Living a Purposeful Life. Kalman J. Kaplan

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      6. Warren, Purpose Driven Life.

      7. Warren, Choose Joy.

      8. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 394.

      9. Exod 19:6.

      10. Exod 19:8.

      11. Exod 24:3.

      12. Exod 24:3.

      13. Kaplan and Schwartz, Psychology of Hope, xiii.

      14. Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem, 85–86, 91–92.

      15. Kaplan and Cantz, Biblical Psychotherapy.

      16. Fredericson and Misra, “Epidemiology and Aetiology of Marathon Running Injuries.”

      17. Marti et al., “On the Epidemiology of Running Injuries.”

      18. Macera et al., “Postrace Morbidity among Runners.”

      19. Saragiotto et al., “What Are the Main Risk Factors?”

      20. Nathan, “Injury Prevention in Marathon Runners.”

      21. Herodotus, Histories, vol. 3; Larcher, Notes on Herodotus.

      22. Browning, Pheidippides.

      23. A version of the story suggests that this knowledge may have allowed the Athenian army to march to the beaches on the west side of the city and prevent a second Persian attack.

      24. Slater, Glory of Hera, 4.

      25. Specifically, Paul Revere was charged with insubordination for his actions during the Penobscot Expedition, a chaotic naval operation that cost the Continental forces hundreds of lives in 1779. Revere was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing, but any career in the military was permanently blocked.

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      Two Views of Creation

No people seemed to search more for meaning in their lives than did the ancient and classical Greeks. In his superb book The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family, Phillip Slater tells us much of interest about the ancient Greeks. They were as creative a people as have ever lived and seemed to search for meaning in everything they did. They were not content with living simple lives but oftentimes took on gargantuan tasks which resulted in a great deal of upheaval and unpleasantness, and oftentimes to disaster. Slater puts it this way: “The Greeks were quarrelsome as friends, treacherous as neighbors, brutal as masters, faithless as servants, shallow as lovers—all of which was in part redeemed by their intelligence and creativity.”26 Daily life had no purpose for the ancient Greeks; they were searching for meaning in exceptionally difficult tasks.

      The biblical human being, in contrast, is not driven to search for meaning in this way. One’s purpose is inherent in daily life. He does not have to search for it. The God of the Hebrew Bible makes the human being, man and woman, in his own image.

And God said: “Let us make man in His own image; in the image of God, created He him,; male and female created he them.27

      He then breathes life into man.

Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.28

Life has an inherent purpose. Man must be a steward of God’s creation.29

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.30

      A passage in Exodus restates the purposeful nature of life. God has a purpose for everyone.

But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”31

      The purposeful nature of life is stated again in the first book of Samuel. We find purpose by serving God.

We fulfill our purpose of glorifying God also by living our lives in relationship and faithful service to Him.32

To gains some perspective on this difference, let us compare the creation narrative in Hesiod’s Theogony with that of the Hebrew Scriptures. These two creation stories embody two radically different worldviews. Nature precedes the gods in the Greek version, but God precedes nature in the biblical account. As Bruno Snell argues, the differences in the respective orderings are not just chronological, but logical and psychological as well.33

      The Greek Creation Narrative

According to Hesiod, in the beginning there was chaos, which has often been interpreted as a moving formless mass, from which the cosmos and the gods originated.34 The noun xaos refers to infinite space or time or the nether abyss, while the verb xao denotes “to destroy utterly.35 There is the implication that chaos must be subdued and controlled for the world to be formed. Purpose is not inherent in creation. It must be searched for. The human being must search for meaning!

In this Olympian Theogony, nature exists before the gods. First Sky rules over the entire world.36 Sky (the male Ouranos) marries Earth (the female Gaia) and produces, first the hundred-handed monsters, and then the Cyclopes.37 The family pathology then immediately commences, as the father takes the children away from the mother. “Sky tied them (the Cyclopes) up and threw them into Tartarus, a dark and gloomy place in Hades as far from earth as earth is from the sky and again had children by Earth, the so-called Titans.”38 Such action breeds reaction.

Grieved at the loss of the children who were thrown into Tartarus, Earth persuaded the Titans to attack their father and gave Cronus a steel sickle . . . Cronus cut off his father’s genitals and threw them into the sea . . . Having thus eliminated their Father the Titans brought back their brother who had been hurled to Tartarus and gave the rule to Cronus.39

Father is set against son, and son must rebel against father in his search for meaning. When СКАЧАТЬ