Abstract:
Religious and existential concerns interweave in many books of the Bible to give attention to
human’s existential anguish, the sense of guilt, the horror of death, the atrocious experience of
the absurd. While many contemporary existentialist philosophers prefer to do without God in
the attempt to deal with human’s existential contradictions, the search takes the authors of the
Bible through intense spiritual struggles as they attempt to confront the belief in the goodness
of God with the human experience of futility in all its facets. We want to seek a meeting point
between the existentialist concerns of the book of Qoholeth with the profound theology of
meaningfulness as elaborated in Genesis 1:1–2:4a. Our article therefore, has a decidedly pastoral
orientation. We will attempt to move, through an analysis of select texts, to a re-affirmation of
one of the spiritual truths that many mystics have tried to teach: that reason alone is not
enough to guide the human person to the mysteries of life, the believer has to learn to unite
with God or to the realities themselves to discover the fundamental goodness in many of the
experiences that, in human perspectives, seem to be absurd.
Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: We believe such union is needed in
a world where racism, violence to minorities, gender inequalities, homophobic attitudes are
thickening the clouds of discrimination and threatening some to doubt the fundamental
goodness of creation as made by God.
