NOTES for Прем 2:23
The question about the sense of life worried man, certainly, from the same moment of the fall. Formerly, before the accident, this sense was defined by God, and man accepted the definition of God, as his. Even if questions appeared, there was always near the One Who can give the most complete, clearest and most correct answer. The problem, as we see, appeared when the fallen man forgot to listen to and hear God.
Then this fallen man began to ask to himself and to others strange questions for someone living a normal and complete spiritual life: who am I? Why am I in this world? What awaits me next? What to do and how to live? Is there really in all this any sense? It is in principle clear why appeared the questions: Indeed, one of the main illusions possessing the fallen man, is the illusion that this part of the universe, that he sees in the fallen state, without noticing often others, is the only existing one. The nature is real, the spirit – a chimera, or at least something secondary in relation to nature.
In principle, there is of course nothing surprising in such an aberration of the perception: because the fallen man is also first of all nature, and is spirit in the best case, in the second. And this anomaly is perceived, as a norm, the only possible norm. But the biblical writer reminds that man is not at all intended to be simply a part of the nature. In the world of nature, man is a guest, but not accidentally.
And he is home only in the kingdom of God. We can forget of course the Kingdom and live as if it did not exist, as if the life of the nature is the only and ultimate reality. But then there is a big chance that the nature with its cycle of births and deaths, making senseless the life of man, really becomes for us the only and ultimate reality. And we shall not notice the Kingdom.