Searching for a Sense of Purpose

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Tiffany Haddish was “the breakout star of last summer's raucous hit movie, Girl's Trip, and last month became the first African-American woman stand-up comedian to host Saturday Night Live,” according to a recent article on the National Public Radio (NPR) web site. In an interview, she recalled times of struggle.

"Life happened for me," she said. "But I just kept pushing 'cause I know what I'm supposed to do here on this earth."

Imagine what “this earth” would be like if more people had a sense of purpose. I haven’t read the 

“The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?” by Rick Warren – which Amazon calls the 

“best-selling non-fiction hardback in history” – but I like the title. It asks a question everyone should ask, but few do. The question is intimidating.

But it must be asked because it has so much to do with our search for God. Among those searching for God in the Christian tradition, we should, perhaps, be as amazed that God became a human being to “redeem” us as that he/she did so even though we appear irredeemable.

We have made progress, of course. With notable exceptions, we don’t crucify people anymore. We don’t burn people at the stake as during the Inquisition or in places like Salem, MA (though we still persecute people for religious reasons). It’s been over 70 years since the last world war (though there have been lots of less horrific wars since). As far as we know, no leaders of the evil stature of Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot are around today.

Stories of Compassion

And there are lots of stories of contemporary compassion. Every natural disaster brings out people willing to make great sacrifices for their suffering fellow human beings. It’s obvious that we still drink of the milk of human kindness.

There’s plenty to lament, however. We may not crucify people, but we still allow our governments to kill people for crimes committed in states with differing criteria for capital punishment, all of whose justice systems are uniformly imperfect. We may not have leaders the likes of Hitler, but we elect people who fall far short of the God-like qualities that inspire us to be better human beings.

We also fail in care for the earth, our common home, ignoring obvious warning signs of serious harm. As a society, we are even less concerned about our fellow human beings who need our help: the mentally ill, the addicted, the poor. As for prisoners, the general attitude seems to be that the less we know about them and conditions in our prisons, the better. “Let them rot,” is a common attitude.

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We tolerate extreme inequality, sometimes justifying it by a stand against “class warfare.” The unjust distribution of the world’s wealth and services exists because we allow it, and health care is one of the prime examples of this inequality.

According to a recent online NPR article, health-care costs are taking a disastrous toll on the world’s most vulnerable. The article cites a joint report in the journal Lancet Global Health by the World Bank and the World Health Organization that “estimates that each year more than 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty in order to pay for health services — meaning that after covering their health bills, their income amounts to less than $1.90 a day.

“Another 800 million people are spending at least 10 percent of their household budget on health care. And 3.5 billion people — accounting for more than half of the world's population — are simply forced to go without most essential services.

“The kind of care they are missing out on is life-saving but also often extremely basic, says Tim Evans, senior director of health, nutrition and population at the World Bank Group.

Common Childhood Infections

"Nearly 20 million infants don't receive the immunizations they need to protect them from diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis," he says. "These are very common childhood infections that can be completely prevented through low-cost vaccination. Similarly, he adds, "more than a billion people live with uncontrolled high blood pressure — meaning they have no access to treatment."

Many of these people live in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, but many others live here in the U.S.

We are quick to blame God when children die or famine and epidemics occur, but most of these tragedies happen because we allow the conditions that cause them.

The search for God, in my view, is the search for purpose. But it's not principally intellectual. It’s a matter of developing a relationship with God and others, and that requires a willingness to participate in the betterment of the human race. People searching for God must all be Tiffany Haddishes, people who keep on pushing because we “know what (we’re) supposed to do here on this earth."