The Westminster Shorter Catechism provides the most memorable Christian answer: 'The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.' Colossians 1:16 confirms it: 'All things were created by him and for him.' The Christian answer to the meaning of life is not self-fulfillment, happiness, or achievement — it is knowing, glorifying, and enjoying God. 95/100 Christ-Centered.
Everyone lives by some answer to the meaning of life even if they've never articulated it. The person who says "the purpose of life is to be happy" is living by a philosophy. The person who says "there is no purpose" is living by one too. The question is not whether you have an answer but whether your answer is true.
The major secular answers: hedonism (pleasure and experience), self-actualization (becoming your best self), achievement (leaving a legacy), relationships (love and connection), and secular meaninglessness (there is no inherent meaning — we create our own). Each of these has a partial truth, and each fails on examination to provide a foundation that can bear the weight of actual human life — particularly suffering, death, and moral failure.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) asks: "What is the chief end of man?" The answer: "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." This is not dry theological formula — it is one of the most liberating and practically significant statements ever made about human existence.
Colossians 1:16 — "For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible... all things have been created through him and for him." You exist for God. This is not an insult; it is the best news about your existence. You were made by the most beautiful Being in existence, for the most beautiful relationship that exists, for the most meaningful purpose in the universe.
Ecclesiastes — the Bible's most honest examination of the search for meaning — exhaustively tests every human candidate for meaning (pleasure, wisdom, achievement, relationships, work) and finds each "vanity" (Hebrew: hebel, vapor) when treated as ultimate. The conclusion (12:13): "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." This is not resignation but liberation: you are freed from the impossible task of making your own existence meaningful through your own achievements.
If your chief purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, then: suffering has a context (it is temporary in light of eternal enjoyment of God); your ordinary life has dignity (every action can be done "for the Lord" — Colossians 3:23); and the loss of what you love does not destroy your purpose (since your ultimate joy is in God, not in circumstances). This framework is not a platitude but a genuinely different way of constructing a human life.
C.S. Lewis formulated it most memorably: "If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." The search for meaning is itself evidence for God. See our guides on Does God Exist? and How to Become a Christian. See our Theology hub. The Gospel Coalition's essay on the purpose of life provides thorough treatment. GotQuestions on the meaning of life provides accessible biblical grounding.