s death seems to tarnish his image even more than his taking of a life.1
In Camus’s second book, The Myth of Sisyphus, in this same year, he writes about the Greek character Sisyphus, who was assigned the task of pushing a rock up a mountain. Upon reaching the top, the rock would roll down again, leaving Sisyphus to start over. Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who is condemned to a meaningless task, the central concern of The Myth of Sisyphus.2
Camus claims that there is a fundamental conflict between what we want from the universe (whether it be meaning, order, or reason) and what we find in the universe (formless chaos). We will never find in life itself the meaning that we want to find. Either we will discover that meaning through a leap of faith or we will conclude that life is meaningless. Camus asks if coming to the conclusion that life is meaningless necessarily leads one to commit suicide. If life has no meaning, does that mean life is not worth living? If that were the case, are all faced with a choice of making a leap of faith or killing ourselves? Camus suggests a third possibility: that we can accept and live in a world devoid of meaning, hardly an attractive option. It should be pointed out that Camus wrote both of these books from Nazi-occupied France during World War II. This was a very pessimistic period in France as Germany had invaded in May of 1940.
Man’s Search for Meaning was published somewhat later, in 1959, by Viktor Frankl, who writes that he developed his logotherapy out of his experiences in Nazi concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland. Frankl argues that man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a secondary rationalization of instinctual drives. Frankl on the surface seems less philosophically pessimistic than Camus. But as the title of his book clearly states, meaning is something that must be searched for. It is not intrinsic in one’s personality.3
However, is this really true? Or does it represent an attempt by a therapist to impose a meaning structure on an individual? This is a criticism levied at logotherapy in 1960 by no less than Rollo May, one of the founders of existential psychology.4 In May’s view, Frankl applied (perhaps even imposed) a specific meaning structure on a patient when he/she did not have a particular goal. May thus feels despite its advantages, Frankl’s logotherapy “hovers close to authoritarianism.”
Suicide is rampant in today’s world, and many people report feeling that their lives are without purpose. Yet a search for meaning can actually be quite destructive. Consider the murders committed by Charles Manson’s Helter Skelter gang as the tumultuous 1960s were coming to an end. Manson often spoke to the members of his “family” about “Helter Skelter” in the months leading up to the murders of Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in August 1969. “Helter Skelter” referred to an apocalyptic war arising from racial tensions between blacks and whites and referred specifically to songs in an album by the Beatles entitled The White Album, and to the book of Revelation in the Christian New Testament. Manson and his followers were convicted of the murders on the basis of the theory by the prosecution that they were part of a plan to trigger the Helter Skelter scenario.5 Yet, were they not searching for meaning?
In direct contrast to these books is a more recent very popular work, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, published in 2002. Warren is pastor of a megachurch in sunny Southern California, a very different place than the gray Nazi-occupied Europe, and indeed the death camps themselves in Frankl’s case. What is important for Warren is not searching for meaning but living one’s life purposively.6 A similar stance is taken by Kay Warren in her very positive 2012 book, Choose Joy, Because Happiness Is Not Enough.7 While both books are written in a specific christological framework, their thoughts express a more general biblical view of life. Could the fact that the Warrens are writing in sunny California rather than a grey, cloudy European context explain the difference in their views. Yet, this difference in locale alone cannot explain this difference; after all, the previously discussed horrific murders committed by the Manson gang occurred in sunny Southern California. It is thus possible to be destructively obsessed with a search for meaning—even in “sunny Southern California.”
So what is the difference? What is the difference between searching for meaning and living purposely, and where does this difference come from? Perhaps it lies in the observations of the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic work Democracy in America. He puts it this way with regard to how his experience in America altered his view of religion.
In France I had always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and they reigned in common over the same country.8
While Camus’ and Frankl’s thought do not seem to be emerging from a biblical worldview, the Warrens’ view does, and it is grounded firmly in biblical thought. Three separate biblical verses record the Israelites’ acceptance of the obligations that the Hebrew Scriptures (Torah) impose on them.
When Moses first ascends Mount Sinai, God commands him to tell the people that if they accept the covenant, God will make them a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”9 Upon hearing these words, the people respond, “All that God has said, we will do.”10
Later in the text, after Moses relates specific divine rules to the people, they again say, “All of the things that God has said, we will do.”11 A few verses later, after Moses writes and reads aloud the words of Scriptures, the people utter the phrase na’aseh v’nishma.12 Although this literally is translated as “we will do and we will hear,” it has often been interpreted as “we will first do and then we will understand.” In other words, meaning does not need to be searched for, it is a consequence of living a purposeful life.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, former Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University, argues this same point.
The ancient Greek writers had a tragic view of life. Theirs was a culture of honor and shame; they admired the hero. But the hero often found himself enmeshed in a situation where death provided the only alternative to living in shame. The fates had