Church and Christian faith are back in the news. A recent Times article ran with the headline: “Full Fat Faith: The Young Christian Converts Filling our Churches.” Reports like this keep appearing—many pointing to a surprising trend: more people, especially young people, are walking into churches, often for the first time, in search of something deeper.
Why?
Beneath it all lies a search for purpose.
For decades, our culture promised progress: more wealth, more freedom, more technology—surely that would mean more satisfaction. Yet here we are, surrounded by endless choice, consumer goods, and social media feeds… and still left hungry. A world without God—where the best we can do is distract ourselves with consumption—turns out to feel profoundly empty.
So where do we find purpose?
1. No God? No purpose.
The book of Ecclesiastes, written by King Solomon, conducts a bold thought experiment: What if “life under the sun” is all there is? His conclusion is stark:
“Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2)
Why so bleak? Because if there’s no Creator, then:
- We’re accidents of nature. If life is just random atoms and DNA, then our stories can’t have ultimate meaning. Dawkins admits that the universe, without design or purpose, offers us “nothing but pitiless indifference.”
- There are no objective values. If there’s no God to set right and wrong, then “good” and “evil” collapse into personal preference. We might agree, for example, that caring for children is good—but without God, it’s just a popular opinion, not an objective truth.
- Death wipes it all away. Whether you live nobly or selfishly, Ecclesiastes says, “all share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked” (9:2). Achievements, morality, legacy—if death has the last word, nothing ultimately matters.
- Self-made meaning doesn’t last. Solomon tested wealth, pleasure, sex, work, and success. Each road ended the same way: with emptiness. Novelist Jack Higgins put it bluntly after finding remarkable ‘success’: “I wish someone had told me that when you get to the top, there’s nothing there.”
Honest atheists admit this. Philosopher Bertrand Russell once said we must build our lives “on the firm foundation of despair.” If there’s no God, there’s no real purpose.
2. With Jesus—deep purpose.
But Ecclesiastes doesn’t end the story. In John’s Gospel, Jesus offers an alternative:
“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
Jesus claims to be God himself, and that changes everything:
- We’re not accidents—we’re created. Like fridge magnets arranged into meaningful words, our lives have purpose because there’s a Maker behind them.
- Good and evil are real. Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd (John 10:11). God’s character and Word provide an objective standard of right and wrong—our choices have real consequences, there is a day of Judgement.
- Death isn’t the end. Jesus speaks of eternal life and offers it through his atoning death.
- Purpose is relationship. Jesus says he is the gate (John 10:7)—the way into life as it was meant to be lived. And at the heart of that life is relationship: not just with friends or family, but with God himself.
Sin separates us from this relationship. Left to ourselves, we remain cut off from God. But here’s the wonder: Jesus, the Good Shepherd, “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). On the cross, he paid the cost of sin, opening the way back into the relationship we were created for.
That is true purpose: not random existence, not self-made meaning, but life with God, now and forever.
The question is not so much“Does life have purpose?” but “Will I receive the purpose Jesus offers?”
Series: What in the World?
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