Hell and the Purpose of Life
Hell and the Purpose of Life
Finally, it is necessary to treat briefly the idea of the meaning or purpose of life for an individual. What is the meaning or purpose of an individual's life? Once again, the Western philosophical tradition has for the most part agreed that the meaning of life is happiness. The Christian luminary St. Augustine asked: “For who wishes anything for any other reason than that he may become happy?…It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains that all men desire to be happy.”6 As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (45) says, “Man is made to live in communion with God in whom he finds happiness.”7 And Lewis wrote that “God not only understands but shares…the desire for complete and ecstatic happiness. He made me for no other purpose than to enjoy it.”8 Lewis believed that our desire for goods in this life was a pointer to the desire for the perfect happiness of life with God in heaven, where the latter desire is for the maximization of that of which we can have but a foretaste in this world. Lewis maintained that the desire for perfect happiness was itself evidence for the existence of the afterlife:
[W]e remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy. But is there any reason to suppose that reality offers any satisfaction to it? “Nor does being hungry prove that we have bread.” But I think it may be urged that this misses the point. A man's physical hunger does not prove that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man's hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. In the same way, though I do not believe (I wish I did) that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will.9