I have a friend who is struggling with the meaning of life. This person loves the Lord and loves the Word, but he doesn't "get" the purpose of life. He knows that God is the sovereign Lord of the universe, but he is stuck trying to understand God's purposes, and I believe in the end he will find hope and peace. He has a kindred spirit in Solomon.
One of the funniest moments in season two of Lost (see part one) is when Desmond meets two of the main characters, Jack and Locke. Since Desmond does not know whether or not these people are good or bad, he treats them as hostiles. Jack, a young heroic medical doctor, is the defacto leader of the survivors, but he also struggles with basic issues of belief. Even though he has experienced the miraculous through his practice of medicine, Jack still struggles with faith unless something can be proved scientifically. Locke, on the other hand, has truly tried to "believe" (in what?) his entire life, and has even placed his full trust in many different people and systems, only to be greatly disappointed, time after time, by the failure of his faith objects. Nevertheless, Locke is intrigued by “the button” (see part one) and feels he has been brought to the island for a real purpose…Locke immediately “believes” in pushing the button. Jack does not. I believe the episode is called "science versus faith" or something like that.
In the scene where they first discover Desmond, the hatch and the computer, Desmond is hit by one of the survivors and as he falls, his gun fires and the bullet hits the computer that controls the dreaded 108 minute timer. He goes crazy, saying, "Now you've done it” and he runs into the other room. As Desmond scrambles to fix the computer, Jack calls for a "time out" hoping that Desmond will shed some light on this wild set-up:
JACK: Now, you're going to tell me what's going on.
LOCKE: Jack, we don't have time for...
JACK: We're taking a time out.
DESMOND: Please, just let me fix the computer...
JACK: Look, you want to get to work -- you're going to tell me how you got here.
DESMOND: It was 3 years ago. I was on a solo race around the world, and my boat crashed into the reef, and then Kelvin came.
LOCKE: Kelvin?
DESMOND: Kelvin -- he comes running out of the jungle -- hurry, hurry, come with me. He brings me down here to the hatch. The first thing he does -- because there's beeping already -- he types in the code, he pushes the button on the computer, and it stops. What was all that about, I say. Just saving the world, he says.
JACK: Saving the world?
DESMOND: His words, not mine. So I started pushing the button too. And we saved the world together for awhile, and that was lovely. Then Kelvin died, and now here I am all alone.
Jack and Locke look at Desmond incredulously--as if "what else is there to this story???"
Desmond: (notices their disbelief and desire for more details): THE END!!!!
End of story. That IS it. That IS his purpose…to, by faith alone, press the button every 108 minutes.
Jack, the skeptic, exclaims to Locke: "Don't tell me you believe this. This is crazy. You think that makes sense? Pushing a button? You're going to take his word for it?"
And then Locke says something very profound: "His word is all we have…"
Whose word? What story? What truth?
The book of Ecclesiastes opens with the preacher lamenting that "everything is meaningless." In fact, he says, that life is "vanity of vanities, all is vanity." I love the raw honesty of Solomon. I remember when we lost my brother Mark, my Dad stood in the pulpit and told the congregation that he was struggling with faith. He told us that he had thought, "You (Jesus) told me that your yoke was easy...that your burden was light...you lied to me." Of course, he then quickly brought it to bear on our lives by clinging to God's sovereign plan, just like Solomon does eventually. God can handle our laments and our questions. Would Ecclesiastes be in the Bible if He couldn't?
The word vanity is taken from the word, hebel. The Hebrew word means "fleeting" or "transitory." Abel, the second son of Adam and Eve, was killed by his brother Cain early in life, therefore his life was "fleeting" as he was quickly gone. Abel is actually a form of the word hebel. Hebel is used throughout the Old Testament as a word for wind and for breath...those things that are quickly gone. It is also a common word in the OT for idols (Jerimiah 8:19). In calling out idolatry as hebel, Jeremiah's point was that idols have no real, lasting substance when compared to the unchanging, and immutable God of the universe! The preacher in Ecclesiastes, even uses a common Hebrew figure of speech (the superlative, ie. "Holy of Holies") to drive his point home even more by stating, "vanity of vanities." Or that life is "as fleeting as possible!" Wow!
Our culture tells us we can find meaning and purpose by earning lots of money, by gaining power, by exerting influence, by living on through our children, by making a name for ourselves, that is how we live on forever. Solomon tasted of the finest of earth's pleasures. He was the richest man in Israel, he had hundreds of concubines and an enormous family, he was the wisest man of the Old Testament period, he had conquered the world, yet at the end of his life he looks back and says “all of those things are vanity, all of those things will lead to despair, apart from God" who became flesh in the person of Christ. I'll write more on Ecclesiastes later this week.
I would love your feedback and interactions....either post here....or email me at clbetters@grpc.org.
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