The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever. Ecclesiastes 1:1–4
Why do we do the things that we do? Why do you bother getting up in the morning when you know you will be going back to bed later? Why bother eating breakfast when you know you will be hungry again in a few hours anyway? Why do we build houses when we know that time will eventually reduce them to rubble? Why accumulate money when we know how easily it can be lost or devalued? If the works of great kings cannot stand the test of time, what chance have our works of faring any better? What can we possibly do that will really matter? These are the age-old questions upon which Solomon gravely reflects in the book of Ecclesiastes.
Solomon observed that nothing ever really changes. In nature, water runs in a perpetual circuit, and the wind gusts about without any particular aim or direction. In human affairs, generation follows generation, but what really changes. Each generation thinks itself something important. We think we own tracts of land on this earth which others have lived on before us and which others will probably lay claim to after we are gone. If the world stands long enough, all that we build will be erased from the landscape and from human memory. If we are born only to die and to build things destined to be torn down, what is the point of living at all?
Solomon feared that none of his great works would last. In spite of all that he had done with his extraordinary endowments of wisdom, prosperity, and might, Solomon wrote, “There is no new things under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9), and, “There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come” (v 11). Was he right? Of all the great works that Solomon produced, the only known surviving artifact is a tiny ivory pomegranate less than two inches long which once adorned a priest’s staff.
Even if it did last, whose would it be? Solomon observed that even if his great works did survive, he had no way of assuring that it would come into the possession of a man who would use it as wisely as he had (2:18–19). He came even to despair that he had such wealth for fear that another who had not worked for it might not only waste it, but abuse it (2:20–22). If you could succeed in every enterprise in life, what will it benefit those who come after you? How can you be sure it won’t be wasted or used for evil? No man can conduct business from the grave.
In C.S. Lewis’ book The Problem of Pain (1940), he explains the reason he would have given when he was an atheist for not believing in God. He talks about not only the horrible pain that men endure, but also the ability that man has to anticipate pain and to invent countless new ways to inflict it upon others. He writes, “Every race that comes into being in any part of the universe is doomed; for the universe, they tell us, is running down, and will sometime be a uniform infinity of homogeneous matter at a low temperature. All stories will come to nothing: all life will turn out in the end to have been a transitory and senseless contortion upon the idiotic face of infinite matter.” When you look at the world this way, what is the use? The truth is that a lot of people do look at it this way, which is why they seek the same things that Solomon would pursue.