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Book nook: Your Life Has Meaning

From business success to health to basic activities that give us joy and fulfillment, the events of the past year have—even temporarily—robbed us of what we think makes life worth living.

Your Life Has Meaning: Discovering Your Role in an Epic Story by Luke George Thompson couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time.

Using the illustration of sitting in a “broken chair,” Thompson—a WELS pastor and former philosophy professor—takes the reader on an exploration of what appears to be the pointlessness of life. Much like sitting in that broken chair, our efforts appear to be wasted as we wait for it to fall apart.

Yet, while tearing down worldly values with fierce abandon for pages on end, Thompson does an excellent job of bringing the conversation back to where it needs to be—God’s Word.

One would expect a book about the meaning of life from a philosophy professor to be tedious and dry, but I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case. Your Life Has Meaning is a punchy, accessible book. Clocking in at only six chapters, the author deconstructs the common things that most people aspire to have or do in this world.

However, he is careful to emphasize that these aspirations do hold value and are not bad—but they do not give life meaning in the way that people think.

Like any good teacher, he makes the material accessible on the reader’s level using both philosophy heavyweights and examples from current pop culture. Where else can you view life through the perspective of Albert Camus, Tim Ferriss, Brad Paisley, Lord of the Rings, Friedrich Nietzsche, Neil Degrasse Tyson, the Philadelphia Eagles, and Death Cab for Cutie?

In the end, Thompson breaks down the biblical view of life’s meaning in the seemingly-contradictory chapter titled, “Everything is Meaningful,” where he focuses on three simple words: Remember your Creator.

Your Life Has Meaning is a great book for anyone who is struggling with hope and meaning in their lives or for people who simply want to dip their toes into philosophy in a very accessible and biblically-focused manner. Personally, this book is going to hold a spot on my bookshelf for years to come.

For more information, visit nph.net or call 800-662-6022.

Author: Tom Meitner
Volume 107, Number 12
Issue: December 2020

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