Solomon: A Nihilist's Journey of Hope

Solomon was a promised child. Before he was born, God told his father David that Solomon would be born and would do great things. Before Solomon was even born his destiny had been determined. He was going to be King, he was going to build a temple to The Lord, he was going to be great, and he was going to walk in the ways of The Lord all the days of his life. You think pastor’s kids have it bad; you can't even comprehend the pressure that was mounting on the shoulders of Solomon.

So Solomon is born, and from the time of his childhood on up his father David was his mentor. Talk about hard to live up to. Solomon had one of the fiercest men in the world as a father. David, the man who concurred multiple nations, established Jerusalem as the city of The Lord, and built the nation of Israel. David, when he was in his youth, killed lions and bears as his past time, and slew Giants while on vacation. I can only imagine the bedtime stories David told Solomon. They probably gave the unfortunate child nightmares. On top of all this, Solomon's father was the greatest man of God since Moses. David was a prophet, a priest who interceded for his people before God, and a King. David was a type of Christ for goodness sake! Yes, Solomon had a lot to live up to.

From a young age Solomon was taught to kill, sing, worship The Lord, and pray. He knew the history of Israel, He knew from where God had led His people. He was more than likely made to memorize whole books of the Bible and commit the promises of God to memory. We often have this idea that Solomon's wisdom was a divine gift from God, but that superstitious idea is not the whole truth. Ultimately all wisdom comes from God since God invented intellect, however, Solomon did not just gain wisdom one night in a dream. Solomon's wisdom was a long time in coming. He studied, he learned, he practiced, he watched his father and he developed in to the man he was. Many have this idea that learning is overrated, schooling is a waste of money and worldly knowledge such as politics, economics, sociology, psychology physics etc. etc., are inventions of man that are not worth the study of the righteous. Some have this idea that the Bible is the only book they need read to obtain wisdom. Solomon would have something to say about that, he says, "She (wisdom) is calling out where the noisy crowd gathers: "Fools, how long will you love being ignorant? How long will you make fun of wisdom? How long will you hate knowledge? I wanted to tell you everything I knew and give you all my knowledge, but you didn't listen to my advice and teaching. "I tried to help, but you refused to listen. I offered my hand, but you turned away from me. You ignored my advice and refused to be corrected. So I will laugh at your troubles and make fun of you when what you fear happens. Disasters will strike you like a storm. Problems will pound you like a strong wind. Trouble and misery will weigh you down. "Fools will call for me, but I will not answer. They will look for me, but they will not find me. That is because they hated knowledge. They refused to fear and respect the LORD." (Proverbs 1:21-29)

Solomon equates knowledge with respecting The Lord. Why is that? Solomon's upbringing had a great deal to do with what he is writing here. Solomon realized something fascinating that I believe is the beginning of a true understanding of God. Everything in existence teaches us more about our creator, the more we know, the more of God we understand. It is true that you can study without understanding, and learn without true knowledge, but a true seeker of God will seek to know and understand as much as is possible. The Bible alone is not enough to gain all wisdom of God. The Bible is enough for salvation and for you to understand a basic version of who God is, but unless you search out wisdom as you would for a lost child, unless you truly seek to understand and explore, you will never come in to a deeper understanding. The brain that stops learning is on a slow progression to death.

No, Solomon's wisdom was not an overnight gift of God. In fact, when we look at the story of when Solomon asked for wisdom, something very interesting is revealed. Solomon, at that point in his life was already wise beyond the majority of the world. The very fact that Solomon asked of God wisdom reveals something quite amazing. Solomon was already wise. Solomon asked of God something that he already had. Why then did Solomon ask it? You might ask. That's very simple, Solomon recognized from whom ultimate wisdom comes. Solomon recognized that although he had obtained the knowledge necessary, it was God who created the ability to learn, and it is wisdom that ultimately leads to ever other gift imaginable. The Bible records that although Solomon asked for wisdom, God gave him everything that he could have asked for, including riches, power, and authority. I challenge this assumption as well. It wasn't that God magically bestowed on Solomon all those things because Solomon was righteous in his ways, no; Solomon obtained wealth, status, and power because of the one thing that he sought for first, wisdom. It is no surprise that Solomon got everything else in return for his one request he made, because Solomon recognized where everything else comes from. Riches do not come from simply praying to God and asking him to bless you, riches come from a cunning mind, the ability to reason and make good judgments. Solomon made the only logical request. In this request, Solomon revealed great wisdom that he had already obtained.

In his younger years Solomon began to become renown in the whole known world. The wisdom of Solomon isn't just bragged about in the Bible and glorified beyond what it really was, Solomon was known by every nation both far and near. He is written of in many writings besides the Bible. He mined massive amounts of precious stones, gold, silver and copper. He had so much gold that he plated the walls of the entire temple in gold. Solomon dealt with the nations with wisdom and he subdued them with knowledge. His armies carried gold plated shields, in other words, they were just for show, Solomon did not fight many battles, his battles were battles of the mind and intellect. As Solomon began to develop his mind, and his might, he began to notice certain things. Every nation around about him had their own God’s; they all sacrificed to them and expected their God to do miraculous things for them, some got what they desired, others got slavery and death. What did every one of them have in common? Each ultimately succumbed to chance or smart wits. Their gods had nothing to do with their successes or their failures.

Along with this revelation to Solomon came a very serious, and very disturbing revelation that I believe is fundamental in the development of your understanding of God. Solomon's God, Jehovah himself, was no different. Solomon's might, Solomon's power, Solomon's wealth, his kingdom, and yes, even his wisdom was a direct result of his own works. God had virtually nothing to do with Solomon's successes, nor his failures. God did not pour out his blessings on Solomon simply because Solomon was worthy, no, God had given to all the same, and in that early dawn of revelation Solomon realized that God had given to everyone nothing.

From this point Solomon built more than just the temple to Jehovah, he built some truly magnificent temples to dozens of Gods from every other nation. Solomon was searching. I don't believe Solomon simply fell to the wishes of arranged marriages, no, Solomon was searching, and he did not find. All the gods were the same, all the temples were the same, and Solomon reasoned away God. There was nothing special about Jehovah! Ultimately Solomon believed the same things about his God, as did the nations about theirs. Solomon realized something extremely important, if God existed at all, He did not care. This revelation led Solomon down a dark road of Nihilism.

Solomon sought for meaning in every part of life. He struggled with purpose, or a lack thereof. He sought meaning in love, but he didn't find it in women. He wrote a wonderful book full of his professed love for his bride. Song of Solomon is a loving and very erotic book. It is your classic Prince Charming and Cinderella story mixed with an erotic novel. Fancy translations and dumbing down of language make it seem as though the book is not truly that graphic, but you read it in its original, it is anything but tame. It is graphic and passionate. I'll give you a brief run down of the book. Solomon goes out in to the country and pretends that he is a shepherd. He meets a girl while visiting the small mountain towns and she falls in love with him. Yet Solomon is torn. He can't reveal to her that he is the king of practically the entire world, or else she would marry him for fear, or for love of money or power, so Solomon continues to deceive her. She marries him thinking he is a humble shepherd. When she follows him to the city looking for him, she describes him to the women of the city, and what do they tell her? There is no man in the entire city that matches that description but the king of Israel, Solomon. There are interspersed depictions of sex and descriptions of their bodies etc. etc. but let's stick just to the story. It is such a wonderful story full of love and passion and excitement, yet even this wonderful loving relationship did not fill Solomon with the meaning he desired.

Solomon lost that love for his bride and he sought it elsewhere. In the end Solomon had at least a few dozen wives (the bible records 300 wives and 700 concubines.) He did not find meaning in women, he sought it in men; yes Solomon practiced homosexuality. He did not find meaning there either. As I already stated, he worshiped dozens of gods, he did not find it there either. He built cities, some claim he built flying machines, he amassed riches, knowledge, he conquered, and in the end what does he say? "Everything is so meaningless. The Teacher says that it is all a waste of time!" (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

Solomon comes to the conclusion that everything is meaningless. If you work for your entire life, you still die, and someone else takes your work and the riches you have gained. We race about our days trying to accomplish something in this life, but when we are gone, the sun still rises over the earth, and the plants still grow, the seasons still come, and the oceans still flow. Everything is meaningless. There is nothing you can do in your life that makes the slightest difference. Read Ecclesiastes front to back and you begin to get a completely different picture of Solomon's life. The guy literally tried everything to make his life acceptable. At every single turn he found all of his works to be useless and to not make a bit of difference. So much so that he writes, "This made me hate life. It was depressing to think that everything in this life is useless, like trying to catch the wind.   I began to hate all the hard work I had done, because I saw that the people who live after me would get the things that I worked for. I will not be able to take them with me." (Ecclesiastes 2:17-18)

Solomon sunk deep in to nihilism. The philosophy of Nihilism is not new. Even before the sophists first started teaching about life having no objective purpose, Solomon himself was a practicing Nihilist and wrote it down for all to see. As Solomon very wisely stated, "There is nothing new under the sun." Solomon mentions how his generation had forgotten everything that was created and built in the past, and that in the future everyone would forget what he was doing right then. It is profound to think about that now, 4,000 years later we are just trying to separate the truth from the fables about Solomon's life, and what he did and didn't do. Did Solomon have flying machines? Did Solomon have knowledge from aliens? Did Solomon exist at all? Did Solomon really have as much riches and power as the Histories say he did? All of these concepts, conspiracies, and ideals exist about the life of Solomon, while Solomon's own words ring truer than they ever have before. His life was meaningless to the generations that followed after. They forgot, they destroyed and they buried what was once a great empire.

Solomon sets out to try to make sense of all the meaninglessness that life has to offer. He basically says, God did it; God set all of this in motion to prove to us that we are nothing and that he is just and the judge of all the earth. So Solomon says, you might as well eat, drink and enjoy the little that you have in the short lifespan that God gives to you. But after saying that Solomon ends with, "But this is senseless!" Solomon tries to reason it out, but no matter how he does it he finds that it is all so chaotic and messed up! Life just doesn't make sense logically. God must have made a mistake, or else he doesn't much care about humanity or the struggles that He had put on them. Solomon built a theory about God that was very distant, and almost atheistic, and no wonder, Solomon was a smart man, his logic was flawless, and his reasoning sound. Who am I to argue with such a man?

Yet as Solomon continues on his journey to find meaning in this life he discovers something fascinating. I actually watched this very transformation happen in my own brother a year or so ago, and I have watched it in my own life. The dawning of what really matters in this life. It isn't how much money you have, how much work you do for God, how big your business gets, how many people you are able to bring to the kingdom, how many countries you have visited, how many degrees you have after your name, how many cars you have parked in your garage, none of that matters, but what does matter is the relationships you have built along the way. You see, in all of the searching that Solomon did, in all the meaningless he found in life's struggles and life's toils he found something that didn't quite fit in side his nihilistic box, relationships. Relationships threw a wrench in to his carefully constructed philosophy of emptiness. Solomon had experienced genuine love, Solomon had close friends, Solomon had loved his father, and Solomon had loved his mother Bathsheba. These connections Solomon had developed with people around him led him to the revelation of chapter 4 of Ecclesiastes. There is a point to life; it is love for other people. "Two are better than one" as Solomon puts it, it is better to sleep in a bed with someone else than to sleep alone, it is better to fight in a battle with someone else, than to stand alone, it is better to work with two because you accomplish more than you would if each of you worked alone. Chapter 4 finishes basically saying that relationship is the point to life.

Then we have chapter 5 as Solomon sends another tirade of all the useless things you can do in this life and how you should never make promises to God because you can't keep them and God will punish you if you don't keep his promises. You see the internal struggle as Solomon writes his journey to discovery. Solomon is revealing the steps of coming in to an understanding of God. Solomon then speaks of the unfair things of this life, God gives good things to some and not to others; God is not fair. Why do people suffer? That is a huge question on the minds of anyone who has ever questioned this life. Why does the world suffer? Solomon makes the assumption that it is because God gives and God takes away for no other reason than because he wants to. In this, Solomon saw senselessness, and again came back to the conclusion, we should just strive to enjoy life and be happy and enjoy each other for as long as God gives us breath. But then something dawns on Solomon, something that he learned at the very beginning of this search, something that he realized before he started his life long search for meaning, God had given to all the same, in other words, God had given to all, nothing. Yet Solomon didn't just stop there, Solomon realized that initial assumption wasn't exactly correct, it was more accurate to say, God had given to all the same, the ability to live.

Solomon writes, "I also saw other things in this life that were not fair. The fastest runner does not always win the race; the strongest soldier does not always win the battle; wise people don't always get the food; smart people don't always get the wealth; educated people don't always get the praise they deserve. When the time comes, bad things can happen to anyone!" (Ecclesiastes 9:11) In another translation it says, "Chance happens to them all." It doesn't matter how good you are, or how much money you have donated, it doesn't matter how dedicated you are to the work of God, in fact it doesn't even matter if you believe in God or not, God has given to all the same, that is life, love and the ability to find happiness. To the atheist, life, love and happiness, to the Christian life, love and happiness. To the rich, to the poor, slave and free, God's gifts fall on all alike with equality. Your works are, as Solomon would put it, completely meaningless in the estimation of God. There is absolutely nothing you can do to obtain the favor of The Lord. God’s favor has already been given. This is because God has given to each of us free will. Not just to us but also to the entire universe free will of action and movement are given. An asteroid will continue its course indefinitely unless acted upon by a force, it has freedom of movement along its course as it is pushed and pulled by the gravity of other large bodies in space. It is the same with us. God had not determined our end. God has not predestined our path, God does not act directly to give or take away.

When something bad happens to us on his planet you bet you can always find a natural cause for it. Let's just pick one, you are driving to work one day and you are involved in an accident that totaled your vehicle. Is this the judgment of God for what you did that night? Perhaps you went out and you had a few beers at that bar, and now God is punishing you for your weakness. Or is it perhaps that this morning you were rushed to get to work, you were stressed for having slept in a little too late and you weren't paying attention. The other person on the road was headed to a doctor’s appointment to find out the prognosis of suspected lung cancer and they were not paying attention. Circumstances worked out to both of your disadvantage and you ran in to each other. The entire experience was pure chance. It was free will acted upon. You had the choice to drive that day did you not? You had the choice to stay out late that night before did you not? You could have woken up early and made It to work on time correct? But you didn't, free will was acted upon and you were involved in a dangerous accident because of your own choices.

Now let's throw another link in our story. The entire drivers side of your vehicle was crushed, you should have died, but you didn't. The other person who hit you died, now what do you say? Any good Christian would say, "Praise The Lord I was saved!" But what would you do if Solomon were to tell you that such a thought is meaningless. Are you really going to assume then, that God saw fit to save your life but not the life of the other driver? Are you so special that God decided He could not do without you on the earth? No my friend. Chance happened and you were saved. Praise God that such a chance was possible, but don't praise God for deliberately saving your life. The same chance that got you involved in the accident is the same chance that saved you. The other car hit you just at the right spot because at the last second the driver saw your car in his blind spot and swerved enough to hit you in such a way as to not kill you. Chance can just as easily bring good things as it can bad. Take the show Deal Or No Deal for instance, if a person makes it all the way to the last two cases, at that moment they have a 50/50 chance of winning one million dollars. Chance could just as easily win them the money as it could lose them everything.

So if God is not deliberately altering our lives and controlling our destiny, what good is He? As Solomon stated so well in chapter 11, "If the clouds are full of water, they drop rain, if a tree falls to the south or to the north, there it stays." In other words, God does not make those things happen, they happen on their own accord as natural chance directs them. God has set up a system of absolute free will; it is a system that can act according to the dictates of circumstance. You see, this system had to be put in place in order for autonomous life to exist. If the world around us was unmovable and could not be altered by our actions, what kind of free will would that be? We would be forced to act a certain way because of the way in which God had created the universe. Because the universe has freedom of movement and trajectory, we have the ability to alter it to our advantage or disadvantage. This is why you have the ability to be involved in a fatal car accident, this is also the reason you have the chance of winning a million dollars. It is the same with our thoughts and actions. If God had designed us to merely act according to his dictates, we would not be alive at all, but rather mere automatons controlled by the dictates of a supreme ruler. There would be no love, there would be no relationship, and there would be no true intellect.

This brings us to one of my most favorite verses in the Bible, Ecclesiastes 11:9, "So young people, enjoy yourselves while you are young. Be happy. Do whatever your heart leads you to do. Do whatever you want, but remember that God will judge you for everything you do." Solomon implores the young to do what seems good to them, explore, learn, enjoy, discover the world that God has created and discover who you are as an individual. It is such a wonderful invitation that I have taken to heart as I have gotten older. There are such few years that we have in this earth in which we can do exciting things, so you use them! Don't come to the end of your life saying you wish you had done something different with it all.

You may notice that at the end of this verse Solomon cautions the young person to remember just one thing in their exploration of life, that is that for everything they do, God will bring them in to judgement. Now Solomon lived in a time and culture heavily influenced by a punitive understanding of God. God was this mighty king and all-powerful judge ruling over the affairs of man. Even though I disagree with this understanding of God, I think Solomon reveals something extremely important in his verse. That is that we must remember that everything we do effects relationships in some way, not just relationships with those around me, but ultimately my understanding of and relationship with God. Solomon understood something very important that I believe Christians often completely miss. There is no such thing as innate sin. There is no sin in the entire universe that is of itself evil. There is no action you can do that can be labeled as utterly evil in and of itself. All actions are amoral. What gives an action its morality is relationship. This is why Solomon wrote chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes. Everything has a time and a place. Let's take a situation as our example. For instance, some teens could take Ecclesiastes and run with it saying, "I'm going to experience everything I can in his world, so I'm going to go out and explore sex to its fullest." And we get the sexual revolution of the sixties.

Sex is not evil, nothing about the action has any innate evil or "sin" associated with it. It is not a sin to have sex with another person, not at all. What makes sex sinful? Sex is sinful when it directly harms relationships around you, and your own personal understanding and relationship with God. I do not believe there is any action that we are capable of performing that does not, in some way, alter our understanding of God either for good or ill, thus we have to be mindful of our actions. To the person who desires to explore sexuality, I say go for it, but remember that whatever you do has an impact, not only on your understanding of God, but on your relationships with people, and it may not have an impact on you alone, it may effect the other persons understanding of God and relationships with their circle of people. Your life, your sexuality, your experiences, the determination of what is sin and what is not is placed In your hands. It is not for the church to decided for you, or your parents, or your friends, the decision is yours alone, but I caution you to, at the very least, consider the advice of the many who have come before you, bible writers, parents, peers, pastors, all advice is profitable, there is no such thing as useless advice. You may not heed all of it, but all of it is capable of teaching you something you didn't consider before.

As we reach the end of Ecclesiastes, we come to Solomon's conclusions on what makes this life worth living and what gives meaning to an otherwise despicable existence. It is relationship. Relationship is what gives your life meaning! There were times when I was so low I desired to die. I wanted nothing more than for my airplane to crash and burn so that I would not have to face the difficulties of life. I dreaded night because at night I had to contemplate my life. I'm telling you, the victory over such depression and disparity is relationship; it is connection with other people. It wasn't connection to other people alone, but as I established relationships, I began to see a different picture of God than I had ever seen before. I saw God as an experience, a friendship with infinity itself, a friendship withy life. My life began to change as I beheld the ultimate character of a God who created for relationship, a God who created this entire universe to help me understand who He is. It is the revelation that God is not a "He", God is not an "it" either, God is nothing. God does not exist because existence itself is created. God is something more; He occupies that space between relationship. Can you grasp what I am saying? That space that I have created between my fiancé and myself, God occupies the space I call my relationship with Morgan.

Ecclesiastes ends by saying the conclusion of the matter is to fear God and keep his commandments. Why is this important? Why is there a focus on the law here? It is because the law is not a law at all. It is not a command, it is not 10 rules to follow, and it is not the 700 odd commandments found in Leviticus. No, the law of God is relationship. The verse could just as accurately say, " Acknowledge God and establish a relationship with Him." That is the conclusion of the whole matter, to know God on a level that you have never contemplated before. To take all the knowledge and information you have gathered throughout your life and build an understanding of God. You have been searching, but you did not realize that the answers have been coming to you all along, they are found in the experiences and relationships you have established with others. The wisest man in the world discovered the secrete, after an entire lifetime of searching for meaning, Solomon finally found it. Life is relationship. As my brother very wisely pointed out in a recent Facebook post, the sentiment, "Nothing matters but God" is a twisted form of theistic Nihilism. Stuart twisted this sentiment to say rather, "Everything matters...because God." Solomon came full circle, from his original premise that everything is meaningless. No, we are to explore, and enjoy and take pride in life because of relationship, because of ultimately "God". Everything is not meaningless, everything has meaning, because every experience we have, every new bit of information we glean draws us in to a deeper understanding of ourselves and those around us, which ultimately leads to a deeper understanding of God.