Making meaning

I am a Quaker and I recently attended a spiritual weekend retreat at Ammerdown. The topic was re-looking at the Bible to see whether it had any relevance for today, and specifically for Quakers today. There has been in recent times an increasingly secularist approach to religion whereby religion – in many areas – has been synonymous with believing in good causes; the books that define the faith are viewed as magical, literalist, and often fantastical. To see whether or not then the Bible – an important but not a binding or “sacred” text to the early Quakers 350 years ago – had anything important to say was the task.

 I myself was asked to make a presentation on John’s Gospel. Where do you begin? My starting point was to consider before studying the text in detail what the purpose of the gospel was. In fact, what the is the purpose of anything? The purpose of this room we are in? The purpose of relationships? The purpose of Quakerism? What is the purpose of John’s Gospel?

 There can be many ways of answering this, but for me the most powerful must come from a consideration of the fact there are four gospels? Why four? Why can’t there be just one gospel that tells the story. Indeed, various people have compiled or collated one gospel over the years – and their efforts have proved vain. Nobody very much wants to read THE one gospel. Thus it is that we can only understand the true purpose of John’s Gospel in contrast to the purposes of the other three gospels.

 But before I consider what all four purposes are I reflect on the word “purpose” – what does it mean? It means: meaning! What is the meaning? Viktor Frankl wrote about man’s search for meaning. It is in the “meaning” that we find our life – in the meaning we can endure all things, and in the meaning is our joy. Human beings love finding meaning; they cannot stop themselves – from the meaning in Rorschach tests to the meanings of physics and Shakespeare.

 And the opening of John’s Gospel goes, “In the beginning was the word …” – in Greek, the logos. Translation of “logos” – word, or … “meaning”. I need hardly discuss in this blog, then, what my finding was about the meaning of John’s Gospel. No, I need only say that a document that begins, ‘in the beginning was the meaning,’ must have something to say about the joy of human life.