What Does It Mean?

The ultimate question is not "What Do I Believe?" but rather, "What Does It Mean?"  Jesus said, quoting Deuteronomy, Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. 

If this is true, and of course, I believe that any thinking person would assert that it is, there are several implications to that statement:

(1) Meaning is essential to a human way of life: we are more than the animals, wonderful as they are.  But they can live without meaning, without reflection, by instinct alone.  Man cannot.  As much as I love and communicate with my cats, and am profoundly grateful for the joy they bring to my life, I have never been able to say to one of them:  "Look at this beautiful flower, or that magnificent sunset!"  The meaning of beauty, or of joy, is not within the parameters of their existence, although I do like to think they are grateful for their daily "bread," in the form of the corn gluten that passes for cat food.

About 40 years ago, Viktor Frankel wrote a classic study called Man's Search for Meaning.  Very few books, as much as I love them and devour them, have actually changed my life -- although I think that every one has influenced me in some way, changing at least my brain, if not my life itself.  But Viktor Frankel's book actually changed my life as a 20-something college student.  As a German Jew Psychotherapist, Frankel found his entire existence turned upside down by Hitler.  He, like every other Jew within Hitler's reach, endured the destruction of his entire life and family and culture in a German death camp.  Day to day, he watched men all around him lose hope and die -- deliberately -- for lack of meaning.  None of the events they endured "made sense" to them; there was no reason to continue to live.  Some of the people deliberately reached out to the electric fence surrounding the death camp, and grasped it to die.  Others just gave up, lay down, and did not get up again.  Those who survived were those who somehow found a reason to survive.

Frankel knew that unless he and others could find meaning in the situation, meaning which gave them a reason to endure unspeakable horror from day to day, they would not come out alive.  Meaning was literally, the bread that sustained them in this situation.  In fact, recently I read of a man who survived the death camps, was re-established and re-nourished -- but who then committed suicide because he could never find a reason to continue living.  After his release from the prison camp, Viktor Frankel went on to re-establish his psychiatric practice, but now based on "man's search for meaning," which he called logotherapy.  He found that man could endure anything if somehow he could find meaning, or a reason to live, in the midst of the situation. 

(2)  The second implication of Jesus' words is that meaning has been given to us "from the mouth of God."  Somehow, some way, God Himself has revealed meaning to man, and man is able to receive it, to grasp it.  This is an awesome concept!  It means that God has not left man alone to figure it out for himself, to stumble along doing the best he can.  It means that, despite Pontius Pilate's question, "What is truth?" Truth does exist, and that we can know it! 

The very foundation of all science is the belief that truth exists and that man can discover, probe, explore it and then, having found it, apply what he has unearthed to his existence on this planet.  What does it mean that man has found penicillin --- not just that we know it exists, but that we can then use our knowledge for the good of mankind.

The same is true in the spiritual realm:  Truth exists; it is not what each man thinks it is, but has a Source that can be discovered, or "received."  And Truth has meaning -- it has application for our lives.  So then, the question becomes, "If ____ is true, what does it mean?"  How does it apply to mankind, to me as a person?  How does it affect my life and the lives of others?  How is this belief "my daily bread," sustaining my existence from day to day?

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word coming forth from the mouth of God.

Where, then, do we go for our daily bread?