Hey Unbreakables, this piece is quite different from my usual writing; I’ve been questioning whether it should be shared. What started as a personal exploration of life’s meaning has evolved into an existential interrogation of reality itself.
This work is a deeply personal and vulnerable synthesis of my process and conclusions. I understand it may be polarising or outright rejected, as I too was tempted to abandon my findings. However, my commitment to truth, reason, and authenticity compels me to share with you what I believe to be the foundation of life’s meaning.
I don’t want to convince you against your will; I hope only that this will help you use your logic, research, and intellect to arrive at a well-founded anchor of meaning in a chaotic and uncertain life.
Ultimately, that is my mission with The Unbreakables: to help you navigate the highs and lows of life, foster resilience, find strength in suffering, and lead a life you can be proud of.
Now, let’s begin.
Requirements of Meaning: A Logical Interrogation
Philosophical Foundations: The Necessity of Meaning
The pursuit of meaning grapples with core human conflicts: our limited lifespan versus a desire for the eternal, the inevitability of suffering versus the search for purpose, and individual isolation versus the need for genuine connection.
Meaning must address these through principles drawn from real-world experience and reasoned necessity.
Scientific research on the brain shows that a sense of purpose regulates key chemicals like dopamine and serotonin, supporting mental stability and warding off issues such as depression or addiction, which can shorten life expectancy.
Meaning isn't optional; its absence inflicts harm on body, mind, and society.
History demonstrates that attempts to forge meaning without a firm foundation ultimately unravel.
This aligns with the felt reality of existence: a sense of being thrust into an unpredictable world where we crave clarity amid apparent chaos, as Heidegger described in his concept of thrownness, or the clash between our longing for order and life's seeming randomness, as Camus explored in his idea of the absurd.
Without a reliable anchor, efforts to self-define can lead to profound disconnection and emptiness, where the weight of inventing everything breeds a kind of nausea, much like Sartre conveyed.
To resolve these challenges, meaning must satisfy five fundamental requirements:
Stable Identity: Offering a consistent self-understanding amid change, countering feelings of existential drift.
Redemptive Suffering: Converting affliction into opportunities for growth, moving beyond endless cycles of desire and disillusionment, as Arthur Schopenhauer portrayed.
Ethical Clarity Without Coercion: Providing universal moral guidance that is freely embraced, avoiding rigid abstractions or built-up resentments, as Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche critiqued in different ways.
Unwavering Access: Ensuring hope, worth and dignity for all, even in moments of failure, to overcome shame.
Transhistorical Scalability: Persisting across eras and cultures, resisting obsolescence, as Hegel considered in historical progress.
These requirements, derived from human nature and logical demands, necessitate a personal, transcendent reality. These aren’t random. They’re the structural minimum viable conditions for meaning to endure through suffering, failure, death, and time.
Collapse of Self-Constructed Systems
Historical patterns reveal that systems of meaning built solely on human initiative, whether driven by the pursuit of pleasure, power, or ideology, inevitably falter.
Empires like Rome fragmented due to internal weaknesses; modern movements, such as communism, descended into disenchantment or oppression.
Approaches that emphasise pure individual choice often burden the self with overwhelming responsibility, frequently resulting in despair. Psychologically, these breakdowns diminish resilience; socially, they breed relativism or authoritarianism.
A finite framework, reliant on personal effort, lacks protection against life's contingencies. Logic, therefore, points to an external, eternal source capable of universalising suffering, delivering clear ethics, and ensuring enduring relevance, as Kant's universal principles and Durkheim's societal bonds illustrate.
Analysis of Meaning Frameworks
To evaluate these systems, I assess them against the five requirements.
Stoicism: Anchors meaning in rational harmony with nature, promoting virtue-based resilience. It reframes pain as neutral and offers universal principles chosen through reason. However, its emphasis on detachment can isolate, reducing suffering to tolerance rather than redemption.
Buddhism: Seeks liberation from suffering through core truths, accepting impermanence and no fixed self. Affliction leads to enlightenment via detachment. Yet, this impersonality may fragment identity, lacking relational depth.
Judaism: Centres on a covenantal relationship with God through ethical teachings and steadfast love. Trials foster growth, with commands viewed as a partnership. But linking access to merit can limit inclusivity.
Islam: Focuses on submission to divine wisdom, rooted in unity. Challenges strengthen faith when laws are followed willingly. However, without an incarnate presence, it misses embodied solidarity in hardship, leaving followers isolated in suffering.
Secular Humanism: Affirms meaning via reason, human dignity, and progress. Crises are addressed collectively, with morals based on the shared good. But its reliance on temporal conditions leaves it vulnerable without transcendence.
Nihilism: Posits freedom in life's meaninglessness, affirming existence despite pain. Yet, without grounding, self-constructed meaning erodes and decays into moral relativism.
Existentialism: Empowers authentic self-creation, affirming choice amid absurdity. But isolation in suffering often breeds anguish, without communal unity and embodied solidarity.
The Only Structure That Doesn’t Fail
Jesus Christ uniquely embodies a reality that comprehensively addresses these conflicts. His incarnation connects the finite with the infinite, delivering:
Stable Identity: Through gracious adoption as God's children (1 John 3:1, Ephesians 2:8-9), surpassing isolation with divine belonging.
Redemptive Suffering: The cross weaves pain into resurrection hope (Isaiah 53:5), inviting transformative participation.
Ethical Clarity: Agape love establishes a universal, relational standard that is voluntarily embraced, fostering unity and shared responsibility. John 13:34: "Love as I loved"
Unwavering Access: Mercy renews dignity, as in Peter's restoration (John 21:17), and is accessible even in times of great difficulty, as in Matthew 11:28: "Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
Transhistorical Scalability: Discipleship (Matthew 28:19) adapts His essence across cultures and ages, withstanding cultural evolution.
Christ's declaration, "I am the way, truth, life" (John 14:6), unites the contingent with the universal. Christianity's proven endurance, spanning diverse cultures and millennia, outlasts shifting philosophies or divided traditions.
Conclusion
Meaning is essential for human existence; self-built systems inevitably disintegrate, making a resilient foundation necessary. Christ uniquely satisfies these demands. Alternatives provide valuable perspectives but ultimately splinter; Christ's relational framework harmonises endurance, release, covenant, submission, rationality, freedom, and authenticity.
To contest this, one would need to refute the necessity of meaning or present a superior alternative. Failing that, embracing Christ emerges as an ontological necessity for coherent belief in a meaningful life.
History and Prophecy
A Historical Account of The Suffering, Death, and Burial of Jesus Christ
These documented events of Jesus of Nazareth's execution under Roman rule, around 30-33 A.D. The following details, drawn from Gospel accounts and corroborated by non-Christian sources, outline his arrest, trial, suffering, death, and burial.
Arrest and Trial
Jesus was arrested at night in Jerusalem by Jewish religious authorities, without formal Roman charges. He faced the Sanhedrin, where conflicting testimonies failed to establish guilt. Sent to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, Jesus was found innocent by Pilate’s admission, as recorded in all four Gospels. Yet, to quell potential unrest during Passover, Pilate authorised crucifixion.
Scourging and Humiliation
Roman custom mandated scourging with a flagrum, a whip embedded with bone or metal, causing severe blood loss and trauma. Soldiers mocked Jesus, dressing him in a purple robe (symbolising royalty), crowning him with thorns, striking him, and spitting on him; actions consistent with Roman treatment of condemned prisoners.
Crucifixion
Jesus carried his crossbeam (patibulum) to Golgotha but collapsed, requiring Simon of Cyrene to assist. Nailed through hands and feet, a method reserved for non-citizens and political threats, he was crucified between two criminals. He remained largely silent, offering words of forgiveness, as recorded in historical accounts.
Death and Burial
Crucifixion typically caused death by asphyxiation, blood loss, or cardiac arrest. A spear thrust confirmed Jesus’ death, releasing blood and fluid indicative of pericardial effusion. Unusually, Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy council member, secured Pilate’s permission to bury Jesus in a new rock-hewn tomb, defying standard Roman practice.
Structural Parallels Between Isaiah 53 and Jesus' Ordeal
The following passage from the book of Isaiah shares the details and context of a man persecuted for the sin of man laid upon Him:
But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.
He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth.
Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream.
But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people. He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man's tomb.
But it was the Lord's good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord's good plan will prosper in his hands.
When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.
The book of Isaiah, written around 700 B.C. and authenticated through the Dead Sea Scrolls, predates the birth of Jesus by approximately 700 years.
Core details: piercing, flogging, silence amid accusation, unjust sentencing, criminal-like burial in a wealthy tomb, and sin-bearing correspond precisely to the gospel and historical accounts of Christ’s trial, crucifixion, death and burial.
Such specific and remarkable alignment implies prophecy realised in Christ.
A Personal Encounter
When I was younger, my stepdad, Mark, would spend time with me working on his speedway car in the shed.
We'd spend a lot of time at the speedway; it's what got me interested in cars, drifting, and swinging spanners - the things that’d set the stage for the rest of my life.
When he passed away, I changed most of my social media names to "dannytwofive" as a tribute to him (his racing number was 25).
In 2018, I broke my neck in a drifting crash, becoming quadriplegic. I spent a lot of time thinking through my life, all the things I’d screwed up, the people I'd let down, the stupid things I'd done.
I tried to forgive myself, and I never could.
I just carried it with me all the time, slowly eating away at me.
I didn't know how to deal with it.
Until a friend gifted me a Bible.
I wasn't sure where to start, so I decided to start with my stepdad's name and racing number:
Mark 2:5:
"When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralysed man: 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'"
Never have I felt more relieved, more at peace, than I did after reading that verse.
The profound alignment of my stepdad’s name and racing number, my life experiences, most significant struggles and specificity to my quadriplegia moved me to tears of awe and relief.
Although this was my subjective experience, the alignment was too perfect not to be taken seriously.
Picking Up My Cross
Understanding the realisation of prophecy in the book of Isaiah, reasoning my way to Christ as the ontological foundation of meaning, and encountering Him through Mark 2:5, left me with a deeply troubling choice.
I could try to deny archaeologically validated historical accounts, fight desperately against my logical conclusions, or reject my encounter with Christ despite the almost impossible specificity to my life.
Or, I could accept the conclusion of research, history, reason and encounter; that Jesus is who He said He is:
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
I could accept that I am forgiven, I am loved, I am called, I am heard, and that I am never alone.
However, this acceptance would come at a cost.
Because words did not forgive me.
Ephesians 1:7:
"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace."
Many want the comfort of redemption without the confrontation of the crucifixion; I did too, but now I refuse to look away.
I crucified Jesus.
Not just the Romans. Not just the Sanhedrin.
Me.
Every lie, every betrayal, every time I choose pride, comfort, and control, I drive nails through the flesh of our God.
I didn't just reject Him.
I nailed Him to a cross and mocked Him as He bled.
That's the cost of sin.
So I do not shy away from the nails, because only when I acknowledge my guilt can I grasp the full extent of His grace.
He died for me, but also because of me.
I carry the weight of this truth, not in shame, but in awe.
Because as we crucified our God, He said:
"Father, forgive them."
This is where the narrative of Christianity as comfort collapses, as fully embracing Christ's love for me necessitates the acceptance of the moral and existential weight of my crucifixion of Him.
This weight, taken seriously, instils a sense of responsibility: I am called to deny myself, pick up my cross and follow Him, leaving me wondering, “What kind of God could love and forgive a man who crucifies Him daily?”
And so I proclaim my faith not as blind belief, nor a comforting story or passive acceptance, but with a deeply reasoned, logical, historical, prophetic, and personal understanding of the truth of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I wholeheartedly accept my responsibility in it, and the existential stakes of failing to live by my faith.
Galatians 2:20
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Faith, Proof, and Rationality
Faith as Epistemic Trust
Christianity posits salvation via faith, as an intimate, connective trust in Jesus Christ. This reliance isn't unreasoned, yet defies reduction to mere proof. Faith emerges amid objective ambiguity.
Søren Kierkegaard observed that faith eludes absolute certainty:
"Without risk, there is no faith. Faith is the opposition between profound inner zeal and external doubt."
Christ solicits belief not by compulsion, but through a subtle invitation; divinity is both concealed and disclosed, as per the ancient declaration:
"Truly, you are a God who hides himself" (Isaiah 45:15).
Why Christianity Must Not Be Proven
If Christianity were logically or scientifically proven in an airtight sense, it would annihilate the possibility of faith’s salvation. Certainty would demand acceptance; trust would be irrelevant.
But salvation is not epistemic submission; it is relational surrender. To “prove” Christianity in the strongest sense might satisfy the intellect while leaving the soul untouched.
As Blaise Pascal recognised: “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.”
In this light, proof cannot produce the humility, repentance, or trust necessary for union with Christ. Faith remains the proper channel of access to divine truth because it engages not only reason but the will, conscience, and heart.
The Test of Truth
Truth in Christianity is not an objective, empirical proof; it is a Person:
“I am the truth” (John 14:6).
The final test of meaning is not argument, but encounter. Just as one cannot prove love, but only experience and respond to it, so too with Christ.
Conclusion
Now, you may understand why I was hesitant to share. As an Atheist of fifteen years, there were times throughout this journey when I wished I could turn back, to return to the comfort of my self-constructed meaning, moral relativism and lack of spiritual accountability.
However, my quest for meaning has burned it all to the ground, replacing it with something much more difficult to bear, but infinitely more profound; a purpose and meaning in life far beyond what I could have imagined, and the willingness to stake my life on the truth of the Biblical account of the life, death and resurrection of my lord and savior, the way, the truth, and the life; Jesus Christ.
I’m not asking for your blind belief, I’m merely sharing my hard-fought faith.
Yours in Christ,
Danny.
Wow, what a testimony to intellectual integrity, diligence in the pursuit of truth, and perseverance in suffering!
Blessings upon blessings be upon you!
Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.
Thank you so much for your words. They’ve truly been a blessing to my soul.