I guess I wasn’t back.
In the spare time not spent working on this dvd project (which basically means when I’m pooping), I have been reading Francis Shchaeffer’s The God Who Is There. The books frames the major problem in todays society as a loss of an anithesis, starting with philosophy and spreading throughout general culture. The antithesis being A is A, not A is not A. Absolutes, you might call them. The thought process of modern society, according to Shaeffer goes like this: There is no good, there is no bad because no one can really know the difference. Priests molest, Cops are corrupt, and Republicans are gay.*
I was laying in bed on saturday night, my wife sleeping beside me, after having cried most of the day. One of our pets died and she was a big part of our family. I started to ponder death when an amazing thought hit me:
We are all gonna die. Everyone. First my parents, aunts and uncles, then me and my siblings.
Then my heart just stopped. The feeling that came after can be described like this:
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 does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils 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 There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow.
Wisdom Is Meaningless
12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! 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 twisted cannot be straightened;
what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I thought to myself, “Look, I have grown and 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;
Schaeffer states that Christians are the only actual realists. They understand that money, power, friends, family will all go away. That life on earth has no meaning and that one day they will die. There is no optimism, no hope in life itself. We don’t believe we can fix aids by hugging each other and buying red t-shirts**. We don’t believe in the “goodness” of man on his own.
So how am I sitting in bed feeling worthless and hopeless? I have a great wife, good job, good friends and a wonderful family. I have a working car and can pay my rent. I am, for all intensive purposes, comfortable. Because it took a loss for me to realize again that everytime I find meaning outside of God, I only find that everything is meaningless.
*I hate to use an asterisk, but just in case the sarcasm didn’t translate, I’m joking about the last one.
**But buying some beanies will help mothers in Uganda send their kids to school
