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What is it to ask about life's meaning?

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But if death and impermanence thus raise a question about the meaningfulness of life, the same is true of natural forces that seem quite unrelated to the ideal of justice that is so important to out our moral and political life and according to which people are to be dealt with in accordance with their deserts, their past actions, good or bad. Because nature seems quite indifferent to this ideal, human beings have looked for some ulterior, hidden justice in what happens to individuals, in their fortunes and misfortunes---whence misfortunes—whence Asiatic ideas of karma and Western ideas of providence as well as of final retribution in heaven or hell. When faith in the ulterior, hidden justice expressed by such ideas collapses, there are apt to be complaints about the meaninglessness of life.

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To answer these questions, let it be said, first, that there is not--and not—and could not be-any be—any such ulterior, hidden justice as some persons take to be a necessary condition of the possibility of a meaningful life. What happens to us is-and must be--partly is—and must be—partly a matter of blind chance. Nor is this in any way a defect in the universe or in God. For chance is inseparable from freedom, and without freedom, and therefore without chance, there would be no life and nothing good at all. Nevertheless, there is an aspect of providence in reality, in that there is one cosmically creative and cosmically beneficient beneficent power, even though it is not all-determining or in the usual sense "omnipotent." That there are probabilities and real, if only statistical, laws is providential. The chance aspect of existence, though real, is limited, and the limits are set by divine power and wisdom, which, though not all-determining, is all influencing.

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Finally, the question raised by death and the impermanence of all human affairs is answered by adverting to a mysterious unity of all things, thanks to which life is not meaningless in spite of death and impermanence. The best way to understand this mystery is by the concept of God as the· the eminent form of life or of living, and thus as satisfying the two theological requirements of (1) likeness to life as we otherwise know it, and (2) superiority to all other living things, actual or possible. Thus the one purpose or plan that death cannot frustrate is the purpose or plan of serving God's life by serving all other lives.