Pastor W. Robert McClelland had to endure the painful experience of
hearing his grown son curse God and cry out in angry rebellion at Him. His
son had worked hard for congressman Jerry Litton in his senatorial
campaign. When the polls closed that Tuesday night and Litton come
through with an upset victory, it was an experience of great joy. But as is so
often the case with life, it suddenly switched tracks and the entire Litton
family was killed in a plane crash on the way to the victory celebration.
You can put yourselves in the shoes of a young man who has just poured
himself out for a cause, and then seeing it all come to an end just as it was
beginning. The absurdity of it; the futility of it, and the total nonsense and
utter waste of it is hard to swallow. He was a Christian, but he felt like
Solomon in his very sub-Christian mind in this book of Ecclesiastes. His
preacher father did not like to hear his deep negative expressions, but he
knew in his heart he had felt the same way on another occasion. He was a
professor at a mid-western college, and the wife of one of his colleagues
became very ill. He and other Christian friends battered the gates of heaven
for her with prayer, and they spent hours at her bedside. The doctor said she
would not live, but she did recover and was home for Christmas celebration.
It was a great victory but she had a relapse, and on New Year's Day she died.
He was so angry at God that he refused to make excuses for God at the
memorial service. He said, "This is your doing God, you get yourself off the
hook. If this is your idea of wisdom, then you explain it."
He, like his son, experienced the deep dark feeling of meaninglessness. It is
that feeling that nothing makes any sense at all, and that life is a joke, but a
joke that isn't even funny. You feel like everything you do is as worthless as
rearranging deck chair on the Titanic. What's the difference when the ship of
life is sinking? This is not a pleasant experience, but it is a universal
experience, and at one time or another almost every Christian will get a taste
of this bitter stuff. Solomon had to eat it as a regular diet for sometime. Few
Christians will have to endure what he did, but the point is, his experience of
the meaninglessness of life is in the Bible because it is, was, and will be, as
long as history lasts, a very relevant issue.
Dr. Viktor Frankl, a leading psychotherapist in Europe for generations,
developed Logotherapy to deal with this very issue. He survived the Nazi
concentration camp experience, and he learned through it that those who
survived while others in as good health died, did so because they had meaning
to their lives. Logotherapy is healing through meaning. If you could get
people to see some rhyme or reason in the meaninglessness of life, they can
live happy lives, or at least survive. Meaninglessness is the number one
enemy of human happiness. Studies show that in both Communist and
Capitalist countries modern meaninglessness has multiplied. You might
assume that this is due to the masses of the poor who cannot get in on the joys
of affluence, but this is not the case.
This malady afflicts those who would feel right at home at Solomon's table.
A study of 100 alumni of Harvard who were successful doctors, lawyers, and
business men, 20 years after their graduation, made this clear. The majority
of them had the feeling of futility, and they wondered what the meaning of
their achievements was all about. The Bible deals with the real, and this
matter of meaninglessness is very real, and has been one of the major
struggles of mankind. Dr. Frankl calls it the existential vacuum. It results
from the frustration of not being able to find meaning even in those things
which are suppose to be the goals of life, such as wealth, fame, power, and all
the other things Solomon succeeded in gaining in great quantity.
The paradox is that the more man succeeds in getting all that life offers
under the sun, the more he questions the meaning of life. It is because when
he does not have them he can hope and dream that they would fill his need for
meaning, but when he has them he knows they do not, and he can no longer
delude himself. Success and progress, therefore, do not take away the
struggle for meaning, but they add to it. That is why the very successful often
battle with despair, for they have everything and yet they are empty of the
one thing they most need, and that is meaning.
Wood Allen says that his only regret in life is that he is not somebody else
expresses, with tongue and cheek, the dilemma of modern man. He writes,
"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path
leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total distinction. Let us
pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." Many feel that these are the
only choices. Solomon in this book is also a pessimist, and he experienced the
despair that comes with the search for meaning, but as we follow him we find
that though the road is rough it does reach a desirable destination and a
meaningful choice. We want to look at his journey in three stages.
I. HIS QUESTIONING OF THE MEANING OF LIFE.
This is the theme of chapter one where he asks, what is the sense of it all?
It is the striving after the wind and all is vanity. Dr. Frankl, who works with
those who suffer from meaninglessness, says it is a good thing for man to
question the meaning of life. Animals never do this, but it is a very human
experience. He says it is being honest and sincere to question life's meaning,
for to just take it for granted is to live on the level of the animal. As long as
there is food and comfort the animal does not care, for that is enough. It is
not enough for man, for he wants more because he is more than an animal.
Questioning the meaning of life is the first step in the quest to find that
meaning. Those who never take the first step never make the journey, and so
they add nothing to life's meaning. It is a fact of life that those who often give
us the most are those who question the most. God is saying to us by allowing
the book of Ecclesiastes to be a part of His Word to man. It is okay to
question. It is not out of God's will to doubt, struggle, and be skeptical about
life. In fact, it makes you more authentic and realistic if you can honestly face
up to the dark side of reality and not pretend it does not exist.
The Christian who goes through life always saying that God is in heaven
and all is right with the world may enjoy his isolation from the real world, but
he will not be enjoyed by the world. In other words, he will never be the salt
of the world making life taste better, for he will never get out of the salt
shaker into the meat and add to life's meaning. He will not be compassionate
and caring for a world that is hurting, because he refuses to acknowledge
that it is. He insulates himself from the world by denying that tragedy and
despair is real. It has to be of value to struggle with the meaning of life, or
this book has no business being in the Bible, and is itself meaningless.
We need to learn from this book to avoid extremes. There is the extreme
of never questioning life and its meaning, and this makes us superficial and
unrealistic optimists. Then there is the extreme of always questioning life and
being skeptical of all ultimate values, and this makes us hardened pessimists.
Positive pessimism questions life and its meaning, but always with the
assurance that in God there is an answer. Solomon questions everything, and
yet he never questions the reality of God. This is what keeps him from being
a pure pessimist.
Novelist Romain Gary in book The Ski Bum has an older man tell a
restless and alienated young person: "Your generation is suffering from what
for lack of a better word I shall call over-debunk.....the generation before
yours went too far with their debunking job. You went over-board...You
were so angry with all the dangerous phony piper's tunes that you ended up
by breaking all the pipes and hating all the tunes. You have reduced the
world to a spiritual shambles. God is ha-ha-ha. The soul is ho-ho-ho. Booze
is reality. Love is sex....But you don't seem to enjoy it. Something is still
missing, eh? You got rid of God and, isn't that funny, something is still
missing." It is tragically funny when you think about it. You throw out God
and then wonder why something is still missing. People do it all the time and
do not even realize how foolish it is.
II. HIS QUEST FOR THE MEANING OF LIFE.
This is the theme of chapter 2. This book could well be titled Solomon's
Search. He leaves no stone unturned in his quest to find that which gives life
meaning. I made a list of all the things Solomon tried and I can't imagine that
there is anything new under the sun that could be tried. He tried all of these
things:
1. Being a workaholic.
2. A nature lover.
3. A history fanatic.
4. Being an intellectual.
5. Pleasure seeking. He gave himself up to the trio of wine, women and song.
If life's meaning could be found in the good times with alcohol, sex, music,
laughter and fun, Solomon would have discovered it.
6. He tried creativity of all kinds, and he built marvelous buildings.
7. He tried possessions and had things from all over the world in great
quantity.
8. He tried power and being superior to everyone. He was number one.
9. He did not limit himself to what was wise, but gave folly and madness a
chance to prove their case, and he acted the fool to see life from all sides.
The one thing you have to give Solomon credit for was his thoroughness.
He covered all bases, and yet when the experiment was over he came up with
the same thing he would have had had he chased the wind, and that was
nothing. He could not find the meaning of life in any of these experiences, nor
in all of them combined. Two out of three ain't bad, but nothing out of
everything is really sad. This Solomon search is what characterizes the life of
most people.
One of the reasons we live in a world of constant change is due to man's
quest for meaning. Nothing can stay the same very long when it is not
adequate to satisfy this thirst for meaning. There is constant change because
there is constant dissatisfaction. Solomon tried everything, and the human
spirit in general is like that of Solomon. The answer must be just around the
corner in some new experience, and so life is a quest for meaning by seeking
endless new experiences. This means nothing can be stable for it soon gets old
and boring because it does not fill the emptiness.
Solomon's experience is being repeated over and over again as people
everywhere discover all of their achievements still leaves them unsatisfied.
This is what motivates people to do all sorts of foolish things. People throwaway
good marriages because they think marrying someone new will bring
them happiness. One wife said, "I feel like an unfinished symphony."
Another said, "I feel like a column of figures that needs totaling. There
should be something that will sum things up and bring the various strands of
life together." This quest for meaning affects marriages, and it affects jobs.
Many men are constantly dreaming and scheming because their job does not
fill life with meaning as it ought. Change is the name of the game because it is
man's perpetual hope that change will lead to meaning. Solomon says forget
it, for going from one meaningless event to another does not add meaning to
life.
III. HIS QUINTESSENCE OF THE MEANING OF LIFE.
This is not a word we often use, but it fits what Solomon does for us as no
other word does. Quintessence means the essential principle of anything in its
most concentrated form. Quint, as we know, means 5, and so quintessence
means the 5th essence of something. This only makes sense when we go back
to the history of philosophy, and to the time when men said the 4 elements of
all reality are earth, air, fire, and water. These were the 4 essences-the 4
essentials. These represent everything under the sun.
But for those who recognize a higher reality, such as the celestial or
heavenly, there was a 5th essence. The quintessence of anything is what it is
from the heavenly or ultimate perspective. That is precisely where Solomon
finally comes to in his search for the meaning of life. He could not find it
anywhere under the sun, but he did find it when he looked beyond the sun to
the God who made the sun and all creation. He gives us the meaning of life in
a nutshell in the last two verses of this book. "Here is the conclusion of the
matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is whole duty of
man, for God will bring every deed into judgement, including every hidden
thing, whether it is good or evil."
You may not see it at first, but his conclusion is the very essence of both the
Old and New Testament. Solomon was one of the wisest men whoever lived
after all, for by his wisdom he was able to sum up the meaning of life with
these two principles-relationship and responsibility. Relationship to God by
fearing Him and obeying Him, and responsibility to man, for you will be
judged for everything you do as to its good or evil. This is indeed the
quintessence of the heavenly perspective, for that is what
the Ten Commandments are all about. They are about relating to God as the
supreme Person in your life, and secondly of being responsible in your
relationships to your fellowmen. Jesus sums up the whole law with these two
great commandments: To love God with your whole being, and to love your
neighbor as yourself. Jesus said it simpler and clearer, but the fact is,
Solomon's conclusion is the same, for to love God is to fear and obey Him,
and to love your neighbor as yourself is to recognize you will be held
accountable for the good or evil you do in their lives, and so you must live
responsibly.
If one truly keeps the first table of the law and makes God supreme, he
will keep the second table and live responsibly toward his neighbor. If a man
truly prays the first part of the Lord's Prayer, "hallowed be thy name, thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," then he will truly
mean the second part, "Forgive us as we forgive others, and lead us not into
temptation." If one keeps the first commandment to love God, he will follow
through on the golden rule and do unto others as he would have them do unto
him.
Solomon's quintessence of life's meaning is the same as all the rest of the
Bible. It is found in an obedient relationship to God. Life under the sun only
has meaning when there is a link to that which is above the sun. Augustine
said it in a sentence-"Our souls are restless till they find rest in Thee." A. J.
Cronin put it in a paragraph: "There comes a moment when man wearies of
the things he has won; when he suspects with bewilderment and dismay that
there is another purpose, some profound and eternal purpose, in his being. It
is then that he discovers that beyond the kingdom of the world there exists a
kingdom of the soul."
Solomon took a terribly twisted road to get their, but he did finally learn
that life only has meaning in relationship to God. This means that life
without God really is meaningless. They ultimate in meaninglessness is to be
without God and hope in the world. Will Durant in his book On The
Meaning Of Life was biblically accurate when he wrote, "The greatest
question of our time is not communism verses individualism, not Europe
verses America, not ever East verses West; it is whether man can bear to live
without God. The answer of Solomon is, no, men cannot bear it, for
everything minus God equals nothing, and men cannot live in a universe
without meaning, for his very nature, which is made by God, demands it.
Man has no alternative for he needs God to give meaning to life, and nothing
else will satisfy that need.
What this means then is that much of life is meaningless because it is life
without God. Solomon is not out of line at all by his pessimistic cry of vanity,
vanity, all is meaningless. Life under the sun that has no link to God above
the sun is, in fact, a life with no ultimate meaning. The despair of the man
without God is not superficial, but it is reality. Meaninglessness is a major
malady of our time because modern man is trying the same experiments that
Solomon did. They are trying to find life's meaning in everything but God,
and they are learning the hard way, just as Solomon did, that all is an empty
world without God.
Solomon is not all wet, but he is telling it like it is, all of the philosophers
who seek for meaning without God tend to come to the same conclusion that
life is futile search in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there. The
paradox of meaninglessness is that it explains so many things about life. If
everything has meaning, and every event and tragedy, and all brutal evil and
mindless folly are a part of some plan, then the mystery is indeed mind
boggling. If a man's dashing into a McDonald's and killing innocent people
by the dozens is meaningful, then we really have a problem. But if the
meaningless is real, then the problem is solved, for it is meaningless. You
don't need to find a meaning for the meaningless, for by definition it doesn't
have any.
This explains why the world is so full of things that do not make sense.
What else can you expect in a world where people reject the only way to
meaning? They reject God and Christ, who is the only way to God, and the
only alternative is the way of meaninglessness. They rob and kill helpless old
ladies; they rape and kill helpless young children, or do they a million and one
other less violent things, but equally meaningless. It is not part of a plan. It is
pure folly and rebellion against the plan of God. It is not part of a puzzle, but
is meaningless.
The more you grasp the reality of what Solomon is saying, the more you
realize that Ecclesiastes is a powerful introduction to the Gospel. It is the
darkness that makes the light of hope so glorious. Until men see the reality of
the meaningless they will never seek God and ultimate meaning, for they will
always be convinced they can find meaning without submission to God.
Solomon says it can't be done, but they do not know it yet, and refuse to learn
from him, but keep trying the same failed experiments that he did.
Jesus confirms the pessimistic truth of Solomon. Jesus said, "What shall
it profit a man if he gained the whole world but lose his own soul?" That is
Eccles. 1 and 2 in a nutshell. Jesus says that if a man gains everything life can
offer under the sun, but has not been saved by coming into a loving
relationship to God, that man's life is of no profit; it is empty; it is
meaningless. His life might just as well have been spent throwing pebbles into
the ocean, for the end result will be the same-nothing.
So often Christians resent the truth of Solomon, or they just flatly reject it.
Many who say they believe the Bible from cover to cover are not honest, for
they do not believe in meaninglessness. They do not see the powerful positive
purpose of pessimism. They say of all tragedy that some day we will
understand, as if it is really a meaningful part of some master plan. Solomon
says, and Jesus confirms it, you don't have to wait to understand many of the
mysteries of life. You can know all there is to know about them right now,
and that is that they are meaningless. They don't fit now, and they never will,
for they are not a part of God's plan. They are the consequences of the
rejection of His plan.
When God says thou shalt not murder, and a man does it anyway, that is
not a part of God's plan, but a rejection of it, and the result is a meaningless
loss of life. Can anyone believe that the millions of babies conceived by
immoral sex and then killed by abortion is meaningful? Neither the
beginning nor the end are a part of God's plan, and so the whole of it is
meaningless. The world is filled with illustrations of what is not a part of
God's plan.
If you are expecting that in heaven we will be able to take the mindless
massacre of millions of Jews by Hitler and fit it into a logical and sensible
picture, as if it was all planned by God, you are ignoring the clear revelation
of God. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. A kingdom divided
against itself cannot stand said Jesus. God is not on both sides of good and
evil. Evil will be eliminated precisely because it is meaningless, and it can
never fit into the ultimate plan of God.
Just as it is foolish to try to make the impossible possible, so it is foolish to
try and make the meaningless meaningful. So what do we do if we are wise
and accept the wisdom of Solomon? We accept the reality of the meaningless.
When we do we can experience the paradox of the meaning of the
meaningless. That's right! Even the meaningless has meaning to those who
have found the ultimate meaning in relationship to God.
Going into the ditch is meaningless usually, but not always, for sometimes
it is a necessity to save your life. As a way of life and pattern of driving,
however, I think we can all agree it would be meaningless to drive down into
the ditch. But because it is meaningless we are motivated to avoid doing it.
The meaningless helps us better define the meaningful. Being burned is not
as meaningful as not being burned, and so we avoid being burned. Being sick
is not as meaningful as being well, and so we seek health and avoid sickness.
If it was just as meaningful to drive in the ditch as on the road, there would
be no good reason to choose one over the other. The negative makes the
positive all the more positive, and the meaningless makes the meaningful all
the more so.
So if all of life is meaningful, and all life styles and philosophies are
meaningful, then there is no good reason to choose one over the other. All
roads, including the ditches, lead to the same place, and so if you choose
Naturalism, Humanism, Communism, or Hedonism, or any of the ways
Solomon chose to find meaning, you are always on the right road, for all is
good. If there is no distinction between the meaningful and meaningless, you
have no right to judge any road as of less value then another.
But if Solomon is right, and meaningless is real, and all roads that leave
out a relationship to God are dead ends, then man is left with only one major
choice: The way of meaning with God, or the ways of meaninglessness
without Him. Sometimes we are Christians want to have our cake and eat it
too. We want Christ to be the only way to God, and the only way to life with
meaning, but we also want everything else in life to have meaning. It can
when it is incorporated into our relationship to Christ, but so much of life is
not. We must stop being superficial and accept the truth of Ecclesiastes, that
much of life is meaningless. In fact, all of it is meaningless that is the result of
the choices of men that are contrary to the will of God. Even good and
innocent things are meaningless when they are cut off from God, for they
have no ultimate value.
Is this suppose to be good news? Yes it is, for it makes life very simple so
that one does not need to be a philosopher to understand it. You do not need
to be wealthy and powerful like Solomon to get in on the meaning of life, for
the way to meaning is available to all, for it has nothing to do with power,
possession, or pleasure. It is in a relationship to a Person-the Person of God,
revealed to us fully in Jesus Christ. When that relationship is the center of
your life, and all else revolves around it, your life and all of it events have a
basis for meaning. But even the Christian can get out of fellowship and do
what is not God's will, and that will lead to what is meaningless.
Jesus said that without him we can do nothing. We can do much without
Him, but the point is it will be meaningless, for it will have no ultimate
relevance to the purpose of God. When the Christian decides to disobey the
known will of God and do what is evil, it will be meaningless and of no value
for the kingdom of God, or for them as individuals. It is a going into the ditch,
and so we need to repent and that means getting back onto the road that leads
to meaning in all that we do.
The Bible rejects the idea that all is meaningful. It stresses the reality of
the meaningless, for the more we know of this reality, the more we will strive
to avoid it and stay on the road of meaningfulness. It is important to be
aware of the reality of the meaningless so that we can specialize in that which
is meaningful. Life makes a lot more sense when you do not have to figure out
how to make sense of that which makes no sense. We do not have to defend
God against the critics who blame Him for so much evil and tragedy. These
are the results of evil and are not a part of His plan at all. They are part of the
world of the meaningless. Do not waste your time trying to prove that driving
in the ditch is meaningful, or that many other such nonsense things have
meaning. Accept the reality of the meaningless and do what Solomon and
Jesus agree on- Make God the first priority in your life, and develop a
relationship to Him, which is best done by receiving Jesus Christ as your
personal Savior, and then you can find meaning in all of life, and even the
meaninglessness of life will make some sense and be helpful to your
development of meaning.
