08 Wisdom in an Unjust World

The Teacher/Preacher is using his human reasoning to figure out life, but he is doing it from the perspective of merely what he observes when he looks around. This is life 'under the sun' - life apart from God, life without an eternal perspective. And the result is not happy: No one on this earth seems to get what they deserve. The righteous are not rewarded. The wicked are not punished. The innocent suffer. The wicked live long. It all seems meaningless! How should we respond? Our options:

1) Deny God's existence -- but if there is no God, then there is no standard of right and wrong, and the concepts of justice and injustice become meaningless.

2) Try to find a little comfort where you can. 'There is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.' There is some truth to this - we should enjoy the simple pleasures of life as gifts from the hand of God. But if that’s all there is, it is eventually unsatisfactory. Ultimate fulfilment comes only from the perspective of God, who stepped into human history in the person of Jesus. He said in Matthew 11:28: 'Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened (by life under the sun, by the injustice of the world, by uncertainty, by suffering, by the fear of death, ultimately by sin, which is the cause of all those things) and I will give you rest' (you will find forgiveness, you will find satisfaction, you will find meaning in life).