In the last few weeks I feel like I've been confronted with a lot of commentaries on very active faith questioning. They've just seemed to be everywhere - in my friends, on my favourite
blogs, even one of my recent bible studies has a virtually atheist subtext. I am thinking of starting a small group that is marketed specifically to the doubter. It won't be because this is where I find myself most of the time, but because some of the most brilliant, dear-to-my-heart people are chronic doubters. I would deny being a doubter, but then again, I still find this doubt idea really relevant because I
would describe myself as a surprising existentialist.
I say surprising because existentialists are often marketed as being atheists. I don't fall into the doubter category as far as my belief in the existence of God; no, my problem is believing, always, in the existence of meaning. Below is a passage of scripture that, funnily enough I find reassuring. My one preface: don't read this if you don't intend to read to the end of the post. My intention is not to depress you; I actually am reassured that a great man, an intellectual, had moments of unrest that even he was able to concede as a bi-product of his knowledge seeking. My intention is to suggest that our questioning is good and right and acts as a challenge and a calling to a higher standard.
Ecclesiastes 1
Everything Is Meaningless
1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: 2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
Wisdom Is Meaningless
12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 15 What is crooked cannot be straightened;
what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said to myself, “Look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.
18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.
To me, this lamentation can be healthy. Someone might wonder why this was one of the passages that made it into a book thought to be freeing and life giving. What I think Solomon saw was routine and predictability in life, and it depressed him. It is a fairly common source of anxiety for people to consider leaving the world having not changed a thing in it, and not having had an impact on anyone. This is why "Somebody's gonna miss you when you're gone" is such a popular platitude. People want to mean something to other people. It is also anxiety producing to evaluate life and find that it is nothing more than a series of functions being fulfilled, of unfair natural laws that we can neither control nor make sense of and ultimately meaningless social constructs that we just tend to go along with. People want to live in a world where life has purpose, and where good surprises happen.
It is obvious to me that if a person were to fixate on the realities of a meaningless existence and a routine without pleasant surprise, they would be thoroughly depressed. Why I say that this lament could be a healthy position is because I am a firm believer in the importance of challenges in a person's life. What
are you here for?
Is your life a predictable, meaningless routine? I find this a helpful rant because it alludes to the idea that a stagnant human existence is exactly that, and it's both depressing and wildly common. It also challenges you to wake up to the fact.
Solomon was wrong when he said that there is nothing that is new. When he wrote this, no one in his empire knew that the world was in fact round, and that there were many other land masses on the other side of it. When he wrote this, babies were still left unnamed for a time after their birth because of simple infections that could easily take their lives in a time of primitive medical understanding. The challenge then, is to make sure that you implement a
new thing in your life, as often as you can. My dad likes to say that if you weren't alive, the world wouldn't exist. I like this, because it puts a really interesting perspective on your life. Everything you see and experience is coloured by you.
You are heavily imprinted on all your impressions of the world.
My challenge to you and to me: go out and make it new.
