Of Skepticism and Meaninglessness

Speaker of one among the gathering (Ecclesiastes 1:2-4a)
Vapor of vapor, says the speaker,
vapor of vapor! All is vapor.
What's the profit of all the hard work under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes..

Not very encouraging words. But then the Bible isn't often a pie-in-the-sky book, contrary to what many people think. Consider that this is the volume which quotes the Son of God as saying, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" It is a book which often dwells upon the worst and the most horrible in life. If you doubt this, read through Judges and several of the prophetic books in one day. For Jeremiah, things weren't getting better and better. Then there's Job...

True, at the end of the Scripture, Goodness, Meaning, and Purpose do win, but that is getting ahead of the story:-) and of this particular reflection.

Most of us are in the middle of life somewhere, not either still bright-eyed and tale-dreaming, very young ones with endless hopes and dreams, nor old codgers (and codgerettes;-) at death's door, living in pain and suffering, There are a few oldsters who are healthy, spry, and accomplished with no regrets. I heard of one who still drives his own car at 106 years of age and cares for his younger wife!

But that isn't the experience of my own extended family or anyone I know personally. Most humans deal with plenty of problems, sometimes so overwhelming they seem hopeless. Or when successful, still ask, "Is that all"?

Even the rich and famous and brilliant, (as the news this week repeatedly showed), suffer and come to the end of their rope. It doesn't matter if it is threaded with gold cordage. As the Speaker says, "a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything..." E.9:4

But most of us live in the middle, in transit--experiencing both the positive and negative of life, though too often for too many, the negatives far out weigh the positives. At least that is where I live.

I know that outwardly, when it comes to necessities and creature comforts, my family and I are in the top 1% of humans who have ever lived. But then why am I so dissatisfied, so often given to a vivid sense that life doesn't make sense, that at times it seems pointless, empty, meaningless, fleeting, futile, etc.?

And this empty despairing place is where the Speaker complains from. He, indeed, is so pessimistic, I've often wondered how his book ever got included in the Jewish and Christian Bibles. Yes, in my time, I've heard plenty of sermons on the book, but most of them seemed to be reading a book other than the one that is in front of me. They mostly seemed to read and speak of Ecclesiastes through rose-colored glasses.

Instead, the book has much more in common with Albert Camus, the French Existentialist who said that life is absurd.

So here we go...

Despair and the Ultimate

At tragic times in my life, when disastrous circumstances overwhelm and all hope seems lost,I drown in despair. And I feel, unbelievably, even worse, because I as Friend, a follower of Jesus, am supposed to be one living in hope and joy. The Good News of Christian hope is the answer for the world of despairing humankind, of those who suffer in agony. So why am I caught in suffering and despair?

In the last several years of my life, I've reached a final nadir, lower than my own worst pessimism could have ever imagined. Keep in mind that I don't have terminal cancer, haven't lost loved ones in a tsunami like the one in Asia that killed hundreds of thousands, haven't lost my home...no, my own despair is in the midst of the relative comfort of California where most citizens live with more physical necessities and amenities than 99% of humankind have ever had.

But my particular despair--within my own life--is still genuine and debilitating and
destructive, keeping me often from accomplishing more in the world to reduce others' suffering. However rather than dwell on the ugly facts, let me hasten to a contradictorily wondrous discovery that came to me one day deep in my bereft hopelessness. It suddenly dawned on me that Jesus, though the Son of God--is there with me--with all of us who suffer. I am not talking about his triumph but of his own despair, his cry from the cross--"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46

Now I had heard and read those words umpteem times in my life before, but in the past they had been words to study, to feret out their literary relationship to previous texts in the Old Testament, to understand their abstract theological meaning...But now, suddenly,they were words for me, words that made me realize Jesus has been where I am, has felt that hopelessness that totally empties and yet gluts one with agony. He has gone deeper into hopeless despair than any drowning of my own loss. And he suffered the agony of the loss of any closeness to God not only when he lost his career, his relationships with others, his family, was betrayed, and endured physical pain--he suffered all of those--but in the end he was numbered with the criminals, the terrorists, the rejects on a cruel Roman torture device where the pain was unbearable. In Roman justice only the worst of the worst were assigned to the cross.

And with this shocking discovery--that even the Son of God came to a time in his life when he experienced ultimate despair and felt totally abandoned--I realize that there is still hope for me (and for all others who suffer much worse than myself).
And then came back to me memories of the many spiritual leaders who also at times lost any sense of hope, who felt abandoned by the very One who was centermost in their lives. It never ceases to trouble and shock me when I re-read in the Gospels how even John the Baptist, who had first announced Jesus as God's Chosen One, later in prison became so lost in his grief that he doubted that Jesus was truly God's answer to human suffering and evil.

From St. John of the Cross to George Fox to Henri Nouwen, so many Christians who have lived for hope have gone through 'dark nights of the soul' when all assurance has seemed lost. George Fox at one point spoke of how he experienced an "ocean of darkness." As I recall, he suffered with despair for at least two weeks, so bereft that he lay in bed unable to function.

Now at this point in my reflection I could launch into the traditional Gospel message of salvation that energized the first Quakers so deeply they traveled across the known world to share their faith--and I do, very deeply, have faith in that wondrous story--but my intention in this meditation is of a different sort; it's to communicate the vital truth that no matter how deep our loss, how terrible our agony, how absolute and ultimate our despair, God is there for us within our terrible loss. Indeed, he has suffered so deeply and so ultimately; he carries within his essence the pain and suffering of us all, indeed of all the pain and suffering of the Cosmos. Before God saves, he loves, identifies, experiences, suffers with us.

Of course, this makes no sense from a scientific or mathmatical point of view. It is spriitually discerned, an ethical truth not a sense observation. God is not an object that can be weighed in objective scales. God is the source of all being so can only be known subjectively.

We should seek to love God with all of our mind, however ultimately God is beyond human comprehension. But the wonder of wonders is that this Ultimate Reality actually cares and suffers with us and for us--we finite beings, conscious primates on a small planet in minor solar system in one small edged swirl of the cosmos.

Despite the ruthless nature of the observable world, the good news is first and foremost that Ultimate Truth experiences what we experience and most deeply loves us even at our worst.

Despite my best efforts, I've never been able to give myself to God ultimately, except in fragmented inspired moments. But thank God he, in contrast, has given himself ultimately to us.

Hope in the Light,

Daniel Wilcox