Part 2: The Abyss of Meaninglessness

Ecclesiastes 1:2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." (NIV version) and Ecclesiastes 1:14, 17-18 I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is futility and striving after the wind...to know wisdom...is also striving after the wind. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge, increasing pain.

Rather totally pessimistic about everything, isn't the Speaker? But there is some superficial truth, I suppose to his nihilism. When I was a young Christian fundamentalist growing up in a small village in Nebraska--before I had gone to several universities, read extensively, suffered tragedy, lived in various places in the world, met humans with totally contrary worldviews, etc.--I didn't understand this hopeless wail. I thought I understood life and God and the world. Though I was ensconced in much illusion and some delusion, I didn't know it, so I was happy and productive and filled with hopes and dreams. Aren't most kids, before the harsh realities of life wear us down?

But even after some very tough times, I still wouldn't have identified with the Speaker's utter feeling of futility, because I had a secure foundation in my faith. My faith in God gave me a deep spiritual life. Thank God, I didn't live on the surface of life chasing after this world's glitter or, worse, its glut.

But then tragedies came...

Well, you get the point...And now at 62, after doing spiritual battle for so many years against inner failings and testings, and destructive worldviews, trying to help others caught in confusion and dysfunction and sin, and grieving over unanswered prayers, and experiencing deep heartache, I sometimes, too, understand what the Speaker means when he finds even wisdom to be a striving after the wind.

And what do we do, when more and more modern Quakers are claiming that there is no Ultimate Meaning or Purpose to existence, but instead identifying with non-theism? And when so many leading Christians are adopting a hopeless theological determinism which claims the vast majority of humankind is preordained to eternal torment? And when a certain political figure is elected on the theme of hope, but then reverses many of his solemn pledges and ideals? And when the natural world heaves, and the striving of hurricane winds and drought and disease and more kills millions?

No doubt, someone will point out that this is the way life has always been--tragic, brief, and short. And, no doubt, the person is correct. That is why Ecclesiastes came to be written by a Jew living about 250 B.C., because so many of the promises of God in the Torah and the Prophets and in Proverbs and the Psalms hadn't come true. Where had the Psalmist been hiding that he could claim, "I have been young and now I am old, Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken Or his descendants begging bread (Psalm 37:25)?

So sometimes, like millions of others at present, or in the past, I too drown in the abyss of meaninglessness, plummet for days down into the bottomless pit of despair.

If as the Speaker emphasizes through most of the book, we only have this life, we then are only like a live dog versus billions of dead lions and dead dogs who have gone before us. Is not this life then a senseless striving after the wind? An emptiness and meaninglessness like a transient vapor--here and then gone?

This is where Paul's statement in the New Testament shocks contradictorily and is life-saving: For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Philippians 1:21

As I teen, I loved the first part of that verse. Jesus was my ideal, my hero, my best friend. As for the latter part, I couldn't see Paul's view at all. But now many years later, past innumerable struggles and heartaches, I can see how, for Paul who suffered much, that Heaven did beckon.

And in times of deep despair when all does seem hopeless and meaningless--like this last month--I remember that for me to live is Christ, and that when I come to death I will be dying into Jesus Christ."*

In the Light of Christ,

Daniel Wilcox



*a paraphrase of Hans Kung in his powerful book Eternal Life