After questioning the purpose of life throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, it is only with the penultimate verse of the final chapter that the author brings us to meaning and purpose: Fear God, and keep his commandments. As if to say that any life lived without honour and obedience to God's laws is ultimately futile. To express this is a more secular way: A life where we serve only our own needs, and have no sense of a cause, movement or idea greater than ourselves is a life poorly lived—a futile life—one that can only cause sadness to ourselves and others.

As people move away in droves from organised religion¹ a void is created: an absence of purpose. The last one hundred years has seen us try to fill this void with psychoanalysis, meditation, mindfulness, astrology, numerology, personality assessments, extreme sports, drugs, video games, gambling, buying more stuff, altering our bodies, joining cults... the list goes on. As as result we have growing numbers of people suffering from depression, anxiety, addiction and trauma.

It's not that we must "find God" but we cannot go on denying the godhead, the divine nature or essence of this world, perhaps this universe.² To continue to do so will surely create fissures so great in the collective human psyche that we could not survive it. Our species will depart to make way for those earthly creatures incapable of such denial, those who live in (blissfully unconscious) harmony with God.

¹ Post Christian Britain arrives as majority say they have no religion, The Times, 26/01/2016
² I recommend Godhead: The brain's big bang. The explosive origin of creativity, mysticism and mental illness, Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell, Human Givens Publications, 2011