Main news for 29 July 2021

Speaking of the deeds that are "done under the sun," Ecclesiastes calls them "incomprehensible." What does he mean? Is science worth nothing? Of course, in his days science knew far less than it does in ours, but science has always remained science; in its main features scientific knowledge was the same then as it is today.

The point is not science as such, but what in the time of Ecclesiastes was called wisdom. Wisdom then did not mean scientific knowledge itself, or even knowledge as such. A wise person was not an intellectual expert, but a person who understood who he was, where he came from and why he came into the world, and where he was going. Wisdom consisted in answering not the question "how," but the question "why."

It was the same old question, still relevant today, about the meaning of life. And Ecclesiastes evidently understood that knowledge as such does not answer it. Science can investigate much; human reason is not at all as weak as believers sometimes say it is. But the main thing cannot be understood by reason alone.

Indeed, the question of meaning, the question "why" and "for what," is not a scientific one; reason alone is too little here. In the final analysis the answer to this question is known to God alone. The nature created by God, which science investigates, contains no answer: stones, trees, and animals not only do not know it, but do not even ask such a question. God Himself answers for stones, trees, and animals the question of the meaning of their existence, but stones, trees, and animals are unable to understand or even hear His answers.

More is given to the human being: he can and must understand why and for what he himself lives in the world, as well as why the world in which God has placed him has been given to him. But for the answer one must turn not to the world, but to God. Here the forefront belongs not to intellect or reason, but to faith, faith above all as trust in God, as the ability to ask Him a question and hear the answer.

From God one can learn the meaning of everything in the world, if only He considers it necessary to tell. Then, having received answers to the main questions, a person becomes truly wise: his life acquires the goal and meaning for which alone it is worth living.