Biblical Nihilism
For man is born for trouble, as sparks fly upward. Job 5:7 NASB
Born for trouble – Nihilism: “the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless.” Or so it seems.
“Not to be born is the best of all things for those who live on earth, and not to gaze on the radiance of the keen-burning sun. Once born, however, it is best to pass with all possible speed through Hades’ gates And to lie beneath a great heap of earth.”[1]
“It would have been better for man not to have been born at all than to have been born.”[2]
“For Man’s greatest crime is to have been born.”[3]
“Man is the only being to whom Being is a problem.”[4]
“Better the miscarriage than he, for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity; and its name is covered in obscurity.”[5]
The world and the Bible agree. Life sucks! Oh, you don’t like that conclusion? You want the Bible to tell you it will all be pie in the sky bye and bye? You want God to rescue you from the tragedies of life because you are such as good person? Even the biblical authors accept a basic nihilism about life. The only solution to human meaninglessness lies outside the box, and apparently we are not privileged to have extra-terrestrial vision. In fact, according to Scripture, the desire for comfort, ease and harmony fundamentally misunderstands what it means to be human in this world. “It is characteristic of a human being to find life uncomfortable, filled with angst and unease.”[6] Zornberg calls this “a sense of being a stranger in the world.”[7] Have you felt it: that itching feeling that you really don’t belong here? That there’s something wrong with the way things are? Well, if you have, you’re in good company. Since Man was expelled from the Garden, everyone has been in exile. Even God.
Should we just become nihilists? Just give up and agree with Sartre? From ancient Theognis to Shammai to Heidegger to Nietzsche, it seems there is no other answer; at least no other answer without radical speculation about another life. The reason Qohelet paints a picture of biblical nihilism is that he refuses to speculate about what happens after death. The obvious reality is DEATH! The END! And that would eventually force us all to nihilism (even if we pretended differently) except for one small caveat.
The resurrection.
Let’s not debate what happened on the cross. In the end, it might not really matter. What matters significantly is the resurrection. This is the answer to biblical nihilism. This is the message from outside the box to our world. It isn’t some transcendent vision or some visitation by an angel. It isn’t religious hope about other realms. This is a man who died, and came back to tell us about it! This is the most important thing that has ever happened in all humanity. It is the answer to every single instance of death. Man is born for trouble. That we cannot avoid. But without the resurrection, all that trouble leads nowhere—to nothing. Without the resurrection, life is an endless torment seeking release. Now all of that has changed. Not that it saves the righteous from andralamousia. It doesn’t. But it does prove to us that we really are resident aliens here and something else is coming.
Topical Index: born to trouble, resurrection, nihilism, Job 5:7
[3]Pedro Calderon de la Barca, “Pues el delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido.”
[6]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, p. 259.
So I wonder if this is the cause of my distress? There are fleeting moments of feeling very connected with the world. It seems a very deep and broad connection. It’s like a glimpse of the spiritual realm where all seems right with the world and me.It quickly passes and I am back in a place of hazy confusion and inner conflict wondering why the hell I am here and why it is so hard to figure out how to get that connection back again.I think deep down I know that connection is what I long for and no matter what I do, I can’t create it or work to get it. When I was a kid I had it much more often than I do now, As a child I told myself it was a God hug. Then again maybe it is all just hormones??? I know that I am a junkie for that feeling of connection and maybe that is what is causing all of this conflict in my life right now. I know everything I endeavor to do will fall short, at some point, of filling that void. I am searching for that connection through the means of doing something when it’s a spiritual connection not a physical one,
Cheryl
We are fearfully, and wonderfully made . God knows our situations from beginning to end..
He is always Desiring that we grow , and has things along the way to help us do so……
These things are our friends, but we call them trials………
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We are fundementaly wired for connection and relationship. First with YeHoVaH and second with one another. In the garden (it all goes back to the garden), our wires got crossed by a very bad choice of Eve and then Adam. Sorting out the signals is to me is the current chalenge. We seem to conituinualy be forgetting we have an adversary working overtime to confuse those signals and lead us deeper into bondage to this present world system and away from the Kingdom too come. They are, as I have said and it seems clear to me, simultaneously coexisting but mutually exclusive. It is an issue of the heart, the motivational movment of it that in my mind determines who we are serving and thus who’s kingdom we are in. The depths of our connections will (it seems to follow) be informed by there motivations and in whom we invest them. Broken people always let us down, since we are all more or less broken, investing our hearts first in their creator rather than the creation might lend some relational stability…Cheryl I name ” the spiritual realm where all seems right with the world” walking in the realms of wonder and I firmly belive it is a clear expression of “the kingdom to come”. We go to it if it does not come to stay with us…
That was absolutely excellent, Cheryl. You said so much stuff to me this morning that I could connect with and relate to….
Here’s a few of the things that you said that stick out to me.
“ ….connection that I long for….” Saint Augustine said, “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee”. The human condition.
“…. then again, maybe it’s all just hormones !”.
Being male, we don’t like to admit to any influence that our hormones have on us, but, nevertheless, I find myself often there, wondering if I just imagined the connection because it seemed to dissipate so fast !
And you said, “maybe I am a junkie for that feeling of connection!” We go from seeking God to seeking the feelings of connection. So we turn to that feeling which by now has passed away. Sort of like the wind, it blows where it wills, And we don’t know where it came from or if it will come again. Sort of like standing on the street waiting for a bus on the street where there are no signs posted. Just hoping that one will pass by!
I guess to a certain degree we all looking for that “ high that will not die” through whatever means that we have grown accustomed to. Stepping out into “God space“ is difficult and usually very unfamiliar. God is after our hearts. I think Hebrews refers to it as “looking for another city, whose builder and maker is God”.
I think the Bible also says that the whole earth is groaning and travailing…. looking for permanent connection, where death no longer reigns. No longer dealing with all the effects of aging.
Now we know in part and we prophesy in part until we are connected with Perfection and Completion! It’s kind of exciting actually, sort of like playing hide and seek. Excitement of finding!
Heaven will be a place with no walls, no walls necessary because there is nothing to keep out !
We seem to forget that Yeshua came “healing the sick, and preaching the kingdom ” The kingdom to come- His rule over our experiance on this planet. This was, as I understand it, declared by and initiated at the resurection. We are now walking out in space and time his victorious acomplishemnts over sin, death and judgment, seeing the inevitable destruction of the present darkness of this wolds system. Most biblical Nihilism penned pre dates this game changing event. At least for those who chose to belive and I must now say chose to inerpert it as so. The cool thing about truth is it will work itself out even if we do not chose to belive it. Perhaps that too was proven at the cross?
I should have written ” proven at the resurection” not the cross but it seems also true that the one inevitable must follow the other at least for those who belive. ..
We are hardwired through design to perfectly integrate with reality around us. The fact that none of us are actually doing that SHOULD BE a non-ending source of angst and horror. And it is! Halleluah! If we were not in pain, we would not look for relief. If we did not seek, we could not find. We are pilgrims wandering and wondering where is that perfect center where we can rest? I think our great assignment, now that we are fractured, is to hate the fracture with all our heart, mind and soul. We must not accept any rest other than the rest to be found only in our Saviour, for only He can connect us with the heart of God, where we were made to stay. Every place else SHOULD BE unendurable! And it is! Halleluah!
I think life after death has always been taken on faith, for death was CLEARLY unnatural, especially to the first people who had actually experienced eating from the Tree of Life. What was not known was HOW death was to be defeated, even though from the beginning we were promised that it would be. The pagan perversions of this how (as usual) only prove the case that, originally, we knew that, somehow, life would be restored to us. I think the resurrection showed us that how, but we were supposed to remember, all along, what we were told from the first.
I think we lost the promises of eternal life we were originally given; for anything else accuses God of not TELLING US. Of course He would have told us! Since when has He ever withheld such vital information? I do not accept this accusation, for there is too much evidence that we DID know, way back when, that death was never the final answer. Nothing else fits the faith of the patriarchs of old. Of course, they had to have faith in a Saviour, who would restore the Garden and life, too. What else would they have had faith in? Temporary, temporal advantages for a random, select few who just happened to be around when the Messiah came – to do what? Merely deliver them from the Romans? Really? I don’t think so!
Of course the resurrection is the most important event in the
history of mankind. But to connect to that truth, we have to believe,
repent and receive His promised Holy Spirit who IS the indwelling
presence which establishes and keeps the relationship between God
and us. Without that awesome presence and our awareness of it, we
can easily continue to wander and wonder.
The revelation I received and continue to believe, is that there is nothing
we can do ourselves to get it. It is a gift of God — given as a response from
God to our genuine, deep and obedient belief in Him and His promises.
Peter, James and John got a glimpse of “the future” during the transfiguration
on the mountaintop and they wanted to be able to maintain it on this earthly plane.
Yet, Yeshua told them that experience would be sufficient for their earthly journey
as they returned to the valley below. We, too, hold on to that message. We see through
a glass darkly, for now, but it’s His Spirit that keeps us uniquely with Him even when we don’t
always realize it.
Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous French existential philosopher is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.”
The waitress replies, “I’m sorry, monsieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”
What a wonderful message it is! What a wonderful gift! Thank you, YeHoVaH! Thank you, Yeshua!
Thank you for a love we can’t fathom!