As a young child, acting on immediate, impulsive desires is meaningful. As we get older we realize that we can find more meaning in forgoing immediate gratification in exchange for more medium to long term aims. However, this realization does not happen until after the sacrifice is made. We have to willingly enter into a meaning deficit first.

Someone who takes meaning seriously might consider a pattern: in order to level up with meaning in life, one must willingly endure a period of meaning deficit. If this person was dissatisfied with the meaning in their life, they might actively seek out meaning deficit in order to potentially level up.

Offering some advice, I would explain to them two basics: (1) our meaning foundation is built on “positive” meaning and (2) meaning is highly dependent on context. By positive meaning, I’m referring to types of pro-social behavior that fulfills our desire for acceptance, social affirmation, etc. A useful way to create meaning deficit is to transport yourself into a hostile world. Within a hostile world, our entire category of positive meaning plummets toward meaninglessness.

The most practical way to transform this world into a hostile world so as to create a meaning deficit with the hope of a meaning level up is through the use of selective attention and memory. You can filter out experiences indicative of a benevolent or neutral world and hold tightly to painful experiences or memories. After enduring this meaning deficit, eventually new meaning will be presented to you in the form of “negative” meaning. This takes the form of a desire for justice and even vengeance.

It’s important to note that moving through this pattern of meaning is like swimming upstream. The tide is going to naturally take you to the more foundational forms of meaning unless you consciously will yourself upstream.

If you go to this dark place, you risk becoming angry, resentful, judgmental, and unlikeable. You might occasionally lash out at other people in a way that makes you feel empty afterward. You followed this path of meaning for fulfillment but you feel empty. You will decide this path is counterproductive and reject it.

Still, in this dark place there is a child. This child is said to be the chosen one, an heir to a great kingdom. He will take on your story with all your problems and work miracles. In exchange you must take on his story.

In his story, he is the child of God who has been abandoned by God. To take on his story means that you now must believe in God. When he experiences identity crisis and despair as a result of his abandonment, then you experience the same. When he wants revenge against God, then you must desire the same.

Accompanying the child is the man who goes on a journey. This man is a hard man. He doesn’t have the patience for your feelings. As far as he is concerned, you are in and now responsible for a debt whether you like it or not. It is a debt of meaning. You either pay interest on this debt or you are cast out with the unbelievers and hypocrites in the outer darkness of the dead. He demands service to the point of enslavement.

You can turn away from this child, but when you do, you are turning your back on meaning. There is nothing more meaningful than serving the child of God who has been abandoned by God.

Hyperbolic drivel. Keep it up and you can start a new religion.

Those who are addicted to the taste of death choose what they drink solely based on how it initially tastes.

Listen, the dead will always serve death, but whoever eats what is dead will make the dead come to life.

In case it needs to be said, what I teach is not suitable for children. Jesus comes first. The Son of Man is after.

Jesus was a moron. Like all his followers.

Duping the incredulous is easy and many are very good at it, and the money is good.

I don't want to be the advocate for anyone's point of view, but I find appalling that the critiques to Craig's expositions are always religion-based. He's not really starting from religion, but rather from human condition. The russian authors and german psychoanalysts that I have read probably would not have despised a conversation with this man, and the way he talks about loss and conquest of meaning feels like first-hand experience. I don't remember who said: "before psychoanalysis I was seen as well adjusted and felt like a sack of potatoes. After psychoanalysis I feel well adjusted, and am seen as a sack of potatoes by others".
The fact that we need meaning is not a matter of religion, it is, for most, a fact. The fact that actions don't give meaning by themselves is another fact for a lot of people. I don't think Sartre was a religious nutjob, but most of his work was a quest for meaning. Most of what this guy says about his relationship with God is what Freud would say about the super-es. There are forces inside us, that we do not fully control. But we know that we can reign at least over ourselves. A lot of psychoses were born from these 2 statements, and I do not think Craig is reinforcing said psychoses, but rather trying to process them. Sorry for bad english, I am a foreigner.