Religious Spirituality and the Meaning of Life: the Problem of Absurdity

Abstract

Religious spirituality faces various challenges in the new world. One of these challenges is the question of meaningfulness or emptiness of life. While in the traditional world, few thinkers see life as empty and absurd, today there are many such views toward life that are in contrast to the spiritual view of it. This paper addresses the challenge that this view creates for religious spirituality and a spiritual view of life. We first review different approaches to the meaning of life -naturalism, supernaturalism, non-naturalism, and absurdism. We then consider three different readings of absurdity. These readings are formulated based on lack of purpose, lack of value, and unattainable aspirations. Various solutions have been proposed to deal with absurdity, such as rebellion, abandoning the aspirations, reconstruction of values, and ironic confrontation with existence. The proposal of the article is presented in several points: First, the meaning of life should be considered as "life narrative"; and such an approach to the meaning of life is different from purely argumentative approaches to the meaning of life. Second, it is possible to judge between different narratives based on theoretical and practical rationality. Third, religious spirituality, by adding elements to our belief system, can make our narrative of life meaningful and free us from the challenge of absurdity.

Keywords

• meaning of life
• absurdity
• religious spirituality
• narrative
• rationality