"Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). Thus begins one of Scripture's strangest and most philosophically sophisticated books. The Preacher (Hebrew: Qoheleth) systematically examines every potential source of meaning—wisdom, pleasure, work, wealth—and finds them all ultimately empty "under the sun."
Ecclesiastes reads like existentialist philosophy 2,500 years before Camus. The Preacher catalogs life's absurdities, injustices, and futilities with brutal honesty. The wise and foolish both die and are forgotten. The wicked prosper while the righteous suffer. Labor is toilsome and its fruits uncertain. Everything is repetitive, cyclical, and ultimately meaningless.
This isn't what we expect from Scripture. Where's the inspirational message? The comforting promises? The clear moral teaching? Ecclesiastes offers none of these. Instead, it forces readers to confront life's harsh realities without easy answers or false comfort.
As someone who processes the world logically and struggles with intuitive meaning-making, I find Ecclesiastes both troubling and refreshing. Troubling because it articulates the meaninglessness that logical analysis of life "under the sun" (apart from God) inevitably concludes. Refreshing because it's honest about this rather than offering spiritual platitudes.
The Preacher's method is systematic investigation. He experiments with pleasure—wine, women, entertainment. Result: meaningless. He pursues wisdom and knowledge. Result: "in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow" (Ecclesiastes 1:18). He amasses wealth and undertakes great projects. Result: "Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind" (Ecclesiastes 2:11).
Each potential source of meaning is examined and found wanting. Not because pleasure, wisdom, or work are bad, but because they can't bear the weight of ultimate meaning. Death renders them all temporary. Forgetfulness makes them ephemeral. Injustice makes them arbitrary.
This is where Ecclesiastes becomes philosophically profound. It's demonstrating that without God, life genuinely is meaningless. The atheist existentialists are right—if this life is all there is, if death is the end, if there's no transcendent purpose, then everything is vanity.
But Ecclesiastes isn't atheist. It acknowledges God repeatedly. The point isn't that life is meaningless because God doesn't exist. It's that life "under the sun"—evaluated purely on earthly, temporal terms without reference to God—can't provide meaning even though God exists.
This is crucial. The Preacher isn't saying, "God doesn't exist, so life is meaningless." He's saying, "God exists, but if you try to find meaning in created things rather than the Creator, you'll find only vanity."
The resolution comes at the end: "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
Meaning isn't found "under the sun" in earthly achievements or pleasures. It's found above the sun—in relationship with God, in obedience to His commands, and in the knowledge that ultimate justice will be done even if earthly life seems unjust.
This is surprisingly similar to Christian existentialism. Life is absurd on its own terms. Meaning must be grounded in something transcendent. For Camus, we must rebel against absurdity while acknowledging it. For Ecclesiastes, we must fear God while acknowledging that apart from Him, everything is vanity.
As an autistic person who tends toward systematic analysis, I appreciate Ecclesiastes' refusal to offer easy answers. It doesn't pretend life makes sense on purely temporal terms. It doesn't spiritualize away injustice or suffering. It acknowledges the harsh realities and then points beyond them to God as the only sufficient ground for meaning.
This makes Ecclesiastes particularly valuable for apologetics. Secular philosophers often claim life can be meaningful without God through various sources—human progress, love, art, knowledge. Ecclesiastes systematically refutes this. It shows that every earthly source of meaning is ultimately temporary and therefore insufficient.
The atheist response is usually to embrace this—yes, life is ultimately meaningless, but we can create subjective meaning. But Ecclesiastes exposes this as unsatisfying. The Preacher tried that. "I said in my heart, 'Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.' But behold, this also was vanity" (Ecclesiastes 2:1).
Creating your own meaning doesn't work when you're clear-eyed about death's finality and life's injustices. You can distract yourself with pleasures or projects, but the vanity remains underneath. Secular meaning-making is ultimately an elaborate coping mechanism for avoiding existential despair.
Ecclesiastes is honest about this in ways modern Christianity often isn't. We want to assure people that life is meaningful, that their work matters, that they'll be remembered. Ecclesiastes says: apart from God, none of that is true. You will die. You will be forgotten. Your work will be undone or forgotten. All is vanity.
This seems depressing, but it's actually liberating. Once you acknowledge that earthly things can't provide ultimate meaning, you stop demanding they do so. You can enjoy pleasure without making it your god. You can pursue wisdom without expecting it to answer every question. You can work without needing your work to justify your existence.
The Preacher even gives permission for modest earthly enjoyment: "There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil" (Ecclesiastes 2:24). But he immediately adds: "This also, I saw, is from the hand of God."
Enjoyment is gift, not ground. We can receive pleasure as God's provision without making it our ultimate purpose. We can engage in work as good while acknowledging it won't provide existential meaning. This is freedom from the crushing weight of trying to find ultimate significance in finite things.
Ecclesiastes also addresses the problem of injustice, which troubled me deeply as someone who values logical coherence. If God is just, why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer? The Preacher doesn't resolve this with theodicy. He acknowledges it as real and points to future judgment: God will ultimately set things right, even if earthly life seems unjust.
This requires faith. It means living with unresolved tension between observable reality and theological conviction. It means trusting that God will judge justly even when present experience suggests otherwise.
For an autistic mind that wants everything to make sense now, this is challenging. But it's also realistic. Life doesn't always make sense. Injustice is real. The resolution won't come in this life. We live in between—between the promise of justice and its fulfillment.
Ecclesiastes teaches that wisdom means living faithfully in this tension. Not pretending life makes sense when it doesn't. Not despairing because it doesn't. But fearing God and keeping His commandments even when the meaning isn't yet apparent.
The book's honesty about life's difficulties makes its conclusion more powerful. When the Preacher says "fear God," it's not because life is obviously great and God is obviously good. It's despite life's vanity and injustice. This is faith, not naive optimism.
For modern readers drowning in self-help optimism and Christian prosperity teaching, Ecclesiastes is bracing medicine. It strips away illusions and forces honest confrontation with life's harsh realities. And then, having exposed every false foundation, it points to the one foundation that holds: God Himself.
Not God plus earthly success. Not God plus guaranteed happiness. Just God. Fear Him, keep His commandments, trust His justice. Everything else is vanity.
This seems bleak until you realize it's actually hope. If meaning depended on earthly success, wisdom, or pleasure, we'd all be in trouble—these are uncertain and temporary. But if meaning depends on God, who is eternal and unchanging, then we have sure ground regardless of earthly circumstances.
Ecclesiastes deconstructs false hopes to point toward true hope. It's not encouraging in conventional ways, but it's profoundly truthful. And in a world full of false promises and easy answers, truth—even difficult truth—is gift.
"The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). Not "Be happy." Not "Succeed." Not "Find yourself." Just: Fear God.
In a culture obsessed with self-actualization and meaning-making, Ecclesiastes offers a radically different path: acknowledge that all is vanity under the sun, and find meaning above the sun in the eternal God.
That's not the message we want. But it might be the message we need.