When Your Purpose Is Found in a Transcendent Creator

As an atheist, I was satisfied with the purpose I had created for my life. I found meaning in my work, my family, and my responsibilities as a father and husband. I also loved the idea that I was in charge of my purpose; that I was the one who got to decide what life was all about. It wasn’t until I became a Christian that I realized my ideas about purpose and meaning were far too small and limited. I now try to illustrate this truth for others with an important utensil from my wife’s kitchen. This tool helps me demonstrate an important point: While it is certainly possible for each of us to design a purpose for our lives, we are missing opportunities for greatness if we reject the existence of a Creator God.

When I show my wife’s utensil to groups, they are always curious about its purpose. It has two joined metal parts; one is a rectangular sheet of metal (approximately 13 inches long), stamped with a rows of small holes, two rails along the long edges and a handle at one end. The other piece of the device is a square, open-top metal receptacle that slides along the length of the railed rectangle. It is a truly curious utensil that usually captures the imagination of the audiences I address. I typically begin by asking them to tell me the purpose of the device. Over the years, I’ve heard a number of interesting explanations. Most say they think it is some kind of cheese grater. But the holes in the rectangular section are entirely flat and it would be difficult to slice cheese without some slight burr on one side of each hole. One person (on a television show) said he thought it might be a device used to cut hair! He held it up to his head and slid the receptacle back and forth to see if it could trim the hair that poked through the holes. I’ve heard a number of potential explanations for the utensil, and some of them have seemed quite reasonable (others have not).

At some point in the presentation, I ask the group, “OK, you’ve all offered a number of possibilities and some of these might even work, but how do you think we might find out what the device is really meant to do?” Most, by this time, have noticed that the tool has the manufacturer’s name stamped on the handle. Someone will usually realize that the best way to figure out the purpose of the utensil is simply to call and ask the company that made it.  Of course this is the point of the illustration in the first place. While each of us can assign a purpose to the device, its true purpose can be discovered by simply asking its creator. Why would we think it’s any different for us as humans? As a naturalist, I was able to assign purpose to my life, and I was quite happy with the meaning I created for myself. But my ideas were far too small.

As some point in my presentation, I reveal the purpose of the utensil. It is a German spaetzle maker. The tool is used to make German pasta; the raw batter is poured into the receptacle as the cook slides it back and forth over a pot of boiling water. The batter then drips through the holes into the boiling water and is cooked into dense little noodles called spaetzle. They are incredibly delicious, especially when fried with cheese and onions!

Two problems arise when we try to assign our own meaning to the spaetzle maker. First, we end up with a device that we try to use for something other than its optimum purpose. Yes, we may be able to grate cheese with the tool, but we’ll end up struggling to do so and making a mess along the way. We can certainly force the utensil to do what we want it to do, but it will never work the way it was designed to operate unless we know who designed it and why it was created in the first place. But there’s an even more important problem. When I tell most people that the utensil is a spaetzle maker, they still need me to explain spaetzle! Most people have never even heard of this German noodle. They’ve missed one of the true culinary delights available on the planet. When they discover what the utensil is designed to do, they also have their eyes opened to something they had never previously experienced. The purposes they offered for the utensil inaccurately limited their own culinary choices. When people eventually sample spaetzle they are glad they learned about spaetzle makers.

Something very similar occurs when you embrace the notion that your objective purpose is found by asking the Creator. Not only do you stop assigning meanings to your life that may “work” but are less than optimal, you also discover something beautiful that was previously unknown. I do think it’s possible for each of us to assign our own meaning, but I think most of our ideas are simply too small; we miss something beautiful. When we ask the manufacturer, we end up blossoming in ways we never imagined. That’s what happens with your purpose is found in a transcendent Creator.

Comments

[Staircaseghost]

Did you know that punchcards were originally designed in the 17th and 18th centuries to making weaving patterns for yarn in Jacquard looms?

If only you had been around to tell Babbage and Hollerith that they were wasting their time using them to program their early tabulating machines, you could have just told them that the best way to find out what the "real" purpose of something is is to call the person who originally designed it, and stop wasting their time trying to invent the modern computer!

p.s. "Humans breed pigs for a purpose -- making bacon. Does that make life meaningful for the pig?" - Sverker Johannson

[John Moore]

It's your wife's utensil? Your wife's kitchen? This is pretty unfashionable language. Among traditionalists it might go unnoticed, but you shouldn't talk this way to liberals - unless you want to go into the whole feminism issue.

[Carolyn]

Oh, please.

[Robby Hall]

Did you know that punchcards were originally designed in the 17th and 18th centuries to making weaving patterns for yarn in Jacquard looms?

If only you had been around to tell Babbage and Hollerith that they were wasting their time using them to program their early tabulating machines, you could have just told them that the best way to find out what the "real" purpose of something is is to call the person who originally designed it, and stop wasting their time trying to invent the modern computer!

This breaks down very quickly. If I take a mouse trap - a very simple mouse trap and use it as a tie clip, it works very well as a tie clip. It looks ridiculous, but it works. However, it's a mouse trap. And as long as it's being used as a tie clip, it cannot be used for what it was designed - to be a mousetrap.

Same thing with human beings. You can make up pretend purposes for life the way a child makes up imaginary friends. You can be as sexually promiscuous as you want, you can do anything necessary to obtain wealth or you can live a quiet life in the suburbs with a wife and 2.5 kids. But are you dong what you were designed to do? And if say naturalistic Darwinianism is true, would any of those things really matter at the end of the day?

[Neal Korfhage]

@ John Moore

Your language about women's "proper" roles in the family is offensive on a conservative blog post about meaning, purpose, and destiny as it relates to God.

Your argument is invalid.

How about talking about the actual subject of the post? That would be way more productive and intellectual.

[ArthurK]

Feminism aside, I have known women who would take your head off if you suggested it wasn't their kitchen. Men can claim the basement but they had no say in the kitchen.

I guess these women where sexist and need sensitivity training to curb their misogynistic views.

[ArthurK]

If you are made for a purpose, but ignore it in favour of a purpose you made up on your own, how does that not make you delusional?

[John Moore]

Sorry to go off-topic, but I just wanted to point out that certain kinds of language-use brand you in certain people's eyes and perhaps disrupt your message.

Maybe this blog post was never intended for liberals, so I apologize again. On the other hand, if you do want a conversation with liberals, it's important to know their language and not throw out any red flags that send them off on a crazy tangent.

By the way, I wasn't saying anything about women's proper roles.

[Trent]

So you are saying that if you deal with a liberal you have to act as if you are defusing a bomb, because the slightest mis-step will cause them to blow up in your face?

Sounds unstable.

That being said, I have met a few who seem to think not agreeing with them on something was a hate crime. It came, in their case, from thinking purely with thier emotions. If you pointed out a problem, or simply disagreed that a slogan wasn't an absolute truth, you were saying their whole world view was wrong and they would lash back. I think it came from a shock that other points of view ( ie. non politically correct ones ) might come from people that looked like they weren't foaming at the mouth hate filled people.

[Jim Hitt]

Let me just say as a deranged sexist myself, the point of the post was not that there is no possible world where a spaetzle maker can be used as a cheese grater, or an electron microscope--but that, other things being equal, it's going to take a lot of contortion to claim you can throw every little invention into the blender and--voilá! out comes the Mona Lisa.
It seems the objection commits the fallacy of the imperfect illustration – that an imperfect illustration is automatically an invalid illustration. There is a real kernel of truth in the idea that things work amazingly well when their true purpose is discovered. It's like the Coke bottle in "The Gods Must Be Crazy." Yes, it works great for hitting your little sister on the head, and also as a pestle to grind up cactus, but there is a higher purpose.