Os Guinness - The Great Quest: Invitation to an Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
ivpress.com

2022 by Os Guinness

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InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges, and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, visit intervarsity.org.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New American Standard Bible, copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

While any stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information may have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates.

Portions of chapters seven and eight are adapted from Fools Talk by Os Guinness. Copyright 2015
by Os Guinness. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL.

The publisher cannot verify the accuracy or functionality of website URLs used in this book beyond the date of publication.

Cover design and image composite: David Fassett
Images: gold texture: Katsumi Murouch / Moment / Getty Images
symbol made by David Fassett

ISBN 978-1-5140-0425-8 (digital)

ISBN 978-1-5140-0424-1 (print)

This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

DOM

And to CJ.

In grateful memory of

Blaise Pascal, G. K. Chesterton, and C. S. Lewis,

the shining trio who became the surest guides

in my own quest for faith and meaning.

D O YOU HAVE A MIND THAT is always seeking to make sense of things? Does your heart have a deep longing for a sense of order and belonging? Have you ever experienced a sense of wonder that thrills to the beauty of the world and the mystery of existence? Or are you uninterested in questions like these? For those who are willing to pursue an examined life, there is a sure path to exploring such desires. Come and lets consider the questions themselves and the great quest for faith and meaning that they spur. The prize offered by such a quest is nothing less than a life that is worthy of life.

Forget the opinion polls. Think for yourself. That old maxim needs reviving today in an other-obsessed age. Many people have little interest in such issues as the meaning of life. They are interested only when the questions are popular with others too. They have hardly given a thought to what life is all about, and they have zero curiosity as to why they exist at all. Press them with questions, and all that matters is that they are alive and well, and enjoying life from day to dayand under the bountiful conditions of the modern world, that is surely not so bad. The best course, we are told, is to do the next thing that we need to do and to make the most of life while we can. After all, we are said to be entering the most irreligious era in human history, when seriousness about faith and meaning is irrelevant to more people than ever. We have enough to live with. Why should we concern ourselves with impossibly big questions about what we should live for?

We are often pointed to the religious nones, the none of the aboves as the exemplars of this fashionable indifference. They are the rising tide of those with receding faith, Matthew Arnolds Dover Beach for our times. To be sure, what the nones say they no longer believe, and what they say is important for anyone to believe, often amounts to very little and seems to matter even less. The result is an easy-going nihilism, often masked under a wise-guy bravado. Many of the nones sound as if they are as knowledgeable as Plato even when they spout nonsense. (I am an atheist who believes in God, one pronounced solemnly. Another tweeted an equal non sequitur to his million followers with pseudoprofundity: If there were ultimate meaning in the universe, your life would be pointless.)

Compared with most people in most previous times, many in todays generation are not only disinterested but unschooled in knowing how to search for the meaning of life. The situation is as confusing and chaotic as it is over sure paths to lasting relationships. Many of todays elites dismiss the very idea of the meaning of life as meaningless itself. As a result, the paths for the search are cordoned off, overgrown, and increasingly uncharted and unexplored. For any who are still determined to break with the crowd and set off by themselves, the quest is often haphazard and ad hoca matter of everyone for themselves.

But is our generation really so incurious that we no longer wonder about the meaning of life? What does it say of us and our view of our own existence that we are content to assume there is no more to life than muddling along as best as we can? Why are we here? What can we know? What is a good life? What should be our relationship to the cosmos in which we live? Are we to be content with clichs and consensus thinking? If the mounting incidence of suicide opens our eyes to the fact that far too many people do not want to go on existing, then the collapsing birth rate across the modern world raises a similar question at a different level: What will it take for humanity to desire to go on existing fruitfully?

For many generations, it would have been considered a time-tested statement to say that faith in God is an essential part of human experience. Carl Gustav Jung used to say that the ultimate question in human life is whether or not we are related to the infinite. But in todays cultural conversation that statement no longer sounds self-evident. Is it in fact outdated, is it arrogant, or is it just plain absurd? The simple fact is, a famous American radio host announced bluntly, religion must die for mankind to live. Many people today say they dont want God, others say they dont need God, and some now say that with biogenetics and ultraintelligence they can replace God. And who is to say they are wrong, they add, if they appear to get by so easily without God?