‘What Will I Do with My Life?’

ASK a middle-aged person, “What do you want to do with your life?” and you will often get a puzzled look. Most adults have settled into a routine of living, perhaps without giving it much thought. They may never have decided what they wanted to do with their lives, and they are no longer interested in the question. Perhaps they are even a little frightened by it, fearing that to ask such questions seriously is to invite a ‘mid-life crisis.’

With young people it is different. The question “What do you want to do with your life?” is urgent to them, even if they are not sure of the answer. Not surprisingly, young people are often far more concerned than their elders with finding ‘the meaning of life.’ But where?

Does Education Have the Answers?

If you are a young person, you spend much of your time in school. It is natural for you to think that education will somehow show you the meaning of life, but such hopes are often disappointed. “When I started college,” said one honor student, “I thought I would add new talents, new capabilities, new accomplishments to my life. Instead, each course I’ve taken, each good book I’ve read, each idea I’ve seriously considered has taken something away from me. I feel like an onion that has had layer after layer peeled away until there is nothing, nothing there at all.”

What happened? Instead of finding life’s meaning, this student, tossed about by arguments and equally plausible counterarguments, lost his bearings. After losing faith in his original beliefs, he had nothing to replace them with and was on the verge of concluding that life is meaningless.

This calls to mind a very astute observation made about 3,000 years ago that “to the making of many books [or, “opinions”] there is no end, and much devotion to them is wearisome to the flesh.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12) Seeking life’s meaning among the ‘great books’ and ‘great ideas’ of men is frustrating because these books and ideas contradict one another endlessly, as students quickly find out.

Does Science Offer Hope?

“Science and technology, hailed just a few years back as the sure solutions for all our increasingly complex societal problems, are both in trouble these days,” admits Dr. Lewis Thomas, a widely read science essayist. Nobel-prize winner Max Delbrück is even more blunt. “It’s obvious that science is not going to solve our problems,” he says.

Today’s adults were raised on optimistic slogans like “Better living through chemistry.” Young people, on the other hand, have grown up with the darker side of science. “Everyone talks about new breakthroughs into the secrets of nature. But somehow I can’t swallow this,” wrote a college student to his professor recently. “Breakthroughs, breakthroughs​—where do they lead us? Atomic bombs, pollution, terrifying drugs: Are these what the frontiers of science are all about?”

“Please don’t answer me with clichés about the gap between ethics and scientific knowledge,” continued the student. “I have heard it all a hundred times. People believe our science is good, but our ethics are bad. This is exactly what I can’t swallow. Am I crazy? Are morality and knowledge really such separate things?”

This young student was making an important point. Knowledge without morality, as when knowledge of nuclear physics is used to build atomic bombs, may offer brilliant inventions, but does it offer hope? Does it give mankind a reason for living? Or does it merely increase the likelihood that men will wind up by destroying themselves?

“I think the further course of history will not be decided by further discoveries in science,” says Dr. Delbrück, “but by . . . questions about human values.” In other words, it is more important to know the difference between right and wrong than to know how to build a better bomb.

But the world today seems far more interested in bombs than in right and wrong. Young people sense this, and it can drive them to give up trying to do what is right. “I am 15 years old,” wrote one boy. “I don’t smoke pot or pop pills, even though I’ve wanted to lots of times. I try not to steal or vandalize or hurt other people . . . what I mean is, all my life I’ve tried to do the right thing. Then a few months ago I realized that it doesn’t make any difference. Whatever kind of life I lead, it’s not going to change the way things are. Now I don’t care whether I live or die. Older people don’t seem to understand why we want to ‘ruin our lives.’ The fact is, it just doesn’t matter anymore.”

Can Religion Help?

It is often argued that science isn’t supposed to teach people right and wrong​—that is a job for religion. But young people today do not seem very satisfied with religion’s performance. A British clergyman who surveyed 10,000 youths found that religious faith is declining rapidly among young people in that country. In the United States, a recent Gallup poll indicated that while most American teenagers believe in God, three fourths of them did not have a high degree of confidence in organized religion.

What was bothering these youths? “The failure of churches genuinely to serve those whom Christ loved . . . the shallow and superficial stance of so many church members; the inability of congregations to deal with the basics of faith and appeal to youth on a solid spiritual basis; the absence of the feeling of excitement or warmth within the church’s fellowship, and negative feelings about the clergy in charge,” report the pollsters. Significantly, they added that “four in 10 young adults state that honesty and the personal ethical standards of clergy are ‘only average,’ ‘low,’ or ‘very low.’”

Distrustful of science, education and religion, is it any wonder that many young people today are adrift? What do they have to look forward to? “When I asked my daughter for a contribution on the topic of teen-agers,” wrote a mother, “she cheerfully and instantly supplied the quotation ‘Teenagers are the corpses of tomorrow.’” A 19-year-old in Lausanne, Switzerland, put it this way: “Why should I work as hard as my father does? Why shouldn’t I have some fun if we all may be dead in a few years?”

Young people are often accused of being shallow and materialistic. But from their infancy television has been preaching to them the virtues of instant gratification. Indeed, it would be strange if today’s youth were not materialistic, considering their “education.” On the other hand, where are young people today going to get encouragement to be noble and self-sacrificing? Not from television. Not from the examples of the world’s political and business leaders. Not from the mainline religions. Then, from where?

Help from Man’s Creator

Some youths have concluded that it is foolish to want to believe in anything. As a student at Columbia University put it, “People are basically interested in themselves.” Yet, will this attitude really lead to happiness? If you are a young person, do you really think that a life of selfishness is going to make you happy? What about the selfish people you know? Are they truly happy? As the wise man put it, “a mere lover of silver will not be satisfied with silver, neither any lover of wealth with income.” (Ecclesiastes 5:10) Why not?

Because just as people are created with material needs, such as the need for food, clothing and shelter, they also have spiritual needs. Money cannot fill those needs. The vague but persistent need felt by young people to understand ‘the meaning of life’ is a spiritual need. So is the need to give and receive unselfish love. These things cannot be bought, no matter what the TV commercials say.

However, the fact that man has spiritual needs does not mean that he is qualified to fill them. If you are a young person, you likely appreciate that, although you have a need for food, clothing and shelter, you are not as well equipped to fill that need as your parents are. Likewise, our heavenly Father is best equipped to fill our spiritual needs. Remember, he is the One who created us with those needs.

But how do you ‘get in touch’ with the Creator, so that your spiritual needs can be filled? In the last decade many young people, disillusioned with the mainline churches of Christendom, have joined other religious organizations. Some of these, like the Unification Church, claim to be Christian. Others, like the Divine Light Mission, do not. All of them claim that they can fill the spiritual needs of young people, but are they really helping their followers to draw near to our Creator? Many of them do not even teach the existence of a Creator, speaking only of a vague “first cause.” Even among those religions that claim to worship the Creator, how many tell their followers that he has both a name and a personality?

“For, look!” says the prophet Amos, “the Former of the mountains and the Creator of the wind, and the One telling to earthling man what his mental concern is, the One making dawn into obscurity, and the One treading on earth’s high places, Jehovah the God of armies is his name.”​—Amos 4:13.

Yes, Jehovah is the name of our Creator, the One best qualified to fill our spiritual needs. Did you notice in the above Bible verse that Jehovah is interested in letting mankind know his will for us? He is willing to ‘make known to us his mental concern,’ or, as Today’s English Version puts it: “He makes his thoughts known to man.”

By getting to know Jehovah God and studying his thoughts, you can get excellent answers to the question, ‘What will I do with my life?’ Would you like to learn about some youths who have done just that?

They Found It​—A Meaningful Life!

BIAGIO is an Italian, now in his 20’s. At 17 he began wandering around Europe. “I thumbed lifts from one place to another,” he says, “and had no other home than the sleeping bag on my back. Having my freedom was very important to me and I felt really free!” But not for long.

“When I returned home boredom would sweep over me. I wondered if it was possible to lead a fuller life. Outside the family circle I had no friends, no one was waiting to see me on my return and no one expected me to do anything. Quite often, as I sat watching people passing on the street, I wondered what others made of life. Sometimes I got drunk, usually when I was by myself and lonely.

“The sense of futility I experienced has driven some young people to drug dependence or even suicide. Once, in Amsterdam, when I was about to enter a place where drugs circulated freely, a young man threw himself off the balcony in a moment of depression, killing himself outright. He just missed me in his fall to the ground.

“I began to realize that the very evils we young people rejected in the ‘system’ were present among us too. We were not free from opportunism, strife, or egotism, and among ourselves we had merely created a system parallel to the old one. For example, young men professing high ideals encouraged their female companions to prostitute themselves to earn money.

“We condemned society, but we did not really want to do anything about it. Why not? We had no desire to work for a better future because we could not see any worthwhile future in the offing. I found myself growing more and more cynical. By the time I was 20 I felt old.

“One night at a friend’s place I came across a book about the Bible. It was called ‘The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life,’ published by the Watchtower Society. I read a few chapters . . .”

From that book Biagio learned that God had originally purposed for mankind to live together in peace and love. He found out that God cannot be held responsible for the worldwide greed and oppression that so upsets honest-hearted persons today.​—Deuteronomy 32:4, 5.

But if God isn’t responsible for the present world conditions, who is? “The chapter entitled ‘Are There Wicked Spirits?’ convinced me that Satan, the spirit creature who long ago rebelled against God, is dominating this entire system of things,” Biagio recalls. In fact, the Bible refers to Satan as “the god of this system of things” or “the evil god of this world.” (2 Corinthians 4:4, New World Translation; Today’s English Version) No wonder the world reflects such a selfish, cruel spirit!

But there is good news too. “I discovered that the Bible spoke of things I had always yearned for,” says Biagio. “It promised a new system of things free from war, disease, old age and death.” Yes, like millions of others who have read The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life, Biagio was thrilled to learn that the Bible has much to say about the future of our earth. It is not merely a book about the ‘hereafter.’ Does not the Bible say that “the meek shall inherit the earth”? (Psalm 37:11, Authorized Version) If God is not interested in setting matters straight on earth, why would Jesus have told his disciples to pray: “Let your kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth”?​—Matthew 6:10.

Excited by what he had learned, Biagio contacted Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a regular Bible study was arranged with him. “Right from the start, the scripture in John 8:32 appealed to me,” he relates. “It says, ‘The truth will set you free.’ I began to understand what true liberty means.” Now Biagio could see why his “free” life-style had been so unsatisfying. “I had really been a slave all along,” he says, “although I had tried to escape.”

“I began to attend the meetings held by the Witnesses and they kindly welcomed me to their Bible studies. The young people I met at these meetings were different from those I had known. They were happy, kind and respectful. Everyone had his own personal dignity and tried hard to show love for others. These were things I had always wanted to see put into practice!”

Many youths, like Biagio, have a vision of a better world. Perhaps you do. If you could be convinced that such a world is not just a dream, but a certainty, how would you feel? Would you be moved to want to share that “good news” with others? Biagio was. “I stopped smoking, improved my grooming, and told my girl friend that we could not continue to live an immoral life and have God’s approval,” he recalls. “I realized the necessity of these changes myself, without being told what to do.” Biagio wanted to qualify for baptism as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Why? Because Jehovah’s Witnesses helped him to find hope for the future and meaning in life. Biagio wanted to join the Witnesses in sharing what he had found with others. Today he and his wife are special pioneers, full-time preachers of the “good news.”

“Real freedom does not mean merely pleasing oneself,” he says. “I know that from experience. Other people need to know it too. The best way to show love for our neighbors is to spread this knowledge and help others to find a worthwhile way of life.”

Learning the truth about God’s kingdom gave Biagio hope for the future. The natural desire to share that hope with others gave him something truly worthwhile to do with his life.

Khem’s Search for the Purpose of Life

“Although young, I was a successful writer in my native Cambodia,” relates Khem. “I had prestige, success, a well-paying job​—everything that young people wish. Nevertheless, I did not see any particular sense in life. In fact, I wrote a novel entitled ‘Life Has No Purpose.’

“You see, I was raised as a strict Buddhist, but lost faith in that religion. After abandoning Buddhism I turned to philosophy, but soon found that for every philosopher there was an ‘anti-philosopher.’ What was I to believe? Time and again I asked myself what was I living for?

“In the 1970’s Cambodia was plunged into civil war. I witnessed executions. I saw mass graves as well as rivers and lakes that were full of dead bodies and literally red with blood. Two thousand years of Cambodian tradition were swept away almost overnight. No Cambodian would have thought it possible!

“The authorities were searching for me. So, with others, I fled into the jungle, hoping to reach Thailand. On that trip I thought much about the existence of God. How wonderful and intricate the creation is! Somehow it was not satisfying to give credit for this to mere accident or blind natural forces. Why not give the honor to a wise Creator?

“I pondered that question for a long time. Then, for the first time in my life, I really prayed from the heart. For the first time I realized that there has to be a Creator. But what was his purpose for man? Why does he permit suffering and evil such as I had witnessed in my own country? Which religion worships the true God? I realized that if I made it through the jungle, my search for answers to these questions would have priority in my life. After 10 days, worn out and half starved, we arrived in Thailand.

“At the refugee camp in Thailand I obtained a Bible in my native language and learned that the God who revealed himself to the ancient Jews was also the God of the Christians. From the Bible I saw that he has a personal name, Jehovah. I wanted to get to know this God better.

“After five months in Thailand I emigrated to Austria. One day I found a handbill that invited me to a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The name Jehovah meant something to me, but who were his witnesses? What could they bear witness to? Skeptical and curious I visited their Kingdom Hall.

“Since I was still learning German, I did not understand all of the talk I heard, but I did grasp that I was learning the good news of God’s kingdom. By means of Jehovah’s kingdom the earth was to be made a paradise, where people will no longer shed tears of grief and suffering and in which God will ‘make all things new.’ (Revelation 21:3-5) This was exactly what I expected from a mighty and righteous God! But why had not Jehovah created such a world long ago?

“The Witnesses began regular Bible discussions with me, answering my questions,” Khem says. During those discussions he learned that God created the world to be without pain, suffering and evil. These elements, which made Khem wonder about the meaning of life, had no place in God’s original purpose. It was not until mankind rejected Jehovah’s rulership that such troubles began. But the evidence is unmistakable that mankind’s sad history of rebellion and alienation from God will soon end!

“I rejoiced to find a religion that was proving its beliefs to me from the Bible, not asking blind belief,” Khem now says. “How much I would love to share the good news of God’s kingdom with my grief-stricken people in Cambodia! Since this is not presently possible, I am publishing the ‘good news’ to my fellowmen in Austria. What a privilege to be God’s co-worker and to have a share in this lifesaving work! Now I can say, full of joy, life does have a purpose!”

Appreciating Spiritual Needs

ALTHOUGH the Italian Biagio and the Cambodian Khem are different in many ways, they have something very important in common. They both realized that their lives were somehow empty, unfulfilled. Their material needs were satisfied, but their spiritual needs were not. They wanted answers to questions such as ‘Why is there evil in the world?’ and ‘What is the purpose of my life?’

Jesus began his most famous sermon by saying: “Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need, since the kingdom of the heavens belongs to them.” (Matthew 5:3) The experiences of Khem and Biagio illustrate this. When they heard the good news of God’s kingdom from Jehovah’s Witnesses, they responded joyfully, because, somewhere inside, they knew that it filled their spiritual need. Out of appreciation for this “good news” they now share it with others. After all, what could be more satisfying than helping other people to fill their spiritual need and gain the hope of everlasting life? It was appreciation for the “good news” that gave Biagio and Khem a purpose in life.

Sad to say, it is possible for young people born of Christian parents to know the “good news” and not appreciate it. “The day comes when a young person has to make ‘the truth’ his own,” said a teenage Witness. “He has to ask himself: Do I really believe it?” Some young people have permitted the world’s emphasis on the pursuit of riches and pleasures to blind them to their own spiritual needs. But will this lead to happiness? “The world is scary,” the young Witness continued. “Youths are upset. They don’t know what is going to happen to the world, and they don’t know what they want. But I know that Jehovah will allow things to go only so far. I have a security others do not have.” Isn’t that security and sense of purpose worth more than just ‘having a good time’? It certainly was to Biagio, and to others who have learned the truth about God’s kingdom.

There is another advantage in taking the truth seriously. “I have true friends,” says this young Witness. “People in school do not, and I feel sorry for them. Even at their parties they don’t really enjoy talking with one another unless they get ‘high’ or drunk.” Biagio experienced something similar before becoming one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Speaking of himself and others like him he recalls: “I think we were happy only in the evenings when we could go to some kind of club or discotheque. Inside these places the music and lights created an unreal atmosphere that kept boredom and loneliness outside​—but only for a while.”

In his prophecy on the times we live in, Jesus warned of neglecting spiritual needs, saying: “Pay attention to yourselves that your hearts never become weighed down with overeating and heavy drinking and anxieties of life, and suddenly that day be instantly upon you as a snare. For it will come in upon all those dwelling upon the face of all the earth. Keep awake, then, all the time making supplication that you may succeed in escaping all these things that are destined to occur, and in standing before the Son of man.”​—Luke 21:34-36.

Christians young and old need to take these words to heart. They should ask themselves, Am I really conscious of my spiritual need? Or have I let myself get distracted, ‘weighed down’ by either the pleasures or the problems of this system of things? Is God’s kingdom real to me? Am I truly a spiritual person? Or am I half-hearted, trying to ‘serve two masters’? It would be a terrible, needless tragedy for one to perish because he failed to appreciate his spiritual need!

Are you following Jesus’ counsel to keep spiritually awake, “all the time making supplication”? Jehovah no doubt heard Khem’s sincere prayer in the Cambodian jungle and arranged to fill his spiritual need. God will do the same for you, but you have to keep asking!

As the Bible points out, “the flesh is against the spirit in its desire, and the spirit against the flesh.” (Galatians 5:17) So the more you cater to fleshly desires, the more difficult it will be for you to appreciate your spiritual need. Is your entertainment​—the magazines you read, the TV shows and movies you watch—​making it difficult for you to appreciate your spiritual need? Why not make up your mind to set aside time every day to read at least a small portion of God’s Word and meditate on it? Why not replace some of your TV viewing with the reading of healthy Christian publications? The book that helped Biagio, The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life, would make a worthwhile study project.

Really, is there any excuse for a Christian who neglects spiritual things in these critical times? If a youth like Biagio, adrift in the world, could appreciate his spiritual need for purpose in life, what can be said of a young Christian who fails to appreciate that need? Is not his situation a little like that described by Jesus in Luke chapter 12? There Jesus spoke in a parable of his return in our days and said: “Then that slave that understood the will of his master but did not get ready or do in line with his will will be beaten with many strokes. . . . Indeed, everyone to whom much was given, much will be demanded of him.” (Luke 12:47, 48) If you have been given a knowledge of Bible prophecy and the significance of God’s kingdom, should you not take the above words to heart?

Jesus did not tell Christians to ‘lift their heads up’ because this decaying system of things would be saved. It is foolish to hope for that. Rather, he promised that his followers would be delivered. The Bible is clear in stating that the world as we know it is headed for destruction in a “great tribulation such as has not occurred since the world’s beginning until now, no, nor will occur again.”​—Matthew 24:21.

How do you feel about the world today? Can you see how utterly unreformable and worthy of destruction it is? If so, why not put yourself in line for “deliverance”? You can be like the people shown in vision to the prophet Ezekiel who were marked for salvation in ancient Jerusalem, which foreshadowed modern Christendom. Those people had been “sighing and groaning over all the detestable things . . . being done” in that unfaithful city. (Ezekiel 9:4) Today, also, Jehovah is looking for such persons who are groaning because of the wickedness that they see in the “Christian” and non-Christian societies around them. These must come to realize that their spiritual need can only be completely satisfied in a world ruled by God, where ‘His will is done on earth, as in heaven.’ (Matthew 6:10)