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scripture from the heart of the church. Today I'd like to address a question that everybody has and that is, why am I here?

What's the purpose of my life?

Well, years ago ago a former Marxist atheist by the name of

Alistair McIntyre addressed that question in a book that became something of a

modern classic entitled After Virtue. In this book he rediscovers

virtue and basically introduces the whole world to it but he does so in a way that is anything but merely academic or abstract.

I'm looking at page 216, where he writes, I can only answer the question, what am I to do? If I can answer the prior question of what story or stories do I

find myself apart? We enter human society that is with one or more imputed characters,

roles into which we have been drafted,

and we have to learn what they are in order to be able to understand

how others respond to us and how our responses to them

are apt to be construed. Now that might sound like an academic quotation and I suppose

it is at one level but I'd like to unpack it because what am I here for

presupposes a previous question. Now that might sound like a rather abstract quote, but I'd like to unpack it in a way that is more personal and concrete.

What am I here for? Well, answer this question first, of what story is my life apart? Well you can see that in

terms of your own family, you can also see it in terms of your own country, you can

see it in terms of your own country. You can see it in

in terms of Western civilization. But we're more than family

members, we're more than citizens, and we're more than

...