Meaningless! Meaningless!

says the Teacher

Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless

Thus the book of Ecclesiastes begins and looks at the hard questions of life.  Questions such as why is there pain and suffering in this world, why do good people have bad things happen to them and why do some get away with their evil doings.  How can a good God allow oppression and poverty in the world, why does do we die and  just what does it all mean?  These are the inquiries that the author, or authors, of this biblical classic ask. 

The book was probably written in the third century BC and is part of what scholars call Wisdom Literature.  This is a form that is found in all ancient cultures.  It can be defined by how it differs from other Biblical texts.  Wisdom literature does not contain any mention of the promises God made to Abraham or the Exodus from Egypt, it also does not mention the Mosaic covenant nor the the Davidic kingdom.  It also does not argue for the centrality of Jerusalem as most of the Old Testament does. 

Along with Ecclesiastes other books in this category include Proverbs, Psalms, Song of Solomon (Songs) and Job.  In other Jewish literature the book of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon are found in this category.  These books conduct a search for knowledge that either enriches life of at least makes it bearable.  While they ask the hard questions of existence, many times it tends to fall into the dark side of life. Another charateristic is that the individual is emphasised over the group and truth is seen as being universal. 

Ecclesiastes is derived from the word Ekklesiastes which is Greek for one who addresses an assembly or a Preacher.  This word is the best translation of  the original Hebrew word, gohelet, which is a verb meaning to assemble.  It is seen as either the sayings of a great teacher in Jerusalem or a collection of sayings put together by the students of a teacher or a school of thought.  Because of Solomon’s reputation for wisdom it , like much of ancient Israel’s wisdom literature, is many times attributed to David’s son. 

The text is divided into two parts, the first  (chapters 1-6) proclaims the absurdity of life and the second (7-12) deals with how one is to live this absurd existence. It argues that all order is fixed by God and mortals cannot understand it, no matter how hard one tries.  It rejects all types of abuse and advises contingency as the best course to follow in life. Thus one should live life as one finds it and be moderate in all things as one enjoys the gifts of the Lord.

The author taunts the people of his time by proclaiming:

What has been will be again

What has been done will be done again

There is nothing new under the sun.

The Beatles echoed this with their anthem, “there is nothing you can that has not been done before and nothing you can say that has not been said before.”  This is also echoed in Erich Remarque’s book, All Quiet on the Western Front, when the main character laments:

And men will not understand us-for the generation that grew up before us, though it has passed these years with us here, already had a home and a calling; now it will return to its old occupations, and the war will be forgotten-and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside.

This is a curse of history, great event soon fades into history books and begins to look strange and foreign to those of the present.  A child of 10 in 2009 has no personal memory of 9/11, a collage graduate of this year has none of Reagan.  For the children of the Baby Boomers, Woodstock and the Kennedy assassination are dim memories, found only in the pages of school books or specials on the History Channel.  Like the attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of FDR was to the Baby Boomers when they were in high school. The world keeps turning and things are forgotten, while the study of history is replete with many lessons of people repeating the same circles of violence, war, oppressions, and other things again and again. 

The author then cautions that “with much wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge the more grief.”  Thus knowledge that brings power, and as Peter Parker observed that power brings responsibility, can bring a joy of learning, and can be a burden on the scholar.  The old adage that ignorance is bliss is an example of this statement.  As one learns more about things, becoming more aware of not only what is, but what could or should be, one can easily become despondent at the state of this mortal world.  The author also admonishes those who feel superior in their knowledge by observing that, “Like the fool, the wise man too must die.”

But does the author tell one that you should not take this journey of enlightenment, no, he encourages it despite the problems one will encounter along the way.   Of the world he says, “he has made everything beautiful in its time.”   Thus knowledge, with all of its problems,  is a gift of God and worth pursuing for its own sake.  This pursuit is ingrained in humanity as the author said God, “has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”  So while we are innately curious of the world, we will never fully comprehend all of creation.

English philosopher Roger Bacon describes this paradox by saying:

for the most useful, the greatest, and most beautiful lessons of knowledge as well as the secrets of science and art are unknown.

St Augustine commented on this with his observations, “The thoughts of mortal men are timid.”  While Matthew Arnold observed that people are, “wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.”  Thus we see the greatness and wonder of the universe and all the things within it, but we cannot comprehend all of it.  We cannot explain it, but like one condemned to roll a rock up a mountain, we cannot stop trying.

Probably the most famous and best know quote of this book is the one that deals with the circle of life, showing that this idea is not a product of  Disney. It is  the  idea that life and the forces that encompass it, flows like a ripple in water.  Moving out from birth to death covering all of our time on this planet.  It even became a top ten hit in the rock music world.  It states:

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to morn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

 a time to tear and a time to mend,

 a time to be silent and a time to speak,

 a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

This classic quote basically is saying that all things come to past in its own time, and we ,mortal humans, are not privy to the whens or wheres or whys.  In his classic book,  Moby Dick,  Herman  Melville expressed much the same in the classic scene between Ahab and Starbuck on the deck of the Peqod, before their final battle with Moby Dick.  Ahab cries out:

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozzening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much dare?  Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.  By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the hand-spike.  And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look ! see you Albacore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying fish? Where do murders go, man! Who’s to doom, when the judge himself is dragged before the bar? 

In the famous Gregory Peck movie, Ahab tells the second mate, Starbuck, they had rehearsed this scene a thousand years before the seas were formed.  Who is this force that Ahab is looking for, according to the author of Ecclesiastes is God. God who gave the gift of life and wisdom and the ability to search and discover the meaning of life and the the wisdom of the ages.  He proclaims; “Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past into account.”  Thus God sets everything into its place and gives everything a time.

Does this mean that God predestines all of life and works out every detail of it before we are ever born? Is there a heavenly book containing the script of our lives, worked out in advance like a Hollywood movie or a Broadway play.  Is God the Shakespeare of our existence?  Some think so, many of the followers of John Calvin argued this idea under the ideology of predestination.  Calvin, building on arguments by both Luther and Augustine, said that all are saved through God’s intuitive and not from any human effort. 

Calvin in his book, Institutes of  the Christian Religion, said, “We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which he determined with himself what he willed to become for each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others.”  Roger Bacon expressed this sediment in a simpler form, saying, “For many have been called but few chosen for the reception of the divine truth.”   Thus many thought that our futures were set in stone by the divine spirit of God.  Or as Bacon further stated, “For with Moses so with Christ, the common throng does not ascend the mountain.”

Calvin stressed that humanity could never know the why of God’s action, only to discover if God has acted in a certain way.  Also, predestination was not as important to Calvin as it was to his followers, he only spent one paragraph on it in his famous work. Using the razor of William of Occam, and stripping away all the complicated things and looking at most simplest forms of this argument, the mystery may be a simpler thing. It may be that God knows us so well that He can ascertain our actions before we do them.  Bacon observed, “as a rule the daughter follows the example of the mother, the son the father’s, the slave the master’s, the porter the king’s, the subordinate the Superior’s, the pupil the master’s.”  God may not have a script for our lives, but His knowledge of us gives Him all He needs to see what actions we will take in any situation.

 While the author of this book celebrates the gifts of God, he decries the many contradictions he sees in the world.  He states, “And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgement- wickedness was there. In the place of justice-wickedness was there.”   The author goes on to decry:

I have seen something else under the sun:

The race is not to the swift

or the battle to the strong,

nor does food come to the wise,

or wealth to the brilliant

or favor to the learned;

but time and chance happen to them all.

Malcolm Gladwell book,Outliers, The  Story of Success, argues that success comes more from family, birthplace, or birthday.  He argues that  chance and 10,000 hours of practice are more important than  any innate ability or wisdom.  Thus a hockey player born in the first six months of the year gets, because of the age requirements of youth leagues, more opportunity to play and practice on a higher level than one born later in the year.   Where would have many American Presidents been in a nation that had a monarchy?  Without the Depression, FDR may have been just another who ran, without Viet Nam and Watergate, Reagan may have been a retired Governor and actor. 

The writer of the text laments, “I saw the tears of the oppressed and they have no comforter; power was on the side of the oppressor and they have no comforter.”  He wonders why, “a righteous man perishing in his righteousness and a wicked man living long in his wickedness.”  He decries the fact that justice and rights are denied and warns us not to be surprised at this as all officials are robbed by one higher than them and the king is the biggest thief of them all.  As one gains wealth and power one gets favors and special treatment.  The problem of power is when one gains it certain perks and priviliges follow. At first one is embarrassed and turns them down.  Soon, that person begins to gratefully accept them, then expect them, and in the end demand them. His laments continues:

Whoever loves money never has money enough;

whoever loves his wealth is never satisfied with his income.

This too is meaningless.

As goods increase,

so do those who consume them.

And what benefit are they to the owner

except to feast his eyes upon them.

The sleep of the laborer is sweet,

whether he eats little or much,

but the abundance of the rich man

permits him no sleep.

He sorrowfully speaks of how wealth that is horded by one end up bringing harm to that individual and leaving his son with nothing.   He warns all that “naked a man comes from his mother’s womb,and as he comes, so does he depart.”  Basically, you cannot take it with you, though many have tried.  A famous example is Henry VIII, who felt he could rule England from the grave with his great will.  Which was quickly overturned by the ministers of the young Edward VI. 

 The author points out that little can be passed on, witness the great English kings, Edward I and Edward III who were both seceded by very weak kings (Edward II and Richard II).  Thus one lives his life “with great frustration, affliction, and anger.”   From this the author laments and warns, “What more can the king’s successor do than what has already been done.”  Like in athletics, you do not want to follow a legend, because not matter what you do, you may not live up to the mythical standards already in the minds of the people or be able to withstand the pressure of the giant shadow the legend cast upon you. 

A popular radio program in the 1930s began with the announcement, “Who knows what evil lurks in the mind of men, the Shadow knows.”  Evil seems to be inborn in people and some have argued that this evil exist even before we are born.  So where does all of the wickedness that cast a shadow on the Lord’s creation come from?   Philosopher Roger Bacon said this of evil:

Let any man you please consider his own life from infancy, and he will find that in the majority of his acts it has been easier for him to reduce to habit what is false and evil.

Yet when God looked over creation he declared that (Genesis 1:31), “It was very  good.”  So what went wrong?  What happened to cause sin and death to enter this perfect world that was declared not just good, but very good.  Was it in a box opened by a girl named Pandora, or kept in a jar guarded by a frog and a toad only to be broken open by accident.  No, it came from within human beings themselves.  It was a small thing, it is called pride, a thing that makes one feel better than all around or makes one wish to be God.  It makes one look down upon those he sees himself or herself as better than.  Looking down and not realizing that the people one thinks they are looking down at are only the reflection of those standing above them.

Simple, the temptation of Eve was that by eating the fruit she and Adam would become, “like God, knowing good from evil.”   John Calvin said of this sin, “The prohibition to touch the tree of knowledge of good and evil was a trial of obedience, that Adam, by observing it, might prove his willing submission to the command of God.”  The sin was of pride, which Augustine said was the “beginning of sin.”  As Augustine states, it was man preferring themselves over God that caused sin to enter the world. 

In Proverbs one is warned that, “pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before the fall.”   Sin and death came into the world through the human pride, man’s wishing to be like God and not his servant.  Calvin explains that, “the offence is not with the work itself, but the corruption of the work.”   So while humans are not born evil, they are born with evil within them and through pride this evil comes forth and separates us from God.  It is the actions of people that are evil and not the people themselves.  These evil actions, as Bacon states, are ingrained within us and are easier to follow than the true natural course of good.

St. Augustine gives this as an example of this, “For avarice is not the fault  inherent in gold, but in the man who inordinately loves gold, to the determent of justice, which ought to be held in incomparably higher regard than gold.”  Actions of people are evil, not things or creatures.  Evil comes from the choices people make.  Humans have the gift of choice and this gift sets them apart from the rest of creation.  They can choose between two roads and must live with the consequences of that choice.  In her poem, The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde,  Bonnie Parker asserts this by saying that while she understands that  the “wages of sin are death” she has chosen to go down with her true love Clyde.  Thus we have a choice and when we choose wrong, we must accept the punishment that follows. 

This is diiffernt from the rest of creation, there is no choice in that relm.  So, if one builds on a fault lines, one will have an earthquake, in a flood zone, floods, in areas prone to hurricanes, storms that will roar through and area destroying much property and life.  These are not evil events, they are natural occurrences of the natural world, running on the laws that God set in motion at creation.  Many worse things would  happen if these do not because of the laws of natural science.  They are tragedies to those in the path, but they do not occur for retribution or punishment, they happen as part of this world.  So to are the acts of animals,  if one goes out into the domain of grizzly bears, lions, tigers, or sharks, one will become the object of these predators hunt for food.  They do what they do, they are not evil or good, they are what they are, predators in the natural world.  These creatures work on instinct, they do not have a conscious choice in what they hunt, they do what they do.

“It is not nature, therefore, but vice which is contrary to God.” stated Augustine.  But we do have a conscious choice in our actions.  It is in this that the author of this book sees the justice of God, as he says:

God will bring to  justice both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time for every deed.

He goes on to caution that we should:

Do not be over-righteous,

neither be over-wise-

why destroy yourself.

Do not be over-wicked,

and do not be a fool-

why die before your time.

It is good to grasp the one

and not let go of the other.

The man who fears God will avoid all extremes.

He cautions people about being over sensitive to what others say:

Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you-

for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others.

He goes on to say of woman:

I find more bitter than death

the woman who is a snare,

whose heart is a trap

and whose hands are chains.

The man who pleases God will escape her,

but the sinner she will ensnare.

 Again he warns us of those whose motives are evil, those who look to relationships for gain and wealth and not for love.  When a relationship is based on love it is as it is written in the Song of Songs (or Solomon), “We rejoice in and delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine.”  he does however, state that in a thousand men he only found one upright man and never did find one upright woman.  But like Paul’s words about woman in Ephesians 5, one must look at the culture of the times.  Woman in ancient Israel had little standing and mostly were regarded as property, but maybe the author was commenting about the women around the centers of power.  As for Paul, while many cite his 3 verses (22-24)  to show his contempt for woman or to prove a husband’s total authority, they ignore the next 7 verses (25-33) that tells the husband to love and respect his wifee as he does the church.

 The author finishes with admonitions to obey the king, common in all Old Testament text and in much of the New Testament as well.  The only exception being Acts 5:29, which tells all that we must obey God over man.  He also expresses  sorrowfor a land whose rulers are immature and pleads for one to remember his Creator before old age robs him of all of his strength. 

The author sees nothing one can do about the state of the world so one can only enjoy the gifts God gave us and live the best we can.  He offers little to no comfort and sees the world in a cynical and fatalistic way.  But suffering and disappointment may have thier good points as well.  One who never experiences either will have no idea how to handle it when these evil things occur.  One might wonder that much of today’s drug use and destructive behavior comes from the Baby Boomers overprotecting their children who now have no understanding on how to handle the disappointments in life. 

So why does God allow suffering, maybe Richard Nixon, who found this his favorite book, said it best :

Only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

He cautions against nostalgia, saying “Do not say, why were the old days better than these.  For it is not wise to ask such questions.”  It is not wise because we tend to forget the bad and only remember the good of the past.  When people discuss the virtues and close family relationships of the Depression, they tend to forget the harsh reality of 25% unemployment and bank foreclosures that left many homeless.  It was  a reality that created the great crime wave of Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and Pretty  Boy Floyd.

St. Augustine said of the relationship between the past and the present, “you try to lay your finger on the present, and cannot find it, because the present occupies no space, but is only the transition of time from the future to the past.”  The author of Ecclesiastes agrees, stating several times no man can tell the future and one forgets the past, so one should as the author suggests: enjoy the gifts of God while we can.

He concludes with a warning that “of making books there is no end and much study wearies the body.”  Then he finishes with this:

Now all has been heard;

here is the conclusion of the matter:

Fear God and keep his commandments,

for this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgement,

including every hidden thing,

whether it is good or evil.