How do we construe the term “meaning”? Atheists and sloppy theists love the word because it is so empty of specifics. What they are doing is using an analogy (casting lives as if they were words or symbols) and analogizing poorly.
The word “meaning” indicates “to signify” - that is, to assign a place to a sign, symbol or word in its proper context.
The word “harpadzei” does not signify anything in English. In the context of the English language, it is nonsense.
In the context of the Greek language it occupies the same signification as the phrase “he grasps” does in English.
Something, like a word or a human life or a carburetor, only has “meaning” in a larger context.
Words are uttered by speakers who have the skill to locate them in a linguistic context and thus give them a signification or a “meaning.”
We can figure out what words signify. What do lives signify? What is the context of a human life? Who utters a life the way human beings utter words? Who contextualizes these lives so that they can be assigned a signification? A meaning?
A life assigning itself its own context is as nonsensical as a word assigning itself a signification. A human life only has “meaning” in the context assigned to it by someone who is able to signify something by it. Claiming that lives can have “meaning” outside of the will of the Father who creates them begs the question.
Thank you so much, dear friend! As usual, you put it as no one else could and in a way that shows it to be undeniable!