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The Meaning of Life
The purpose of life is to develop and grow in a relationship with God. Life (meaning each person, the universe and time itself) is valuable because God gives it value by choosing to care about it.
History: My most vivid memory from all of my years of Sunday School, Catechism classes and Bible classes that I have ever taken (and there are many) occurred in the ninth grade. I was going to a Christian school and we were required to take a Bible class. My teacher didn't like me very much (it was junior high - nobody liked me very much). One day, though, he decided to do something a little different in class. He had each person write down a question - any question at all - about religion (any religion, not just Christianity), and said he would read all the questions aloud and either answer them then and there or devote time in a later class to look into them.
     The sharpness of the memory of this day will never leave me.
     I remember that I raised my hand and asked him, "Any question at all? You'll really answer any question?"
     "Yes," he said, "whatever you ask."
     We had been recently studying the book of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon questions the purpose and value of his own life as well as the value in all other things in creation. The recurrent phrase in that book is this: "Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher. 'Everything is meaningless!'" I reflected on this and pondered it for a moment. I also pondered my trust in my teacher. Finally, I wrote the question that I wanted most to have answered: "What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Why do we go to school or to work or try to accomplish anything at all, when we're just going to die in the end anyway?"
     The teacher collected everyone's questions, shuffled them so that the students wouldn't know who had asked which question, and then started to read through them. Of course, he knew which student had asked which question. He began reading questions, answering those he could and noting the ones that needed to have more time devoted to them.
     But when he came to mine, he adopted a tone of sarcasm and scorn, and read the question as one who was trying to get out of schoolwork. He tossed it aside with no answer and went on to the next question. From that moment forth, my soul ached, for I knew that my life indeed had no discernable meaning, purpose or value; at least not in the eyes of others. But, even as my hope faded, a stubbornness in my soul was born, and a flame kindled by the Holy Spirit, and I resolved not to rest from searching until I found an answer to my question; if not for myself, then for others and for the world as a whole.

     Since that time, I have searched and pondered and questioned and polled, striving to find what one person could and should have told me in two short sentences on one day in 1994. But, as with all painful events in my life, I find myself the stronger for it, as I would not have understood the full meaning of the statement and may have never pursued studying its depths. I will try, here, to convey some of the questions, revelations and events that led me finally to this understanding.
What is the meaning of "meaning"?
This was the first and an often recurring question that came to mind when I started to ask, "What is the meaning of life?" There are several ways to define that word, and each gives a different slant to the question. For example, "meaning" can be replaced with one of the following words: "definition", "purpose", or "value". To expound on this, here are different uses for the word, in different contexts: Definition: "What is the meaning of the word 'scorn'?"
Purpose: "What is the meaning of this behavior?"
Value: "What does this heirloom mean to you?"
     My first task was to decide which words were really being used when the question was asked. Over time, I found myself most often being drawn to "What is the purpose of life?" and "What is the value of life?". Most often, when I asked other people, "What is the meaning of life?" I would get responses that showed the question to mean "What is the purpose of life?" - thus I chose that as one important angle. But the answers to that question always left me asking, "Why?" Why achieve certains goals or behave in a certain way? If I do these things all my life, what value will I have to added to anything? For example, if my purpose were to get rich, how would that change the state of things in the end? When I die, the money would not go with me. Even if my goal was to be a good person and better society, how would my actions benefit the world in the end?
     Once I began to realize these equally important aspects of the underlying question, I was able to focus more in on answering each.
42
To those that have read "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" series, this may not need more explanation. For those that haven't, or for those that don't see its relevence to my search, I will explain.
     In this series, the author (Douglas Adams) poses the question of the meaning of life against a somewhat satirical backdrop of a universe that is entirely random and gone mad with the desires of the human nature. People are doing everything from visiting The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (not physically at the end of the universe, but temporally - when the universe finally collapses) to becoming president because they are crazy and people like to watch crazy people run the world to building computers that are supposed to mathematically calculate the meaning of life. The first such computer built was an artifical intelligence device that was intended to take years and years of data from the universe to answer "the question of life, the universe and everything". This computer worked and worked through many generations and at last came up with an answer: 42. Scientists were stunned by this answer, as it was thoroughly incomprehensible. The computer told them that this was the correct answer, however, and that their problem was that they didn't know the correct question. Another computer would have to be built to discover the question.
     This new, bigger computer was built. It was the planet Earth, and was populate with creatures that would evolve to the point where they knew the question. Meanwhile, these creatures were monitored by extra-terrestrials that lived on the planet with them to wait for the question. But just on the verge of the moment when everything would finally fall into place and the question would finally be answered, the planet was destroyed. One survivor fled and eventually discovered that the meaning of his life was to find the question of the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Unfortunately, he did not know the question. He tried many different methods of devining the question from his sub-conscious, but the closest he ever came to finding an appropriate question was: "What is nine times six?"
     Finally, someone discovered the question, written by God in flaming letters in the middle of a desert on a relatively deserted planet. Everyone flocked to this location to find the question and finally gain understanding. When they arrived, the burning letters said this: "Sorry for the inconvenience."

     How does all this relate to my search for the meaning of life? There are several relationships. First, many times, when I have asked people what the meaning of life is, they will respond with, "42." This is frustrating to me, as it demonstrates the second and third relationships: Adams is pointing out that the question is on everyone's mind (second relationship), but no one is really doing any work to answer it (third relationship). The question is always there, nagging us and lingering, but instead of searching for our purpose, we let ourselves get caught up in fads and society and science and never get any closer to doing anything valuable with our lives.
     To sum up this section, I'll make some broad and sweeping categorizations that I have observed in people that don't fully know the meaning of life:
What is the meaning of death?
Most often when I get serious answers to my question about the meaning of life, I find that people's answers are more related to their view of the afterlife (or lack thereof) than to things in this world. I'll use the above categories to explain what I mean (I skip the "I don't know and I don't care", since they tend not to give serious answers):      For me, the nature death and the afterlife was a key component to answering the question of the meaning of life. If there is no afterlife, then there is no value in anything I do, because nothing I do will be lasting in any way. But, as a Christian, I believe that there is an afterlife, and that my actions here impact the nature of my afterlife (heaven or hell for my soul). But even with that understanding, I still questioned both the purpose and the value of my life. Are there specific tasks I have to perform here? Are each of my actions collected in a bank to determine the value of my life? I don't believe that my actions are somehow key to shaping the future of the universe, since I can see that the things I accomplish and gain in the material world are all fleeting and small. If this is the case, is there a point to doing anything? And the question of value is still unanswered - even assuming there is an afterlife, why was I created and why should I be placed in either heaven or hell?
The Nature of Time
This study is built upon in later studies, so the relevance may not be readily apparent.
     My curiosity about time started sometime in high school, I think. Either it was when a friend of mine made a comment about teleportation ("Teleportation can't be instantaneous") or it was in a physics or calculus class when we were studying the effect of time on certain types of equations. Since then, a lot of my interests have related to time, including my college studies and certain aspects of my career.
     My general theory of time comes from the study of dimensions. The 0th dimension is a point, the 1st is a line, the 2nd is a plane, the 3rd is space, and the 4th is time. To support this theory, I'll try to illustrate an example. Imagine the 0th dimension (a point) as a golf ball. Of course, for a truly 0-dimensional object, there would be no measureable size or shape. Anyhow, we usually represent this dimension with a round point, so I'll use a golf ball. To proceed to the 1st dimension, collect several golf balls and place them in a straight line next to each other. There is now a measureable size - length. To proceed to the 2nd dimension, make several more rows of golf balls and set them next to the first row on the floor or on a table top. There are now 2 measurable sizes: length and width. In the third dimension, create another plane and set it on top of the previous plane. Now we have length width and height. Each of these dimensions takes the previous dimension and replicates it in different directions. Thus, we get the fourth dimension: take a solid object and then make another one like it that goes right up next to the first somehow. This is the passage of time: A solid shape exists from one moment to the next because it is constantly being replicated and set right back down where it started. Solid objects can also be moved or changed in shape over time by altering the other dimensions. This gets into laws of physics, such as motion, friction, energy, gravity, inertia and the like.
     If that last bit is confusing (it's still confusing to me, even after I've thought about it for a long time), I'll describe 2 other ways of thinking about it.
     The first example is "claymation" - a movie created by taking clay figures and moving them very slightly, taking pictures after each move. When a claymation movie is played back on a screen, it appears that the clay objects are moving. In reality, however, the clay objects were still, but just changed in space from one picture to the next.
     The second example (closer to my field of study) is computer animation. Anyone who owns a home computer sees this in action frequent, and it is similar to the way a television works, so the example can be carried over to that realm, as well. A computer monitor (as well as a television) has a "frame rate", which is the number of images it can display in a given amount of time. Computers also have graphics cards that send visual information to the monitor (similar to vacuum tubes in televisions). A computer screen is made up of millions of pixels (individual points on the screen) laid out in a plane. Each pixel can be any of a large number of colors. When information is sent from the graphics card to the monitor, it is just a list of colors to make each pixel. A "frame" is a list of colors that fills the monitor one time. Since the "frame rate" of the monitor is the number of frames displayed over an amount of time, the image on the screen is redrawn frequently from a new frame sent from the graphics card. To create the illusion of motion in computer animation, consecutive frames are sent to the monitor with slight changes in the color lists from one frame to the next. For instance, to make an image "slide across the screen", the colors are shifted over by a few pixel in each frame.
     Both of these examples are meant to illustrate the same point: time is nothing more than changes in space and our perception of those changes.
Time and the Soul
Many science fiction stories are based on the idea of time travel - where a person can move from one point in time to another in an unnatural direction or at an unnatural speed or by skipping over chunks of it. All of these concepts suggest that time is to space as a line is to a point. If one were to "step out of time", one would see a row of spaces, each slightly changed from the previous. According to the stories, if this is the nature of time (which I believe, as illustrated above, and which it seems that many others believe due to the nature of these time-travel stories), one might be able to get out the frame or space that he is currently occupying and move to something other than the next frame. One might move to a frame in the past or the future, or one might insert extra frames (slowing down time) or frequently skip a few frames at once (speeding up time) or one might "rewind" time by moving to previous frames instead of following frames. I'm not saying that I believe time travel is possible - I'm simply commenting on the stories that people have made about time travel based on an underlying concept of time.
     All of these views of the nature of time assume two things: first, that time is a series of still frames or spaces; second, that time is not actually an entity, but rather a perception made by an outside observer at a constant rate. In other words, "time" is a concept created by something that is outside of space. Something that is in a space is static and cannot change, move or observe anything. Something that is outside of space may look from one space to the next. Somehow, some part of each person is outside of space, watching it and effecting what parts of it he is able. As far as is accepted universally, one can only change the position of one's body and (depending on the strength and mass of that body) things that it comes directly in contact with. The body is trapped in space, but some other part of a person changes the body, creating movement over time.
     This theory supports the concept of a soul or mind that is accepted by many people (religious or not), where there is a part of a person that is not physical. I will refer to this non-physical part of a person as a "soul" for simplicity's sake.
Time, the Soul and Predestination
If time is truly an ordered set of spaces, and people have parts that are not in space and are not physical, then it can be further conjectured that all of "time" (all the spaces that will ever exist) is already set in place. If the soul were able to perceive more than one "space" at a time, one might see the entirety of history and of the future all at once. All that the soul is doing right now is allowing its perception to drift through spaces that are already created. By this model, several other concepts come into play.
     First, and most controversial, is predestination. Some people believe that all things are already determined and set in place, as examplified in this model. By the rules of predestination, all choices have already been made, and we are just observing them as they pass. Others would argue that we have free will - the future is not already set in place and choices can still be made to effect the possible outcomes of situations. My theory, however, allows for both models. By predestination, all spaces are already created. By free will, all spaces were created depending on the nature of the soul. For example, if my soul is such that I don't want to do a certain thing, then the spaces that concern the possibility of doing that thing reflect my desire. In a sense, I have already made all the choices of my life, so I am both predestined and free of will.
     One might argue that a person's soul can change over time. I do believe that the soul is different after its perception of time than it was before (because, otherwise, there would truly be no purpose to life), but now there is a blurred line between the perceptions changing the soul and the soul changing the perceptions.
The Purpose of Life
What does all this have to do with the meaning of life?
     The key is in the last part of the previous section: The soul is different after its perception of time. The purpose of life is the change in the soul. Since all things physical are already created, one cannot make the world better or worse - one can only move around the things that already exist. The thing that does actually change is the soul, the perceiving and choosing part of a person.
     This answers in part the question of purpose: the soul is meant to be changed. However, another part of this question still exists: Changed from what and into what?
The value of the physical world
By my previous statements, one may think that I see the physical world and my physical actions as unimportant. If I am unable to actually change or do anything significant in the physical world, and if the only purpose of the physical world is to change the soul, why is my behavior important? Are there "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts"? Are there "better" or "worse" actions?
     What one must remember to answer this question is that the soul and the what it perceives and chooses are very closely tied to each other. If the choices a soul makes never change, then the soul never changes. Similarly, the soul can choose things that are bad, changing itself to something worse than it was, or it can choose things that are good, changing itself into something better.
     Many different people have an understanding of this, whether they are aware of it or not - there are rules and morals present in every form of society where people assume that certain behaviors are better than other behaviors and that certain things are either right or wrong. While the set of rules or morals may vary from case to case, the concept of right and wrong and the sense of responsibility toward the right is present in all people. Some people may actively choose to fight their morality. Some people may blindly follow their unspoken rules. Some actively pursue the "right". Most people will agree, however, that the "right" is something they are incapable of always accomplishing; even though we know something is right and another thing is wrong, we are still prone to do the wrong things.
     The changing of the soul comes about by actively pursuing to do one kind of thing (right or wrong) over the other. Therefore, I believe that the physical world is very important, as it is the tool for changing the soul.
The change of the soul
There are still several questions left unanswered: Here are my answers to these questions, based on the Bible, Biblical teachings and experience.
The meaning of value
We must now return to the second variation of the question "What is the meaning of life?". The rewording of the question would be "Why is life valuable?". To answer this question, we must explore the term "value". As I pondered the term "value", I came to understand several things about that concept.
     First, nothing in the physical world is intrinsically valuable. No object or creature, on its own, has any value. In order for something to have value, someone or something with value must assign value to it. Take, for example, a dollar bill. On its own, it is a piece of paper with some ink on it. Open any book, pick up any newspaper, get the junk mail from your mailbox - there are thousands of pieces of paper with ink on them all over the place. What makes a dollar bill valuable as opposed to a piece of junk mail? People have assigned value to the dollar bill. It is used to purchase things that are essential for life, such as food and shelter. As a scrap of paper and ink, it is not valuable at all. But it has been assigned value based on the value people hold toward survival.
     Second, nothing can be given value except by something greater than it. One piece of paper cannot give another piece of paper value. A dollar bill does not determine the value of a Euro. People determine the values of both. An acorn cannot determine the value of a peanut, but a squirrel may choose one as being more valuable than the other.
     Third, two of the same things cannot determine each others value. This is a restatement of the second point, but is an important sub-case of it. While society fools us into believing that such things are possible, the underlying truth is that it is not. The media wants us to believe that certain models are more valuable than others because they are more beautiful, or that certain millionaires are more valuable than others because of their money, or that certain leaders are more important than others because they wield more power. But the fact of the matter is that all people are equal - all of us are in the same starting state, and all of us have equal opportunity to change that state. We have neither the basis nor the right nor the power to assign value to each other.
     Fourth, value is first assigned to something by its creator. I am writing this information down because I feel that it is important, and so the end product will be valuable to me. If I didn't think it was important, it would be nothing more than useless babble, and I would most likely throw it away. The same happens with artists. Whether writing poetry or painting a picture or writing music, the product has as much value as the artist chooses to put into it.
     Fifth, value is next assigned to something by those that benefit from it or use it. If someone reads this information and learns and grows from it, he will assign value to it in proportion to how much it changes him. If someone needs some item in order to accomplish something he needs to do, that item has value assigned to it in proportion to its usefulness and the urgency of accomplishing the task at hand.
Why is anything valuable at all?
If nothing in the physical world is intrinsically valuable, then all things are equally un-valuable. If no equal things can assign value to each other, how is it that anything has value at all? The answer is, again, outside of the physical world. God is intrinsically valuable. He is intrinsically valuable because He was not created by anything and nothing else existed besides Him until he created it. Everything that has been created by Him (both physical and non-physical) inherits value from Him because He put value into creating it. He also uses His creation for His own glory, which makes it all the more valuable.
How does the value of people effect us?
First of all, of physical creations, God values people most of all, because they are made in His image. This is something He chose to do, and without this choosing, we are completely insignificant.
Secondly, if He values some people over others, we are incapable of knowing such things, and therefore should not try to assign each other greater values. For me to try to assign someone else a greater value than his peers would be for me to assume that I have a greater value than any of them.
The Value of Life
Now that we understand value and how we get it, we can answer the question at hand: Why is life valuable? Life is valuable simply because God says so. God chose to create the world and chose to put people in it and chooses now to change our souls. The existance of the universe is valuable because it gives people the chance to fulfill their purpose. The existance of a single person is valuable because God created that person and has a purpose in mind for that person - whether it be to change the person's soul for the better or to allow it to pursue its own desires.