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Something Meaningful
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
James 4:10 (CEB)
James 4:10 (CEB)
I've had just enough of the spotlight when it burns bright
To see how it gets in the blood
And I've tasted my share of the sweet life and the wild ride
And found a little is not quite enough
From "Empty Me" by Chris Sligh
One day, Solomon, not long after he was inaugurated as king of Israel, went to worship at one of the shrines that had been built to God. That night, God appeared to him in a dream and said, "Ask whatever you wish, and I'll give it to you." Solomon was a bit self-conscious at that time. He felt that he was too young and inexperienced to be king, so he asked God to give him the wisdom he would need to lead his people well. God was impressed that Solomon selflessly asked for wisdom when he could have asked for anything else, so God agreed to give Solomon the wisdom he requested along with the riches and glory he did not request.1
A friend of mine once observed that thoughtful people tend to be prone to sadness. Similarly, I seem to remember reading that philosophers are some of the most depressed people in the world. I would wager a guess that their depression stems from their habit of picking apart everything that typically makes people happy. I suspect that Solomon must have experienced some sort of cognitive dissonance, some internal conflict between his desire and his wisdom. He pursued his every desire, holding nothing back from himself, yet his wisdom haunted him, crying, "Meaningless! Utterly meaningless!" not unlike a raven repeating, "Nevermore."
The very fact that someone laments that life is meaningless hints that there actually is meaning in life. To borrow some logic from C.S. Lewis, if life really was meaningless, then nobody would know or even care that it was meaningless, because there would be nothing meaningful to which one could compare the meaninglessness. Nobody laments the meaninglessness of life without having first tasted something meaningful in life.4
Solomon was wrong: some things in life actually are meaningful.
Last year, my friend Scott was diagnosed with cancer, and he fought it bravely to the end. All the while, he and his wife had a large community of friends and friends of friends supporting them and praying for them.
To be perfectly honest, I hesitated to refer to Scott as my friend when I asked people to pray for him. My hesitation was a matter of semantics and not fondness. I didn't dislike him; I just didn't think I knew him well enough to rightly say that he was my friend. There was a time when we worked at a spiritual retreat together, but, other than that, we hadn't really spent any time together.
As I already noted, Scott had a lot of friends praying for him, and, shortly before he passed away, a large number of us took buses to his house to sing to him. He and a his wife invited us into their house afterward, and each of us had a chance to talk with him. When my turn came, he said to me, "Thank you, dear friend."
Any question in my mind regarding whether or not Scott and I were friends was settled.
I received a blessing that day, which seemed unfair at first. I went with the others to be a blessing to Scott, but he blessed me by calling me a friend. I seriously doubt he even knew what his words would mean to me: I'm sure he just said what he was feeling at the time. When we look at the world around us, life seems like a zero-sum game in which many lose so that a few can win. That day, I was reminded that there is another mode of living in which one can give a gift to someone else and both somehow end up richer for it.
An early Christian hymn tells us that Jesus Christ, who was both one with God and equal to God, divested Himself of the power and glory that comes with divinity, to take on frail human flesh and minister to the humans He created. He lived His live as a servant, and He always did what was right, even though it meant that He would die a disgraceful death.5 The life of Christ was perhaps the most meaningful life in human history.
Like Solomon, we all go through life seeking personal fulfillment, but so often we find ourselves feeling empty inside. I live in a country that was founded on the right to pursue one's happiness, yet, for some reason, depression runs rampant like a plague. Perhaps our problem is that our search for meaning and fulfillment is largely self-centered. We follow our desires to make us feel happy and fulfilled, yet it is in those moments when we empty ourselves for the sake of others, following the example of Christ, that we truly find meaning in life. Perhaps fulfillment is found ironically through emptiness.
Notes:
- 1 Kings 3:3-14 (CEB)
- Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
- Ecclesiastes 1:2,14 (NIV)
- C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. Book 2, ch 1
- Philippians 2:5-11
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