Empty and Meaningless vs. Meaning and Purpose:
A quick comparison of the worldviews of Werner Erhart and Rick Warren (pictured).

My brother and his wife have recently been through the Forum and the Advanced Course of Landmark Education, which grew out of the work of Werner Erhart, originally called Erhart Sensitivity Training, or EST.

I wanted to write them a little about my take on this material in retrospect. I took it years ago. I endorsed the Curriculum for Living, of which these courses are two-thirds, because they give the student a rich perspective on their own ways of thinking and the “meaning making” that surrounds them. However, there are reasons to find “the training” troubling as well. One of them is the subject of this little blurb. It is the “distinction” that life is “empty and meaningless” and therefore you assign your own meaning to it and so does everyone else. That distinction is not helpful to the pursuit of God.

The reason I’m writing this now is that during my recent stay in Louisville, in their bed, I saw Rick Warren’s book on the bedside table. The purpose of Warren’t book is to show the opposite: viz, life has meaning and purpose. The gospel of Jesus Christ sanctifies life and the teachings of Genesis and the Torah through Jesus interpretation and the bible as a whole show it. The gospel (good news), in brief, is that what is in front of us is not meaningless data to be interpreted to your purpose, but instead all life has a meaning and purpose, found in Christ, the Creator, ruler and sustainer of Creation. If Jesus is who he says he is, then the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ are the most important facts in the universe. And, more, our life finds meaning and purpose by resonating with the god-Man and doing his will, not ours. You can’t get more contrast in two ideas than that.

In the Forum and Advanced Course, there is not much discussion of religion, but it is there nonetheless. The statement that life is empty and meaningless is a religious statement! No proof is offered. We are used to cultural commentators and scholars doing this, so we don’t see it. But, this statement is a religious tenet which includes the distinction that matters of faith can neither be true nor false because they are in the realm of faith, not knowledge. Once again, no proof is offered because we all believe this. Nevertheless, this too is a religious statement. It offers a “truth” without proof. It is a foundation principle for secular religion.

So, in taking the Forum and going to church or reading Rick Warren’s life, the aspirant has one foot in the Judeo-Christian worldview and one in the modern secular worldview. No wonder people feel at sea. Over time, we all have to pick. You can’t organize your life around meaningless meaning or empty fullness. We have about six thousand years of accepting and operating on the Judeo-Christian tenets and only about a hundred years of experimentation on the tenets of secular religion. We’ve had some success with the former and we have found some weaknesses in the secular paradigm, only recently. Secular humanism leads to blather and real suffering; it was and is not a panacea. In order to give it a good hearing, the cultural elites demonized Judeo-Christian truths. I think we’d better go back and see whether we threw the Christ child out with the bath water, don’t you think?