Meaning Making Machines
May 20, 2009
I’ve listened to people claim they’ve found healing in the idea that “we are meaning making machines” and nothing more. That nothing has any inherent meaning. Life and events mean whatever we make them mean. We choose our own meaning. Therefore we choose our own life. Healing comes through living in the moment and taking every unpleasant thing in stride and deciding not to make it mean anything. Insults, relational tension, mistakes–they have no meaning except what we give them, therefore we cannot be wounded unless we decide to be wounded.
Fair enough. I used to camp there too.
It sounds wise. But it is also cold. And perhaps even a little evasive. I think this approach does offer healing as far as it goes–for the routine hurts we receive in the course of an average day. But what about the really big stuff, like the death of a child, the death of a spouse, or the death of a sibling? Or divorce, rape, physical abuse? Or, or, or. Name any great loss. If, for the sake of getting on with our lives, we say that these losses have no meaning, or that they mean whatever we make them mean, then are we not insulting the memory of the dead, who after all, had an existence and meaning quite apart from us? Are we not cheapening the significance of our most cherished relationships and doing violence to our own souls? Is this healing, or fragmentation? Does this make us whole, or do we succeed only in making sure that certain parts of our soul never talk to certain other parts again?
Jesus offers something entirely different. He says, I see that wound. I see it as clear as the day it happened. And it mattered. It mattered deeply. There are things you can do about it, but I will do what you cannot do. I, myself, will heal you. I have overcome the world.
But you must ask. I invade no man. I evade no man. I am here. Ask.
Or wait. Sooner or later you will come to the end of your own resources. And I will still be here. Ask then. Healing is, was, and always will be, My thing.
If you enjoyed this post, be sure to read the rest from this author. Marc is a local writer, musician, and physician. He is a regular contributor to ConneXions and has written reviews for Spectrum: Adventist Forum. He loves words and music, windsurfing, and going on adventures with Janine and the kids.(Read more from this author) 
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I think it’s telling that God devotes so much of the Bible to people grieving, weeping, lamenting–Job and Lamentations, for starters. This honors the human, God-given need to experience all that loss entails, to savor it even, as a hospital chaplain once put it to my wife and me as we were losing our first and only boy 20 weeks into pregnancy.
And I agree with the meaning you have assigned to all this, Marc.
That said, I do think it’s healthy and helpful to stay in touch with how responsible we are for the meanings we live with–even the meaning of something as precious as a lost life. Maybe the freedom is not in pretending things have no meaning, but in recognizing the powerful role we play in how they end up affecting us. It’s what Viktor Frankl said in Man’s Search for Meaning: “Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Everything has meaning and value. To ignore unpleasantries or pretend they do not exist, in my opinion, is a mistake. To live life to the fullest, we must open ourselves to fully experience the unpleasant as much as we do the pleasant. This opens us up to the full spectrum of Gods canvas and that is the only way I think we can experience life completely. To do otherwise, would be to look at a picture with half of it covered. You would not get the full meaning or perspective. You would not fully appreciate the good if you did not allow yourself to also experience the bad.
I’m not suggesting that anyone create bad experiences or seek them out but I am suggesting that you not block them out when you encounter them. Be brave. Live a full experience. You will be stronger and you will benefit from it. It is part of life here on earth.
My two cents,
Bill L.