Please enjoy this article from our partner, Summit Ministries:
Students find meaning from a Christian perspective when they discover their purpose in life through community, biblical wisdom, and image-bearing embodiment. For homeschool families, the search for purpose and connection goes beyond curriculum choices. You want your children to know not just what to believe but why their existence matters in God’s story.
Dr. Jeff Myers, president of Summit Ministries, offers theological insights on these philosophical issues, drawing from decades of work in the spiritual formation of youth. If your family is diving deeper into how to live on mission with a Christian worldview, this article explores how the good, the true, and the beautiful satisfy the hunger for meaning that every student feels.
A Monument to a Life Fully Lived
London’s Westminster Abbey features dozens of gigantic monuments to persons whose historical achievements were often modest but whose families had sufficient means to memorialize them in grand fashion. Amid these imposing memorials, one monument stands apart: small and unpretentious, as if to reflect the slight frame of its honoree rather than his gigantic, nation-shaping spirit.
Tucked in a side alcove, the monument to William Wilberforce might go unnoticed but for a twenty-first-century revival of interest in his tireless opposition to the transatlantic slave trade.
Invited by Abbey personnel for an after-hours visit, I stood before the Wilberforce monument, journaling my thoughts amidst the fading echoes of the day’s last departing guests. Evensong approached, awakening the Abbey’s mighty organ, its massive pipes curling the joyous sounds of heavenly anthems into every transept, calling living believers into eternal community with the saints entombed beneath the Abbey’s stone floor.
At just that moment, my eyes fell on a phrase chiseled into the base of the Wilberforce monument: “He was among the foremost of those who fixed the character of their times.” My eyes stung, hot. This was a man fully alive. Death comes, I realized, as if for the first time. But then a vow: God helping me, I will be fully alive as long as I have breath.
Perhaps you’ve had a moment when you craved aliveness of the sort that enables you to shape the times, rather than be shaped by them. The search for purpose in life isn’t abstract philosophy. Our hearts long to know that our existence isn’t incidental to what really matters.
For most, the search is solitary and thus futile. Alone, our cries for meaning dissipate in the poisonous atmosphere of self-pity or echo back insufficiently sharp to penetrate the busyness of the day or the cacophony of the age. Our search for meaning needs something more than we can supply on our own. But what is it?
Years ago, when I began teaching at a college, I noticed the question of meaning on the lips of each of my students, no matter how gifted, talented, or popular. It is a question that demands, but rarely receives, an answer, and it often sounds like this:
If I Were to Disappear, Would Anyone Notice?
Most of us can only look at Wilberforce’s legacy with wistful envy. We hunger for truth, for identity, for meaning, yet do not know how to find them. We scavenge the platitudes with which we were raised, but find them self-defeating.
Layered over with strips of papier-mâché optimism and the watery glue of self-confidence, our outer forms become a way to hide the emptiness we feel inside. I recently encountered a website called The Experience Project, where people discussed questions such as, “Would anyone miss me if I disappeared?” My heart ached with pity as I read:
“I’m sure my parents and maybe my brothers would for a while, but I’ve left no lasting impression on anyone in my life.”
“I just don’t actually believe that anyone genuinely cares enough to miss me if I were to vanish. Of course my family would have the police looking for me because I was supposed to be somewhere or do something, but after a while, life would go on and no one would remember me.”
“If I were to disappear, I believe that people would be relieved. I caused nothing but trouble for so many years and I think I am a burden.”
In other words, I believe the real me—the deep part of me I know is not imaginary—has no actual value to anyone else. The hunger for meaning will be met, either by the good, the true, and the beautiful, or by their counterfeits: self-obsessions incapable of giving to others or receiving from God. Sometimes our quest for meaning becomes the obstacle that keeps us from finding it.
Discover how graduates find their path through the Odyssey Program
We Act on What We Believe: The Biblical Worldview and Daily Life
As the father of four now-adult children, I’ve read The Hobbit and each Lord of the Rings book twice and watched each movie at least three times. My heart beats to Aragorn’s speech on the eve of the battle for Gondor:
Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. . . . This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand! Men of the West!
I want to be in that army, part of a winner-takes-all battle against a snarling, ugly foe.
But when the speeches are made, the rush of inspiration they ignite masks a debilitating lie: that the only path to meaning is a heroic stand against a singular evil. For most, this is not our lot. Instead, we live an intrepid life of thousands of little daily decisions, each seemingly inconsequential but, together, signaling what we truly believe about the meaning of life.
The epic-battle-myth obscures the truth: humanity’s search for meaning isn’t so much a forward march into the unknown as it is a battle against what we know all too well—the seemingly unconquerable meaning-killers that seep into our everyday existence.
How Modern Culture Destroys Purpose and Meaning
Meaning-killers such as:
Hopelessness
A sense of dejection, inadequacy, and desperation pervades our nation. About one-third of high school students feel sad or hopeless.[1] People polled say they believe it is harder to get ahead than it used to be. And it’s not just among youth. In America, the highest suicide rates occur among white men over the age of 85.[2] Hopelessness abounds when people feel powerless to make life better. Hopelessness is a parasite to meaning, destroying the very thing on which it feeds.
Consumerism
The average American may be exposed to thousands of advertising messages per day, from billboards to t-shirts to web popups to television ads. Technological breakthroughs now make it possible to identify a person’s age, race, and gender as they walk through a mall and instantly customize electronic billboards to feature ads that those in similar demographics find compelling.
Very soon, advertisers will merge the virtual and real worlds, using social media profiles to recognize shoppers’ faces and offer special deals from nearby stores. Through this targeting, we begin to identify ourselves primarily as consumers rather than producers—existing only when others think we might buy something. No money, no meaning.
Habits: Sometimes the habits we adopt to ease hopelessness curve back and erode meaning, leaving us ever further from a source of hope. A study of Christian young men found that those who reported using pornography also reported lower levels of religious practice, lower self-worth, lower identity development regarding dating, and higher levels of depression.[3]
In a study of twenty-somethings’ faith, sociologist Jeremy Uecker found that although young people can (and do) return to faith from just about every circumstance, certain life habits such as cohabitation, extramarital sex, and drugs and alcohol accelerated the decline of religiosity.[4] Sin leads to disordered love—loving the wrong things in the wrong way at the wrong time. Disordered love destroys meaning.
Ruptured relationships
Shalom is a Hebrew word describing peace with God, peace from war, and peace with one’s neighbors. To wish someone shalom is to wish that person completeness, safety, physical health and wellness, prosperity, tranquility, contentment, and friendship. God originally created human beings in a state of shalom—wholeness in their relationship with him, with each other, and with creation.
In the fall, each of these relationships was ruptured. The world we see is not the way it’s supposed to be. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied the daily habits of Americans and gauged how much “flow,” or sense of well-being, they experienced when doing various things.[5] People reported the lowest level of flow when they were alone with their demanding “self.” Even leisure did not necessarily improve the quality of life. In fact, one of the most common leisure activities, watching television, was correlated with the lowest level of flow.
The way we live our lives can deaden our sense of meaning in life. But might it also enliven it? Yes, and in the most surprising way.
Read How Christian Homeschool Parents Can Inspire Kingdom Vision
The Christian Worldview: Too Earthly Minded for Heavenly Good
In ancient Rome, Christians were often considered atheists because, in becoming like Christ—the God-man who came to earth and experienced life as a human—they feasted joyfully together and focused on physical acts such as easing the suffering of the sick and poor. This earthy focus offended Roman sensibilities. Peter J. Leithart explains: “Instead of ascending past sensible things to the intellectual realm, Christians said that God had made Himself known in flesh and continues to give Himself in water and wine, bodies and bread. Christians were so earthly-minded that they could be no heavenly good.”[6]
So earthly-minded that they could be no heavenly good. It’s the opposite of the accusation lodged against Christians today. Such a thing is only possible in a world where the good, true, and beautiful actually exist as a physical unveiling of spiritual wholeness rather than a spiritualized masking of physical imperfection.
We sense in our hearts that a world of goodness, truthfulness, and beauty would, by definition, be a meaningful world. But what would it actually look like?
The Good: Finding Purpose in Life Through Togetherness
In all the universe, the church is the natural home to what is robust, fruitful, victorious, and full of ultimate meaning. Not just in a church, as in a particular church building, but in the universal church, the body of Christ, a group of losers for whom perfection is a far-off dream. We flail, toddler-like, steadied by God’s ever-patient hand, until at last we grow up and become a beautiful bride. Not individually, mind you. Together.
Sociologist Peter Berger noted that being together with other believers is one of the key factors that make a serious faith plausible: “To have a conversion experience is nothing much. The real thing is to be able to keep taking it seriously; to retain a sense of its plausibility. This is where the religious community comes in.”
The church serves as an “authoritative community” that gives people of all generations a sense of place, nurtures them, helps them grow spiritually, and teaches them to treat those inside and outside the community with dignity and love.
How the Church Builds Authoritative Community
Recent studies have shown the power of “authoritative communities” in people’s lives, helping children and adults live mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy lives. Churches ought to be the most purposeful authoritative communities. No church is perfect, but every church ought to be a safe place to practice the life of the kingdom rather than just a place to go on our day off.
The True: Biblical Wisdom as Skill in Living
In ancient times, Greeks saw wisdom as a spiritual state, other-worldly and detached. Plato (428–348 BC) saw wisdom as an unattainable form, about which we could know only enough to want and love it. Lucretius (99–55 BC) taught that by absorbing the teachings of the wise, people could separate themselves from the striving masses and live a life free from pain, fear, or struggle.
What Is Biblical Wisdom?
In the Hebrew tradition, though, wisdom was not a state of restful repose. In Hebrew, the dominant word for wisdom is khokmah, which means skill in living. While the Greeks saw wisdom in party clothes and looking a lot like leisure, the Hebrews saw wisdom in overalls and looking a lot like work.
From a biblical perspective, wisdom is truly multigenerational. Some young people are wise; some older people are not. As Job 32:9 says, “Great men are not always wise; neither do the aged understand judgment.” Think of Solomon, proclaimed in Scripture as the wisest of men. Solomon started out wise but became more foolish as he got older.
Today, scholars say that the optimal age for wisdom development is between adolescence and the mid-twenties. Wisdom is a virtue that must be cultivated, and it is best nurtured in youth. Preparing for a life of wisdom while you’re young guides you toward what scholars call gerotranscendence, away from superficial social engagement toward concern for others, meaningful relationships, and a commitment to contributing to society.
We grow wise together, across the generations.
Read about 6 Biblical Strategies for Homeschool High School Success
The Beautiful: Purpose Through Image-Bearing and Embodiment
The Christian conception of humans is that we possess both natural, material bodies and supernatural, immaterial souls. Our souls rule our bodies, disciplining them in accordance with God’s eternal law.
The reigning ideology of our age, on the other hand, is that humans are merely bodies—computers made of meat, as Marvin Minsky so hideously phrased it. Based on a false understanding of the Apostle Paul’s differentiation between the “spirit” and the “flesh,” though, some Christians make the opposite mistake—exalting the soul and considering the body a sort of prison from which the soul longs to escape.
Understanding Image-Bearing in the Christian Worldview
This teaching isn’t new, nor does it come from the Bible. It’s an ancient heresy called Gnosticism or Manichaeism that taught that material existence is the cause of all evil and that humans can only be saved by a spiritual act of renouncing the body.
The biblical perspective is far different. Genesis 1:26 says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'” The words image and likeness (shape and resemblance) are physical terms that symbolize authority over a certain domain. God’s domain is the entire universe, but rather than setting up a statue, God took the dust of the earth, breathed into it, and created a living, moving representation of his image.
As image-bearers of God, we don’t give shape to ourselves, nor do we resemble some abstract form. Instead, we take on God’s “shape” and resemble him as sons and daughters resemble their parents. All human life is meaningful if for no other reason than that we bear God’s image and experience the good, the true, and the beautiful in real life. But what does this sort of image-bearing look like in the church?
What Embodiment Looks Like: Spiritual Formation for Youth
It took a near tragedy for Calvary Community Church in Westlake Village, California, to connect the generations in a way that satisfied the hunger for meaning. Drew Sams, pastor of student ministries, shares the story: “For years we had tried to make students ‘busy for Jesus’ by providing exciting events and programs that they would want to do.”
Drew’s youth group was thriving, but everything came to a screeching halt when one of their top students—a young man who was involved in leadership, small group, and missions—attempted suicide. Shocked, Drew and his team realized they had labeled this student a “success” while knowing nothing of his struggles.
That’s when it hit them: No other spotlight in the world can illuminate the heart the way a personal relationship can. With that realization came a paradigm shift: their youth ministry needed to shift its focus from numbers, events, and a full calendar of ministry activities to life-on-life involvement with their students.
Drew describes how this paradigm shift has played out: “One of the many practical ways we have [brought about this shift] is through equipping volunteers, parents, and students to be present in each other’s lives. Our events calendar is emptier than it used to be, but now we are free to go to students, listen and care unconditionally for them.”
This is a picture we ought to embrace all across the lifespan. Scripture describes the spiritual life as a birth and the church as everything from a family to a team to an army to a flock. These metaphors have two things in common: We grow, and we grow together. No one can deliver a baby by email, nurse it by Skype, or teach it to walk through texting.
The only way to show rising generations that church is something you are, not something to go to, is to make it personal. It’s like a birthday party, not a drive-through. A wedding reception, not a concert. A family reunion, not an amusement park. But knowing this in theory does us little good. Our own hunger for truth, identity, and meaning will be satisfied only as we meet others’ hunger.
Explore Intentional Relationships through Psalm 90:12
How to Find Purpose as a Christian: The Practical Call
As you go through your week, let’s both consider: How can I do that practically today?
Frequently Asked Questions About Finding Life’s Purpose
What is the Christian answer to life’s purpose?
The Christian answer to life’s purpose centers on the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s first question: “What is the chief end of man?” The answer: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” This purpose unfolds through embodying the good (togetherness in community), the true (biblical wisdom as skill in living), and the beautiful (image-bearing that reflects God’s character). Unlike secular answers that place meaning in achievement, relationships, or self-actualization alone, the Christian worldview roots purpose in our relationship with God and extends it through loving God and neighbor in tangible, embodied ways.
How does classical Christian education address purpose and identity?
Classical Christian education addresses purpose and identity by forming students in authoritative communities where they practice the trivium arts of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric not as mere academic exercises but as habits of attention, naming, wonder, and worship. In programs like Classical Conversations, students discover identity through multigenerational learning where parents, Tutors, and Directors model the pursuit of wisdom together. Rather than separating age groups or treating education as content delivery, classical Christian education sees learning as spiritual formation where students grow in understanding who they are as image-bearers of God within community, across the generations.
Why do students struggle with feeling their life has meaning?
Students struggle to feel their lives have meaning because modern culture bombards them with meaning-killers: hopelessness from feeling powerless to change their circumstances, consumerism that reduces identity to purchasing power, destructive habits that promise relief but erode self-worth, and ruptured relationships that leave them isolated with their “demanding self.” Without authoritative communities that provide plausibility structures for faith, students are left to construct meaning alone. The question “Would anyone miss me if I disappeared?” reflects the deep cry for authentic value beyond performance or achievement. Students need embodied relationships where they are known, not just programs where they participate.
What role does community play in finding meaning?
Community plays an essential role in finding meaning and purpose in life because humans were created for shalom, wholeness in relationship with God, each other, and creation. Sociologist Peter Berger noted that religious community is what makes faith plausible over time, serving as an “authoritative community” that nurtures identity and purpose across generations. Biblical wisdom develops multigenerationally, not in isolation. The good, the true, and the beautiful are experienced together, not alone. This is why the church (and classical Christian education rooted in community) provides the natural home for meaning. Personal, incarnational relationships illuminate the heart in ways that programs, events, or digital connections never can.
Find out more about Summit Ministries and their resource for spiritual formation in youth here:
Find out more about meaningful connections through classical Christian education with these resources:
- Screen vs. Community: Why Classical Education Thrives on Real Relationships
- For I am Persuaded: The Need for Community
- One-Room Schoolhouse Homeschool: Why Learning in Community Matters
[1] Verlenden JV, Fodeman A, Wilkins N, et al. Mental Health and Suicide Risk Among High School Students and Protective Factors — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2023. MMWR Suppl 2024;73(No. 4):79–86.
[2] Hedegaard H, Garnett MF, Dill-Murphy P. Suicide Among Adults Age 55 and Older, 2021. NCHS Data Brief No. 483. National Center for Health Statistics. 2024.
[3] Nelson LJ, Padilla-Walker LM, Carroll JS. “I Believe It Is Wrong But I Still Do It”: A Comparison of Religious Young Men Who Do Versus Do Not Use Pornography. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. 2010;2(3):136-147. doi:10.1037/a0019127
[4] Uecker JE, Regnerus MD, Vaaler ML. Losing My Religion: The Social Sources of Religious Decline in Early Adulthood. Social Forces. 2007;85(4):1667-1692. doi:10.1353/sof.2007.0083
[5] Csikszentmihalyi M. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books; 1998.
[6] Leithart PJ. “No Heavenly Good.” First Things blog (Leithart). June 2007. https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2007/06/no-heavenly-good
Written by:
