Reliable Truth A Study on Ecclesiastes: Part 4 - Richard E. Simmons III
Do you know what life is like if there is no God?
It’s kind of like the view that John Lennon wrote about in his song, "Imagine." He says, “Imagine there’s no Heaven, it’s easy if you try, no hell below us, above us, only sky. Imagine all the people living for today.” Lennon is saying, just imagine what it would be like if there was no God and no Heaven and no religion.
Solomon says that life "under the sun" leads to a life that is empty and meaningless. And so, what do we do? We look for ways to divert the mind and tend to center our lives on pleasure and our work. But then we discover that it doesn’t keep emptiness out of our lives. It doesn’t permanently satisfy.
Dallas Willard said, “Meaning is one of the greatest needs of human life. One of our deepest hungers. Perhaps it is in the final analysis, the most basic need in the realm of the human experience. Almost anything can be born if life as a whole is meaningful. As Albert Camus, the very famous Nobel prize winning Christian novelist says, ‘The foundational question about life is the question of meaning. Everything else is secondary.’ And until you answer this question, you cannot give answers to the other questions of life. And what Camus was saying was, this is life’s most pivotal question.”
Why do we have this desire and this sense of wanting permanence to our lives? Join us for this final lesson in finding wisdom in the book of Ecclesiastes!