In a limited, temporal sense, yes. But in a wholistic, eternal sense, no. You probably know people who don’t believe in God or follow him who seem to have meaningful lives. They love their families, they contribute to the greater good of society, they do honorable work, they help their neighbors now and then. But their story is viewed as a small one, not as a part of a greater, eternal story. They have their joys and sorrows, their victories and defeats; they live, they die, and they are gone.

Thousands of years ago, a man whose name or title was Qoheleth (some say this was King Solomon) recorded his existential search for meaning. We recognize his story as the book of Ecclesiastes, which today might be subtitled, “Been there, done that, now what?” Qoheleth was a man who had much, experienced much, and hungered for even more. He had wives. Horses. Education. Power. Opportunity. But again and again, he summed up his existence by saying, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” The word translated “vanity” literally means vapor, and it conjures up a picture of something fleeting and elusive, not something solid and satisfying.

Qoheleth concluded that without God, life is meaningless. Apart from him no larger, epic story exists that has true and lasting purpose—only a blank, finite page on which to create our own tiny, temporary story. We need something beyond ourselves and bigger than ourselves to give our lives eternal meaning. Without God, we have no reference point from which to see the bigger story, and we are bound to nothingness, or vapor.