Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Thursday July 19, 2007

Have you ever described or heard someone described as being "out there?" I have heard this phrase and I have also heard it whispered about me. I readily admit to being "out there" but I like to think that my "out there" is the result of having my heart and mind set on things above. Well, alright, at least some of the time.

The atheist and philosopher, Bertrand Russell lamented that he was in fact a tormented soul when he wrote:

"I care passionately for this world and many things and people in it, and yet… what is it all? There must be something more important, one feels, though I don’t believe there is."

In context Russell was writing about the inability to truly bond with others and that this was because people are like ghosts, floating through the world without any real contact.

Could it be that our noted unbeliever suffered from a case of severe emptiness?

While admitting to in effect, caring passionately, for things and some people, he still felt disjoined from them, unable to communicate at the highest and deepest level. He attributed the sense of a higher being to mere feeling which drives humans to feel, evidently intensely, the need for God, yet by refusing to believe in God his final answer to the riddle of life could only be, "What is it all?" Could such a thought be in the Bible? Could it be that the wise man Solomon dealt with this vacuum experienced by Russell?

Solomon put it like this when he used the word Vanity to describe the futility of the earthly life even at its best. Ecclesiastes 1:2:

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity." Vanity is used in the scripture to essentially mean that all things created by God are good for their purpose, but when used instead of or in place of God, they are nothing, empty, vain. C.I. Scofield put it this way: "Vanity," in Ecclesiastes, and usually in Scripture, means, not foolish pride, but the emptiness in final result of all life apart from God. It is to be born, to toil, to suffer, to experience some transitory joy, which is as nothing in view of eternity, to leave it all, and to die."

The emptiness mentioned by Bertrand Russell is that feeling experienced by anyone and everyone who rejects God, and attempts to find peace or meaning in life in someone or something besides God Himself. The double use, vanity of vanities, means that the truth of the statement is doubled in force and meaning. You can bet the farm that neither you, nor anyone will find lasting meaning in any person but God as revealed in Jesus Christ, nor contentment in anyplace except the invisible city that Abraham the Father of The Faithful looked for, the city made without hands eternal in the heavens.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2007 Use with Credit

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