Author Os Guinness joins the show to talk about his new book, The Great Quest: Invitation to an Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning.

TRANSCRIPT

0:01

Hey everyone. Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host, Mark Moore. And on the show today, we are so privileged to have prolific author and social critic Os Guinness, and he's the author editor, over more than 30 books. His most recent book is called the great quest, invitation to unexamined life, in a sure path, meaning it's a fascinating conversation that he and I get to have. And he is a fascinating author and has lived an amazing life. I hope you enjoy the show. And I hope you're inspired to live an examined life a life that asked questions that seeks answers, and that responds to faith in Christ enjoy the show.

0:46

Os, thank you so much for joining us on the show to talk about your new book and also talk about your your amazing career as a writer and all that you've written.

1:05

Well, it's a great privilege to be with you. Thank you, Mark.

1:09

Yeah, and it really has been struck by by your new book, The great quest, and just the idea of searching for meaning and understanding direction in life, I think it's gonna be so helpful for our students and and and students who have just graduated who are still very much maybe searching for direction in their life. And also, even you know, and you know, this, under this, even as you get older, you still have a search for meaning in our lives. So excited to have you on the show, to talk about that. Where are you joining us today?

1:48

I'm joining you from Montauk on Long Island in New York.

1:52

That's great. So we're coast to coast today on the podcast. When you talk about the great quest, I'd love to kind of maybe start right there. What what is the great quest?

2:07

Well, the great quest is the journey towards the search for the meaning of life. And I think that notion of the journey, the picture, the journey, is probably the most universal human picture of what life is about. So it's an odd thing today that many of the philosophers think that the meaning of life is irrelevant. You know, one book actually said, it's only for madmen, and comedians. But that's absolutely crazy. Because almost everything we do, assumes and requires meaning, or compensation now, or going into the film you want to watch, whatever it is, meaning is so important. And ultimately, only if you know the meaning of life, can you really make the most of life and live a life worthy of life?

2:59

Yeah, and I think journey is just a great picture of that. And I think it is universal, because we have that idea of, of being on a journey together. I'd love to hear a little bit about your journey of, of how you started to think about the meaning of life and pursuing that he talks about a little bit in the book.

3:20

Well, I grew up my first 10 years was spent in China, with incredibly wartime circumstances. So I was born in the war with Japan, 17 million were killed in that war, when the Japanese army invaded the Chinese flooded the Yellow River where we were, they killed 900,000 of their own people overnight, because they won them. And then my parents who are medical missionaries, my parents and I were in a famine in which 5 million died in three months, including, sadly, my two brothers. Wow. And then we lived and we then we moved to Nanking, Nanjing today, which had been, you know, on the receiving end of the Rape of Nanking. And I experienced the first two years of the reign of terror under Mao Zedong. So my first 10 years were quite dramatic. Yeah, war torn, revolutionary, and so on. So I'm sure that's part of what gave me a very realistic view of life. But it was really only back in England when I was a boarding school and I began to really search for myself. And then I'm very grateful that when I came to faith, I came to faith and I went to university in the 1960s. Because the 60s, you know, drugs