My answer will be "right" only if it conforms to the truth, of course. But you can often tell when you're hearing truth, and when you're not. Truthful answers have a way of sounding coherent and integrated in ways that falsehoods often lack. So it's not hard to narrow the field to a few options, and work from there.
They, too, have everything they have from God. We are all in His debt, whether we want to realize it or not.What about all the people who's lives are miserable?In God's case, we will last much shorter without Him. And He will be the reason we're alive, for a lot longer. Everything we are -- all our potentialities, joys, hopes, achievements, and even the very breath we take each moment, are gifts from Him. This universe itself owes its order and coherence to Him, and to His provision. We enter this world far more indebted to Him than to our own parents; and it's all the worse when we, as children can, imagine we owe nothing and can rebel with impunity and without consequences against those who made our very life possible...and even He who sustains it now.
I've met people who live in very low conditions who are happy, and people who are extraordinarily wealthy who are not. But it is a valuable life, not merely a happy one, that is the true goal of our existence. Earthly life is not the be-all and end-all, despite the secularists' dreams to that effect; eternity is the goal and summation of our existence. So we are wise not to judge on mere partial data.
This life is, by all reckonings, very short. Eternity is very, very long...so long, that the day will come when this life is nothing but a flash in time, a brief memory in an immense field of other happenings. That fact speaks to the imprudence of judging too much on the now.
I didn't suggest they were. I'm sorry if you took that implication.I don't think my kids are ungrateful.Shakespeare wrote, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." (King Lear). How much sharper and more venomous it is for a person created as a child of God to give no love or honour or gratitude to his Creator. Such children inevitably come to grief...and when they do, they certainly deserve it, as we all can see.
I meant that we, as creations of God, would be very ungrateful not to acknowledge our Parentage and our debt for all He's done for us.
That would depend on how good you were. The more you had been good to them, the more you might suppose they'd want to be with you.What sort of a parent would I be if I expected them to be constantly expressing their gratitude?
That's one way of deciding, of course. Things can BE pointless, or can just FEEL pointless. And those are not the same, of course.I must admit that, just lately, I don't see much point in anything. I'm going through a can't-be-bothered patch; it happens from time to time. I will, eventually, become interesting in something, and pursue it for a while, and for as long as it lasts there will seem to be some point in it. I think the concept of their being a point to things is a purely human one. It's another one of those subjective things that seem objective.But I should understand first what gives you (or your chosen point-of-view, in this case) the sense of pointlessness, if I can ask that.
But I get what you're talking about. As one gets older, it's more and more easy to ask the old question, "What's it all about, Alfie?" as the old movie does. With more in the category of "done" and less and less in the category of "left to do," it can seem as if life is running down to a rather pointless and unpleasant ending. And, if this life is all we get, that's exactly what's happening. So that's just realism.
But if life is pointless, what's the point of knowing it is? It's not heroic, or admirable, or consoling to trail off in pointless pessimism, is it? So we're all then just doomed to watch life run down to nothing.
I recently watched my father die. He was in a room with one small closet and a drawer with a few basic medical things and one or two possessions in it. Nothing more. His mobility was gone, his sight and hearing were nearly gone, but his mind was clear. His whole earthly life was summed up in that one little drawer, you might say. And when he passed, even that little drawer no longer meant a thing.
That's the future for ll of us, if this life is pointless.
But what if it's not?