Aristotle
was right. If there is some end of the things we do, meaning some supreme
purpose for which we live, knowledge of that end will have a great influence on
life. Some, of course, deny there is any such supreme purpose. Others argue
that each person’s purpose is different.
Have
the circumstances of your life ever provoked you to ask the question, “Why am I
here?” Perhaps your questions have been the more desperate kind like, “Why was
I ever born?” or “Is this all there is to life?” You are not alone.
The
wisest man who ever lived described life as monotonous and meaningless.
One generation passes away, and another generation
comes;
But the earth abides forever.
The sun also rises, and the sun goes down,
And
hastens to the place where it arose.
The wind goes toward the south,
And
turns around to the north;
The wind whirls about
continually,
And comes again on its
circuit.
All the rivers run into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full;
To the place from which the
rivers come,
There they return again
All things are full of labor; man cannot express it (Ecclesiastes 1:4-8).
The
Book of Ecclesiastes rehearses Solomon’s quest for the truly worthwhile in life
(2:3ff). And the corresponding question that echoes throughout the book is,
“What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun?”
We
might express it in this way today: We go to bed late, we get up early, we go
to work, we drive home, eat and go to bed, to get up
early, to go to work, to come home, ad nausea. And, as if that were not enough,
we are plagued with making ends meet financially, fighting off the latest
virus, hoping to avoid some dreaded disease, mistreated at work and abused at
home, and then we die. Every aspect of life seems vain. It is like striving
after the wind.
A
man named Job was driven to ponder the significance of life after losing his
livestock to marauders, his children to murderers, and his health to Satan. All
that was left to him was the breath of life and a wife who counseled him to
renounce God and die. Job was a man in a desperate situation.
He
made statements like, “May the day perish on which I was born, and the night in
which it was said, ‘A male child is conceived’” (Job 3:3). And he asked
questions like:
Why did I not die at birth?
Why did I not perish when I came from the womb?
Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breasts, that I should nurse? (3:11-12).
Why is light given to him who is in misery,
And life to the bitter of soul,
Who long for death, but it does not come,
And search for it more than hidden treasures;
Who rejoice exceedingly,
And are glad when they can find the grave? (3:20-22).
What
value is there in such misery and misfortune?
When
Jesus walked this earth he passed by a man who was blind from birth. His
disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents?” (John 9:1-2). Their inquiry assumed that sin was the direct
cause of this man’s blindness. Jesus corrected their misinformed notion by
saying, “Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God
should be made manifest in him” (9:3).
Job’s
fair-weather friends believed that Job must have done some despicably wicked
thing to have fallen victim to the calamities described in the first two
chapters of Job, and the disciples of our Lord believed that the blindness of
the man in John 9 was the direct result of sin...either his or his parents. Both
parties were wrong.