Old Testament reading, we turn to the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 1. Ecclesiastes chapter 1, we shall read the first chapter throughout. The words of the teacher Son of David, King of Jerusalem. Meaningless. Meaningless, says the teacher. Utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. Sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north. Round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place where the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome. More than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, look, this is something new. It was here already, long ago. It was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow. I, the teacher, was king over Israel and Jerusalem. I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men. I have seen all the things that are done under the sun. All of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. What is twisted cannot be straightened. What is lacking cannot be counted. I thought to myself, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me. I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge. Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom and also of madness and folly. But I learned that this too is a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief. And we end our reading at the close of this chapter. I begin this evening by referring you to one of the most awful and terrible statements in the whole Bible. It's found in Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verse 2. The words, as it were, of an unbeliever and yet a human being. Meaningless. Meaningless, says the teacher. Utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. This is a key word in the book of Ecclesiastes, meaningless. It's used 31 times. It comes from the Hebrew word chavel, which means a breath or a vapor, something that is fleeting and empty and futile. I send out a breath from my mouth, it's away, it's invisible, it's vanished. And this is a very strong phrase. Our versions don't translate it adequately. It's not an adjective, meaningless. It's a noun. Meaninglessness. The essence and totality of what is meaningless. Everything that is meaningless gathered together in one mass. And in the Hebrew it is a superlative. We could translate it meaninglessness of meaninglessness. Utter, complete, black and total meaninglessness. Everything is totally meaningless. Think of it. Your child puts her arms around your neck and says, I love you. It doesn't mean a thing. The nurse goes into hospital, the doctor, and saves the life of a patient. It doesn't mean a thing. They might as well let them die. There's no meaning to love. There's no meaning to truth. There's no meaning to hope. There's no meaning to courage. There's no meaning to friendship or loyalty. There is absolutely no purpose or meaning or value in anything, anything in this world. It is all, all utterly and totally meaningless. Life is a sick, obscene joke. That's the statement that we have here in Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verse 2 utterly and totally meaning. There are people who really believe this and there are many of them. And one name we could give to them is existentialists. And they are worshippers of the next of our 20th century idols that we want to look at. Existentialism. I want to look at it this evening under four questions. First of all, why study existentialism? Secondly, what is existentialism? Thirdly, what are the weaknesses of existentialism? And lastly, what can we learn from existentialism? First of all, the obvious question some of you may be asking, why study existentialism? I said to several members of our congregation last Sabbath, who are present on holiday, Well, next week you're going to miss a sermon on existentialism. And you know something? They did not look terribly disappointed. They faced the blow with great fortitude and went off quite cheerfully. If you had known that the subject this evening, I'll not say would you have come, because I hope you would have come, but would you have brought a friend? What does it mean? It's very hard to say what it means. It's a philosophy which grew up on the continent of Europe, and I've read quite a few of the writings of existentialists, and they're very hard to understand. I can assure you, never mind explain to other people. Sometimes the writers themselves don't know what they mean. And you might ask, why should we as a congregation on a beautiful summer Sabbath evening waste time over a continental philosophy that is hard to understand and even harder to explain? What has it got to do with us? And I can assure you, my friends, that I have wrestled with that problem because I don't want to stand up here and have you thinking, what on earth is he talking about? And I think there are at least three reasons why we should study, briefly, existentialism. The first is because some of the major cultural figures of our century who have shaped the society in which we live have been existentialists. They have been influenced by this false god. They're worshippers of this false god. We think, for example, of famous writers. The best known is the French novelist and dramatist Jean-Paul Sartre, who lived from 1905 to 1980. He was an existentialist. His friend, the French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, was an existentialist. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, three years before he died in an accident at the age of 47. Some of the most famous filmmakers of the 20th century have been existentialists. Federico Fellini in Italy, Ingmar Bergman in Sweden. A major film of his has just been released this week, a long film about his father and mother. Bergman is an existentialist. Famous philosophers have been existentialists, men like Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers of Switzerland. Leading theologians are existentialists, men who have influenced and trained thousands of pastors. And there are many ministers preaching in Northern Ireland who have been influenced by the writings of existentialist theologians like Rudolf Buchmann and Paul Tillich. All these men are existentialists. And even on a more popular level, writers like Ernest Hemingway and Truman Capote are influenced by existentialism. To go even, perhaps I shouldn't say lower still, you've heard of the Beatles. Many of their songs are clear statements of existentialist philosophy. So that's one reason for studying. The second reason is for the sake of our young people. They're going to come up against it. One of Sartre's best-known novels is a set textbook for A-level French. Several of our own young people are at present studying this existentialist novel. When our young people go to university or college or out into the world, They will perhaps be lectured by existentialist professors. They will meet and hear about existentialism in the student world and they need to be warned about it and prepared to face it. We cannot send our young people out ill-equipped to meet this. Then a third reason. We should study it because it is in the air we breathe. It's in the air we breathe. Millions of people who have never even heard the word existentialism and wouldn't have a clue what it means are practicing existentialism. It comes to us through our television screens, through our newspapers and popular magazines, through the novels, the paperbacks, and non-fiction works that you'll see in any popular bookstore, through the self-improvement, self-help books, through all the avenues of the media. It fills the air we breathe. It is an infection, and we're all in danger of being infected and affected by it. And many Christians have been. So we can't ignore it. We can't say, well, that's some airy-fairy philosophy that I've never heard of that has nothing to do with me. It has a lot to do with you. It has polluted the world. We know what air pollution means. A nuclear plant blows up and the pollution spreads. And people who have never seen a nuclear plant, people who live thousands of miles away, are affected by it. So it is with existentialism. We may not have heard about it, we may not have read it, but we're affected by it. And more importantly perhaps, those to whom we seek to witness and minister are deeply affected by it. So this evening I think we need to look very briefly, and it can only be briefly, at this false god. so that we may avoid him, and so that we may stay close to the true God. I think it's a worthwhile study. Secondly, what is existentialism? What is existentialism? Well, it's hard to explain what it is. It's a very broad movement. Some existentialists are atheists. Others would call themselves Christians. Others wouldn't call themselves existentialists at all. When Sartre was asked about his friend Camus, is he an existentialist, he says, and I quote, no, he is not, that is a grave misconception. Yet Camus thought he was an existentialist. It's not a movement, it's not a coherent philosophy, it's a tendency. It embraces many areas of study in life. The fathers of existentialism go right back to the 19th century, men like the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who died in 1855, or the German philosopher who was responsible for much of the thinking of the Nazi movement, Friedrich Nietzsche, or the Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky. All these men contributed in their writing and thinking to the movement that we call existentialism. But more precisely, existentialism was born in Germany after the First World War. And it flourished in France after the Second World War. And I would like you to note that and remember it. It was born and it was nourished in a context of tragedy, cruelty, and immense, terrible suffering. It was born in a defeated, ravaged nation, where people were driven to the verge of despair, and it flourished in a nation which had seen at close hand the occupation and the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler. And that is deeply significant because that has coloured the whole philosophy. I want to look at it just very briefly under three subheadings. What it rejects, what it believes, and what it advises. First of all, what it rejects. Existentialism rejects God. There is no God, they say. God is dead. If he ever existed, he exists no longer. No God anywhere. Existentialism rejects values. There is no such thing as right and wrong. There is no objective basis for saying that something is good and something is evil. In the previous century, Dostoevsky had written prophetically, if God did not exist, everything would be permitted. And now they teach that God does not exist. And everything, everything is permitted. They reject values. They reject meaning. And they reject reason. There is no meaning to life. Ecclesiastes all over again. The world is an empty, absurd place. You must never ask the question why. There is no answer. And they reject hope. And in that sense they're different from the humanists, from others who have hopes for the future, hope that man will improve, hope that man will make a heaven on earth. Hope that man, by his technology and his reason, his science and his cultural development, will rise from barbarism, from the beasts. Man will make his own heaven, his own utopia. And the Marxists have hope. They have hope that they can make a perfect world. The existentialists have no hope. There'll be no perfect world, ever. That's what existentialism rejects, God, values, meaning, reason, hope. What does existentialism believe? The first thing it believes is nothing. It literally believes in nothing. Ernest Hemingway wrote a parody, An Existentialist's Lord's Prayer. And in that he substitutes the word nothing for every noun. Our nothing, who art in nothing, hallowed be thy nothing. And he goes on to the end of the prayer. For thine is the nothing, the nothing, the nothing, forever and ever. Amen. They believe in nothing. Existentialism believes in myself. I am. The only fact of which I can be sure in this universe is that I exist. You may not exist. You may just be figments of my imagination. But I know that I exist. And that's what matters. That's why it's called existentialism. The only thing that matters is existence. My existence. The existentialists ask the question, is it? He never says, why is it? He never says, what is it? He just says, is it? Existence. They have no interest in theory. They have no interest in what is impractical. Myself and my existence. Existentialism believes in Responsibility. Responsibility. I am responsible for myself. There's no one to turn to. There's no God. There's no help. There are no rules. There are no guidelines. There's no instruction manual by which I was, about which I was speaking last night. I have nothing. I have no one to trust. I have no one to blame. I cannot blame my heredity, I cannot blame my circumstances, I cannot blame my environment. I am who I am and I make myself who I am and I am responsible for who I am. The existentialist stands in a sense that heroic lonely figure in the world. He says I stand or fall by myself. And how do I make myself? The existentialist believes in choice. In choice. How do I know that I exist? By choosing to act. That's how I know I exist. By choosing to act. And the important thing for the existentialist is that he or she acts And by doing that the existentialist says I authenticate myself. Now the content of the choice doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you choose. You see an old lady standing at the side of the road. You could help her across the road or you could kick her into the gutter and steal her purse. Both actions would be equally valid. Both actions would be equally valid. In each case, you are choosing. You are acting. You are affecting the world you live in. One is not better than the other because there is no such thing as right or wrong. The content doesn't matter, just that you do choose. So existentialist plays and novels show us people choosing, choosing as we think absurdly, evilly, cruelly, selfishly, obscenely, doesn't matter. You have to choose. You have to act. That's what the existentialist believes in. What does existentialism advise? It advises courage. Courage. Man's place is doggedly to choose in an absurd universe. That's all they can say. Albert Camus uses the old Greek myth of the man called Sisyphus. And Sisyphus was condemned to all eternity to roll a huge boulder up a hill. And as soon as he reached the top of the hill, the boulder rolled down again. And Sisyphus had to roll it up again. and it rolled down again, up again, and down again for all eternity. Camus writes, the struggle towards the summit itself is enough to fill the heart of man. That's what it is, just a dogged acting, for no reason, for no purpose, with no meaning, but that's what life is. I remember going to hear an existentialist thinker in America when I was a student, and I've used the illustration before, I've never forgotten it. He described his view of life. Someone said to him, what is your understanding of human life? He described to us, very graphically and painfully, a child who was severely spastic, with shaking hands trying to reach for an ice cream cone. And he portrayed to us the terrible, heroic, persevering struggles of this little boy to get his hand round a comb, and how he reached out for it a dozen times and his little hand would miss it. He kept on sweating and gritting his teeth and trying, and eventually got his little fingers round the comb, and slowly and painfully started bringing it to his mouth, and then splattered it against the side of his face. That was his view of human existence. Effort. Courage. Dogged endurance. Striving. But at the end, nothing. Nothing. Sarko says, we must act without hope. The only thing to help us survive is scorn. Not a very cheerful philosophy. Let me say something about the weaknesses of existentialism. I mentioned three. First of all, it is logically inconsistent, as some of you, I'm sure, have already realized if you're thinking along with me. From now on, we're getting more practical for those of you who find the going a bit steep. It is logically inconsistent. Think a moment about the statement, everything is meaningless. Well now, if everything, if everything is meaningless, so is that statement. If everything is meaningless, then existentialism is meaningless. And the statement that everything is meaningless, that's meaningless too. And if you really believe that everything is meaningless, well then you've destroyed the basis for thought and for speech and communication And what existentialism rejects is meaningless, and what they believe is meaningless, and what they advise is meaningless. And we don't need to listen to them, we don't need to take advice from them, we don't need to be influenced by them in any way, because everything they say is meaningless. And you could listen to an existentialist, and at the end of his address you'd be entitled to stand up and say to him, but by your own beliefs, everything you have said tonight is nonsense. He couldn't argue with you because he believes he lives in an absurd world and everything is meaningless. So what are we doing here sitting listening to you? It's logically inconsistent. Secondly, it's practically impossible. It's practically impossible. Existentialists say that they don't believe in right or wrong. They say there's no such thing as right or wrong. They can't live that way. The greatest existentialist of the century, Jean-Paul Sartre, was bitterly opposed to anti-Semitism, to the persecution of Jews, and he defended Jews, and he risked his life for Jews. He fought in the resistance. He took a heroic stand on behalf of Jews because he felt it was wrong to persecute Jews. But he didn't believe in right or wrong. So he said. But you see when it came to the bit, there was something in him, there was something of God, the image of God implanted in him that was better than his philosophy, that was higher than his philosophy. He could apply it to his own sexual behavior. I don't believe in right or wrong, he said. He could apply it to his own friendships, but he couldn't apply it consistently. He couldn't live with his philosophy, couldn't live with it. Eventually, he was driven to the point where he had to say, this is wrong. My friends, there's nobody on this earth can live consistently with that philosophy. Not the greatest monster or devil who has ever lived can live consistently with the belief that there is no right or wrong. It is practically impossible. You see, God's image is in us. We look for meaning, we hold values, we can't live out philosophies like this. There's a beautiful story about Dr. Francis Schaeffer who was once talking to an existentialist, a young man. The existentialist was hiding behind this idea that everything is absurd and nothing has any meaning. And Schaeffer would talk to him and the young man would say, when you talk about God, he would say, we're not communicating, we're not communicating. And later on, you talk about faith, hope, we're not communicating. You talk about love, we're not communicating. He says, human beings can't communicate, can't communicate. So Schaeffer said, I'm going to punch you on the nose. And the young fellow did that. Schaeffer said, are we communicating? You know what a punch is? You know what a nose is? You're going to get one. Now we're communicating. You see, you can't live that way. You can't live that way. It's practically impossible. And thirdly, it is psychologically destructive. It is psychologically destructive. It leaves men and women in a wasteland of bewilderment, and despair and emptiness. Look at the culture of our day. Probably like me, you're not really much into modern pop music and all these things, but it's worthwhile occasionally to look at how ugly much of it is, how unnatural, how almost demonic That's the fruit of existentialism. Look at the morality of our day. How it's turned upside down. Look at the random violence of our day. You see, this all seems very airy-fairy. You're a young fellow who's been kicked out of school at 16 and you've never passed an exam in your life. And you're not going to get a job. and you're living in a miserable little tenement, five or six floors up with the rest of your family who don't even like you, and life is just empty. What is open to you? What is open to you? But acting. Acting. Go and kick an old lady. Become a football hooligan. Smash somebody's window. That's existentialist philosophy. For a few moments you feel that you have power, that you matter, that people have to take notice of you. That's why these things are happening. Look at the mental and emotional condition of people in our age. I read yesterday that a quarter of the hospital beds in America are filled with schizophrenics. A quarter of all the hospital beds in North America are filled with people suffering from one variety of mental illness. That's the fruits of existentialism. It's weaknesses, it's logically inconsistent, it is practically impossible, and it is psychologically destructive. Now you'd be relieved to hear that I've left about half of this message out. because there's a whole field of religious existentialism that we could have looked at and perhaps we will again some other time. But I want to end by asking, what can we learn from existentialism? What can we learn from existentialism? Now you may think, well, we can't learn anything. I never heard such a miserable, pessimistic, silly view of life as has been explained this evening. Surely there's nothing we can learn from this. But my friends, that'd be wrong. That'd be wrong. And that's why I began with Ecclesiastes. Because if there is no God, the existentialist is right. He's right. Existentialism is perfectly true. And we should commend them for their courage and for their honesty. And it's a thousand times better than the empty tissue of lies which humanism holds. Humanism teaches it's possible to have a wonderful life without God. Humanism teaches that in the films and stories you can have a happy ending, that you can have meaning, that you can live on this earth, you can have a good family, you can have a good life, you can live well, you can enjoy this earth and all that it contains, and that's a lie. That is a terrible, terrible lie. The existentialist has the courage to face reality, as the writer of Ecclesiastes does, and say that if you leave God out of the picture, if you look at the world under the sun, that's another phrase in Ecclesiastes, without God, then this world is an unspeakably ugly, cruel, empty and absurd place. And my friends, it is terribly, terribly sad. Without God, life is agonizingly, heartbreakingly sad. Have you felt that in your own heart? Have you lived long enough and experienced enough to feel that. I sometimes think that if there were no God, if there were no Christianity, I don't know how I could stay sane in this world. For it is filled, it is filled with sadness. We don't believe that when we're young, but the older we get, the more we see it. It's the little spastic boy with the ice cream cone. That's all it is. All the struggle, all the struggle for nothing. Sartre says, we because of Dachau and Auschwitz have had to take evil seriously. And we should commend them. We should commend them. They are right, apart from God. And the humanists are wrong, and the optimists are wrong, and the Marxists are wrong, and the rationalists are wrong, and the existentialists are right, and they agree with Ecclesiastes 1, 2, under the sun. Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless. Everything, everything is meaningless. But thank God, their proud presupposition is wrong. There is a God, and this God has spoken, and this God has acted to save his people. Sartre wrote, evil cannot be redeemed. But it has been redeemed in Christ, and we can enter into that redemption through faith, and we can know life and meaning and hope. And I really believe that there are people around us and at the back of their minds is a horror of darkness. That's why they keep the radio on. That's why you get some young people walking about with radio things stuffed in their ears. They don't want to think. They don't want to listen. There are ghosts in the blackness of their mind waiting to jump out and terrify them. Terrify them. That's why everybody's busy, busy, busy. Keep the TV on. Keep busy. They want to stop. Because all these demons are waiting. And we have to go to people like that and say to them, you're right. You're right. Apart from Christ, life is black. Life is ugly. We understand that. We understand that. We shouldn't be criticizing the existentialists for the ugliness of the picture they paint. We should be congratulating them. Saying, yes, that is what life is like without God. Don't you know that yourself? If you were to hear tonight that this was all a myth, how could we go on living? So we should go to them, not coldly or glibly, but with sympathy and with understanding and say to them, we have faced that darkness, we have thought about that darkness, we can understand you when you speak of that darkness, but my friend, God has shone in the darkness with the light of the world, who says, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. I hope this hasn't been a complete loss. I hope it hasn't been a waste of your time. There is that darkness. And a lot of intelligent people, thoughtful people, they see it. They understand it. We're not going to reach them with little slogans or little cheerful clichés. No, no. No, no. Above all, we as Christians believe that to be without God is to be without hope. To be without hope. And our argument is not that the world is not dark. Our argument is that the light has come into the darkness. And they have seen the darkness. And now it's our task to try to point them to the light. Amen. Let us pray. O God, we pray this evening for people all over the world who find life intolerable, who are lonely and discouraged, and who are sensitive to dying babies and broken families, and grieving women, and ravaged countries, who see the cruel and emptiness and shallowness and meaninglessness of life. And Lord, they have no faith in you. They have no awareness of you. And Lord, they are not wrong, for your word tells us that they are right. But Lord, we pray that out of that darkness the light of Christ may shine. that they may, in their very despair, be led to turn to Him who is the light of the world. And Father, we pray that we may not be shallow, trivial people who are happy simply because we stay away from the darkness and never look at it or think about it, because we pull pious blinds around us and stay in our own cozy, bright little circles. O God, help us to be men and women who live in the world while not being of the world.