Qoheleth Is Right That All Things Are Vanity

Vanity of vanities! . . . All is vanity. What does a man gain by the toil at which he toils under the sun? . . . I have seen everything that is done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. (Ecclesiastes 1:12)

These words are from a philosopher in the Bible, Qoheleth, who lamented that everything in the world was vanity. I once questioned his thoughts. Now, I’m inclined to feel the same as he does.

After spending most of my life discussing reality with people who don’t agree with me, I have finally reached the point where I realize there must be a reason why things are the way they are. It’s just that one doesn’t live long enough to discover it. All of us together, everyone contributing their best, can build up a partial answer over generations as to why things are the way they are. None of us can do it alone, unless, of course, God should reveal the truth to us. Then we should believe it.

That’s the way science is built up: gradually, bit by bit, not much of an explanation at first, but as the input of others accrues, it becomes a theory, a good way to explain the way reality seems to be. But it is still predicated on human perception, and there is no assurance that it is actually true, namely, the way God see things. Sometimes longstanding theories are cast aside as inadequate as more observation is gathered.

Mysteries in Nature

Long ago, I got interested in events that baffle human understanding, these fascinating events that challenge the human mind. Now, I see threads of vanity even in resolving mysteries, the vain way people impose their own biases even when pursuing truth. This bothers me. It saddens me, after years of reading, to realize that reports of flying saucers, ancient aliens, Sasquatch, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and the Bermuda Triangle are all distorted by the vanity of some authors who try explaining these things. Whatever truth was there to begin with in these theories and experiences is overlaid with every kind of falsehood, in some cases, deliberate lies, so that, what might have been discovered, if honesty prevailed, is lost because of human vanity.

Even philosophy gets distorted. In fact, philosophy’s simplest starting point: “What is reality?” is disappointing. Is reality something that exists outside of me, unaffected by what I think? Or is reality purely subjective, existing only in my mind? If I recognize something, is my recognition what makes it real? If I don’t recognize it, does it not exist?

If a tree falls to the ground and nobody is present to hear the noise, does the tree fall soundlessly? This kind of skepticism about reality started with Descartes who made his own mind the judge of all reality: “I think, therefore I am!” Did Descartes really believe this is the reason why he exists? Might his statement really mean, “I know I exist because I realize I can think?” What came first in his perception of his existence: his sudden realization that he can generate cognitive thought or his simply being alive?

Traditional science is also tainted. Did everything we see merely evolve without any planning, direction, any point for existing? It describes the ultimate origin, the “Big Bang,” as a singularity, which, by definition, is a situation both unknown and unknowable. How is this science, which depends on observation to prove things? Why don’t scientists just confess that they don’t know? Why drag us back 13.7 billion years to finally admit that they don’t know.

Qoheleth is right! Everything is tainted by human vanity. If a singularity cannot be known, then how valid are the natural laws these scientists postulate? Does evolution proceed exactly as these laws propose? Must creation start at the ultimate, unknowable, theoretical beginning and proceed slowly, step by step, until things are as they are now? Why is there no theory proposing that, perhaps, creation did not start with a Big Bang but started with a fully developed universe governed by laws that can be extrapolated back to the plausible condition it would have been in immediately after the point of creation, which condition, in fact, never existed.

What About Me?

Did I evolve, I, the person whose mind is composing what you are reading? If I, the person writing these lines did not come into existence until after my body was born – as so many scientists claim – then I did not even come from my mother. I, the person writing these lines, am the product of a spontaneous creation. One moment I did not exist. A split-second later, here I am, fully alive, fully human, and ready to exist within my own body, independent of my mother. There was no slow-moving evolutionary process in it. In such a case, my mother, in fact, had nothing to do with the origin of the person writing these lines. It was only after separation from my mother that the person who I am came into existence.

We could ask: What singularity brought me into existence? Was it our government, who, now face-to-face with me, has no choice but to admit that I exist? Was it God who created me, but not at the logical beginning when my body was first formed at conception? Oh no! I came into existence after my body was fully formed and able to exist on its own.

In fact, the argument that I did not come into existence until after my body was born is used today to justify abortion. What a contradiction to all of our previous thought. What an obvious rationalization to avoid believing what was always believable to our ancestors. Does anybody realize that if this is true, it destroys the Theory of Evolution?

What About Angels?

Are there really angels, non-physical beings that, in an instant, were created, fully mature, fully alive, fully intelligent, fully aware that a split second ago they did not exist? How different they are from us. No one of us remembers our origin. The best we can do is recall memories at the age of three or four years old, when we were slowly growing into maturity and slowly learning about the world surrounding us. We do not experience that we were created because we cannot remember that far back.

How different angels are from us. There is no progressive growth with angels because they are not physical beings. They don’t exist as part of the physical world, made of matter, having weight, occupying space, existing in the four known dimensions. If they were created before the physical universe, then length, breath, depth, and time have no hold on them. They understand these concepts, but they are not locked into them as we are. Especially time: they have a different experience of time than we have.

How would you feel if you came into existence the way they come into being? Would you wonder “why am I here?” Why am I the way I am when I had no choice in it? Why am I different from others? Why don’t I have what others have? Why don’t I have everything everyone else has?

What confusion there would be for us if we started out that way. It’s a good thing we can’t remember our ultimate origin. It’s a good thing we slowly become aware of who and what we are, so slowly that we just naturally accept what we are and naturally feel at home with those who surround us. And yet, ultimately, we face the same questions the angels might ask.

I think this is why human science and human thinking is so full of human vanity. That vanity is our attempt to influence the reason why we exist, our attempt to dictate the purpose for our existence.

Vanity Asserts Itself

It is not only in science that human vanity asserts itself. Our bias to believe what we want to believe is also and especially noticeable in political thought and in what is presented today as politically correct thinking. We are worse than ignorant. We have eyes, but we refuse to see, ears, but we refuse to hear. We are truly blind and deaf.

I’ve already argued that our rationalization justifying abortion is illogical. It’s worse than illogical. For reasons of imposing our own opinions, we have destroyed the Theory of Evolution, and we gave ourselves an even more difficult question of how you and I came into existence.

If those who defend abortion are correct, we really are only the products of spontaneous creation. In an instant, we came into existence with absolutely no change in our physical bodies. Therefore, we did not evolve. A more difficult question is this: “Who or what created us?” Who breathed the person writing these words into the non-human body born of my mother?

It doesn’t end there. The gay community would have us believe that male and female are meaningless categories. Their objectives go far beyond requesting politeness and respect from others. They insist that the human race is different than it really is. I suppose they might acknowledge that God created the human race male and female, but, according to them, somehow the human race didn’t develop that way. Somehow there is a third division, and this third division deserves to be recognized as a third category, neither male nor female. If they believe in a creator, how is it possible that the creator could miscalculate something as fundamental as that?

What About Religion?

Not satisfied with preferred opinions, certain influential authorities theorize about religion. All religions are good, they say, equally true, equally worthy of acceptance. However, if most religions were generated by human thought, and God revealed one religion in particular, wouldn’t that revealed religion be better?

If there were more than one religion claiming to be revealed by God, wouldn’t an unbiased search for the one that was really revealed be in the best interests of humankind? If the rival revealed religions contain contradictory elements, isn’t it obvious that they can’t all be true? The honest search for the true religion ought to be the noblest quest of humanity.

We all know that very few people make that search. What if we made that search? What if we found a true re-ligio, that is, “re-ligature”, to God? That’s what religion means: “rebinding”. What if we fully understood and believed God’s revelation of a religion that is able to answer all the questions we might have asked were we created like the angels. Without God’s revelation, we would never know why we were created and what was expected of us, nor would the angels.

Therefore, all religions are not equally good. Valid is the perhaps the better word. The only religion that is truly good (and valid) is the religion endorsed by God. That valid, revealed religion has been with the human race all along, but most humans won’t accept it. Vanity of vanities, all things are vain when based on human vanity.

Conclusion

I hope that most of my readers learn to think along philosophical lines. The ancient Greeks and Romans, were able to do it, and much of their thought is still with us today. Since we were created by an intelligent God, I think He is looking for some intelligent appraisal from us of the world that He created and of His creation of man.

Don’t spend your whole life pursuing pleasure, greed, and self-aggrandizement. Think philosophically about how you fit into God’s world and His statement in Scripture: “Let us create man in our own image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26).

God revealed that He created man and the entire universe, and He wants man to come and live in happiness with Him in His heaven. The only things He wants from us are our acceptance of His revelation and our personal choice to love Him and obey Him during our sojourn on earth.