Our postmodern world is focused primarily on materialism and scientism. It believes that science tells us all we need to know about life, and anything science cannot prove is unprovable. Likewise, life consists of obtaining those things or experiences that will make us happy or bring fulfillment. The problem with both those approaches to life is that they lead to dead-ends and ultimate boredom.
There are many things science cannot prove and was never intended to prove. Just because science is not equipped to prove certain things does not mean they do not exist. Many things transcend the limits of scientific discovery such as the existence of God and the souls of mankind. Some will insist that since science has not found such things they must not exist, and yet many leading scientists believe they do.
Solomon points out the limits of materialism. Considered the wealthiest person who ever lived he wrote that anything he desired he experienced whether it be pleasure, possessions or power. Yet, at the end of his life he insisted that it was all meaningless. He found it all unsatisfying and boring just as multitudes find it today.
Trying to escape the boredom postmodern mankind focuses on anything that can provide even a temporary escape: sports, movies, video games, drugs, alcohol, sex and constant checking of cell phones and social media. Families sit around dining tables each focused on their phones fearful they will miss a post. Attend a sporting event and you find the same thing. Many are more focused on their phones than on the game being played out before them.
In The Republic Plato rightly describes persons who live in a world without God when he describes those who "never taste any stable or pure pleasure. Instead, they always look down at the ground like cattle, and, with their heads bent over the dinner table, they feed, fatten, and fornicate." The atheist Bertrand Russell admitted that if God does not exist then all we can do is build our lives on "the firm foundation of unyielding despair." (I must give credit to Paul Gould and his book Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World where I found both quotes.)
In a sermon I sometimes preach I point out that each of us are created to have a relationship with God. I call it the missing piece of the puzzle, and we are not complete without that piece in its proper place. Many of us try to put something else in that location, but just like a puzzle, those other things will never fit properly. Anything we try to use will always disappoint and never fulfill us. Like Solomon, we find such things become meaningless and boring.
Our role as believers is to share that God is real and the most fulfilling and joyful life any of us can imagine is one in which He is active in our lives as Lord and Savior. We must take seriously this role because we are rapidly losing this generation to a life that is ultimately devoid of true meaning.
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