SOLOMON, WISDOM, AND THE HATRED OF LIFE

We do not understand the depths of our riches in Christ. However, we are richer than Solomon, who had everything that a man could possibly want. But there was one thing he lacked - an understanding of the meaning and purpose of life. He therefore embarked on a wisdom quest: 

• And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. (Ecclesiastes 1:17-18 ESV)

Wisdom increased sorrow because it failed to reveal the answers he sought. Moses had only provided very cryptic knowledge of the afterlife - God's ultimate reward and the fulfillment of His justice and grace. Without this revelation, Solomon tried to find his footing in the darkness:

• For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity ["incomprehensible"] and a striving after wind. (Ecclesiastes 2:16-17)

Without the knowledge of the afterlife, this life remains incomprehensible and painful to the mind. Therefore, from Solomon's limited range-of-vision, life lacked meaning: 

• For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity...Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? (Ecclesiastes 3:19, 21)

Consequently, as had Job's friends, Solomon was coming to some erroneous conclusions. As a result, for him, life was oppressive, even though he had everything else. His dilemma graphically illustrates Paul's observations about the need for confidence in our heavenly reward:

• If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied...What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." (1 Corinthians 15:19, 32)

Without this confidence, we are condemned to live pleasure-seeking lives, maxing-out our credit cards, frenetically avoiding the deeper questions, which can lead to a Christ-centered hope and a deeper joy, which pays great dividends:

• Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:19-22)

What a great privilege knowing that we can come sinlessly spotless before our Lord. Without this confidence, we cannot stand against doubts and adversity, and our experience can be little better than Solomon's, who had everything but hated life.