Meaning in the Meaningless 

His words felt like an echo when I first heard them in high school. 

“The more knowledge I gain in my life, the less I believe in God.” 

Andrew was one of my high school best friends, the person I stayed up late for to help with his English homework online after baseball practice. We swapped terrible short story and poem files we’d each written, most of mine barely hiding my deep crush on him. In short, Andrew and I loved words together. 

But when he told me he was losing his faith, I didn’t know how to respond.  

Then I remembered where I’d heard Andrew’s words before: “For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief” (Ecclesiastes 1:18, NIV). And I began to wonder if he had discovered something I needed to pay attention to more in my own life. 

The Author of Meaning 

To better understand Andrew’s perspective, let’s start with the author of Ecclesiastes (a trickier puzzle than you might think). The writer of this text calls himself “the son of David, king in Jerusalem” (1:1). Based on the timing and topic of this book, it’s easy to connect these clues to Solomon, a historical leader known for his wise ruling. Solomon was the son of David and Bathsheba and his father’s successor to the throne of Jerusalem. 

However, some biblical scholars have pointed to a difference between the actual author of this book and the character who speaks as the narrator in the text. In literary studies, this is where written tone comes in, as the speaker of a text expresses a specific viewpoint on a topic through vocabulary, rhythm, and figurative language. 

So the author of Ecclesiastes might sound a lot like Solomon. But it’s more important that he uses the title “Qohelet” in Ecclesiastes 1:1, a Hebrew word meaning “one who gathers people.” In this case, the narrator is gathering his audience to consider where they find meaning in life. 

As seniors in high school, meaning and purpose were often at the forefront of Andrew’s and my conversations together. Part of our late-night chats between homework assignments also included where we wanted to go to college, who we wanted to be in the world after graduating. 

Like the speaker of Ecclesiastes, we worked together to pinpoint what in our lives would best drive us forward. Was it knowledge? Happiness? An awesome career? The more we talked, the more I began to understand that Andrew’s disconnect from his faith was directly tied to his search for future meaning in life. 

Seeking Meaning 

The Qohelet character in Ecclesiastes begins his reflection on the meaning of life with the Hebrew word “hevel”: “Hevel, hevel, everything is utterly hevel” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). English translations have interpreted this word as “meaningless” or “vanity.” But more accurately, the original Hebrew translates to “vapor” or “smoke”, something that is intangible and temporary. 

“Hevel” is used 38 times throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, especially as the Qohelet seeks to address meaning in our earthly world. In short, everything on Earth is unimportant in the grand scheme of the universe: “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten” (Ecclesiastes 9:5). 

By the age of 18, Andrew had lost one of his best friends to cancer. One of his younger sisters had died from a heart defect. In the landscape of his grief, it was understandable that he was floundering for answers beyond his reach. 

Why make future plans when it could all end tomorrow? 

Why seek hope when everything feels hopeless? 

Why try when it’s all been done before? 

I was the eternal optimist to Andrew’s pessimism in this season of our lives. Arguably, I was fascinated by Andrew’s understanding of pain and loss of which I had little to no experience at the time. 

But the funny thing about life is that it’s not predictable. As Ecclesiastes 9:11 states, “…time and chance happen to them all.” 

The Meaning is Lost 

And suddenly I remembered the Qohelet’s words in Ecclesiastes. Like Andrew, it felt so easy to give up when my life felt completely out of control. “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14, NIV). 

I was living several hours away from my home and family for the first time when tragedy struck. My cousin died of a freak gun accident, and my grandfather quickly succumbed to his battle with cancer in less than a year. Around the same time, I lost my job. I didn’t have any friends in a new city. All the community I’d come to rely on when I was younger was miles away. Sure I got text messages or emails from friends and family now and then, but most days I felt extremely alone. 

But the thing about the book of Ecclesiastes is that it doesn’t stop with pessimism. In fact, the speaker of the text argues that the pursuit of meaning is the thing that causes life to lose its value: “What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest…” (Ecclesiastes 2:22-23). 

So what if life has to be about something else? What if purpose is not found in something we can achieve or control on our own, but rather in whose we are and how we are created? 

What This Means 

Some verses in chapter 12 of Ecclesiastes point to this very message: 

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14) 

Looking back, heartbreak is most often experienced because we feel powerless in the face of great loss. Someone once told me that grief is the feeling of love without a home. And this is exactly what Andrew and I wrestled with as we faced the Ecclesiastes truth of our world. 

We can’t control when people leave us—or what we lose or gain. We can’t control change and meaning as they each come to our door. But we can choose where our trust lies as we ride the waves of each new season through the years. This is where the real meaning of our lives is communicated, when we love God first and then love our neighbor as a fellow child of God. Jesus Himself said these were the most important of all the commandments (Mark 12:30-31).  

Life is not about having all the answers, especially when we enter online spaces. It can be so easy to speak from a place of false authority to someone across the internet, but that road is exhausting and isolating. Instead, it’s about trusting in a God who reaches out to us daily through the hands and hearts (and online words) of others—even when our days feel like “hevel.”