Engaging Scripture

Can an ironic proverb help us make sense of our complex world? – Ecclesiastes 7:15-8:8, Part 1

*Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash*

Are you feeling perplexed? Confused by the world we live in? If so, you are not alone. How many of you are familiar with Veggie Tales? The creator of Veggie Tales, Phil Vischer has been making some fascinating informational videos relating to racial justice in the USA. One video answers the question why Black Christians generally vote for one party and White Christians generally vote for another. Shouldn’t our Christian beliefs lead us to vote the same way? Interestingly, Black and White Christians agree on so many theological issues. But when we go to the voting booth, we overwhelming part ways. It’s perplexing. Why does it have to be so confusing?

And that is just one important issue among many. We humans see the world in so many different ways. Have you ever had that experience when you’re talking with someone or watching a news report or reading a Facebook post, and you think to yourself, “How can they, in their right mind, believe that nonsense?” It’s perplexing! Where can we find wisdom in this perplexing world?

What we are starting today is a four-week sermon mini-series on a section of Ecclesiastes that runs from chapters 7:15-10:20. If you follow the blog regularly, next week there will be no posts because we’ll have a guest speaker at Faith Church. I’ll return the following week with a quarterly current events sermon. After that I’ll continue with our study of Ecclesiastes 7:15-10:20, which Dorsey titles, “Practical Advice about Wise Living in This Perplexing World.”[1] It is interesting to think that the Teacher, some 3,000 years ago, might have thought he lived in a perplexing world. We definitely think that our world can be perplexing, don’t we? Hopefully these four sermons on Ecclesiastes 7:25-10:20 will be a treasure trove to help us make sense of the world and help us live more faithfully in it.

This week on the blog we are studying Ecclesiastes 7:15-8:8, and what we are going to see in this section is that the Teacher includes lots of proverbs. As we read, see if you can spot the proverbs. But what is a proverb? A proverb is a short wise saying. The book of Proverbs is the epitome of this kind of literature. It is 31 chapters filled almost wall-to-wall with proverbs. There is one very important point we need to make about proverbs, as we look for them in Ecclesiastes 7 and 8. Proverbs are often defined as sayings that are always true, but the reality is that proverbs are not necessarily always true. Instead proverbs are better defined as wise sayings that are usually or often true. We cannot say that proverbs are always true because there tend to be exceptions to the rule. Let’s start our search for proverbs by reading Ecclesiastes 7:15. Please open a Bible and read that verse.

Was there a proverb in verse 15? Yes. But it is a twisted, ironic proverb. “The righteousness of the righteous man destroys him, while the wickedness of the wicked man helps him live a long life.” Both of these situations can be true, and in fact, they occur far more than we might like.

When would a righteous man be destroyed in his righteousness? It can happen when a person is killed because of their faith. The epitome of this is Jesus. He was literally a righteous man that was killed because of his righteousness. Earlier this year we studied the book of Acts, and in chapters 7 and 8 we met Stephen, who, though he was not perfectly righteous like Jesus, was a faithful follower of Jesus who was killed for clearly articulating his faith in Jesus.

Along with millions of others who have been unjustly slaughtered, Jesus and Stephen are examples of the injustice that is far too prevalent in our world. What the Teacher sees in his world, we have seen far worse in ours. I watched the World War 2 in Color episode about the Holocaust recently, and it was very, very hard to get through. Millions snuffed out. Similar genocides have happened in so many other places throughout history. I’m not saying that all those people died because of righteousness or because of their faith. Many did. What I am saying is that this proverb is ironic because the righteous are not supposed to die because they are righteous. You’d think that living a life of righteousness would lead to life, as it often does. But the Teacher is right. Righteous people do sometimes die because of their righteousness.

Likewise, there is a sick irony in the second half of verse 15. Wicked men whose lives are prolonged because of their wickedness. Think, for example, of a crime boss who gets rich via fraudulent means, or maybe a bank robber, or leaders of a drug cartel. Through their riches, gained by evil means, they are able to live a long life, get excellent health care, etc. Again, while these cases happen, and they happen far more than they should, they are not the way life is supposed to be.

So the Teacher starts us off on a dark note. Where is he going with this? I thought this was supposed to be wisdom for a complex world. Instead, he seems to start by highlighting the complexity.

Stay tuned, because the Teacher has a flow of thought, and as we follow his thinking in the rest of the posts in this five-part series, we’ll learn some very practical wisdom for navigating the complexity of our world.

[1] Dorsey, David. 1999. Literary Structure of the OT.

The way to have a better life…now – Ecclesiastes 7:1-14, Part 5

I love the encouragement of this picture. With two and a half months to go in 2020, many of us are holding out for a better life in 2021. Here in the USA, the bitter presidential election will be over. It seems that we will get beyond Covid in 2021. So does that mean, as the picture says, we just need to “hang in there”? Is having a better life just about waiting?

Or is there something we can do now?

There is a lot we can do now!

All week long, we’ve been studying the poem in Ecclesiastes 7:1-14. It is a poem comprised of seven couplets, and in this post we study the 6th and 7th. In the sixth couplet, the Teacher gives us a kind of summary “better than.” Read for yourself how the Teacher puts it in Ecclesiastes 7:11-12:

Wisdom, like an inheritance, is a good thing
and benefits those who see the sun.
Wisdom is a shelter
as money is a shelter,
but the advantage of knowledge is this:
that wisdom preserves the life of its possessor.

Don’t see a “better than” statement in there, do you?

It’s there, in the first sentence. Still don’t see it? See the phrase, “is a good thing”? A literal translation of that phrase could be, “is a ‘gooder than’ thing.” That doesn’t work for English. Neither does, “is a ‘better than’ thing.” So translators just shorten it to the word “good,” so it reads smoothly in English. But know that it is the same word in the Hebrew as in all the previous couplets.

Why am I telling you this nuance of translating the Bible? Because I’ve been saying all along this week that the poem in Ecclesiastes 7:1-14 is structured by 7 couplets, each having a “better than” statement. Even though you can’t see it in most English translations, like all the previous couplets, there is another “better than” statement here too. But what is the Teacher saying in this sixth couplet?

With this “better than,” the Teacher summarizes the larger concept that he has been illustrating in each of the previous five “better thans.” He is saying, “Here’s how to have wisdom in this life: Be prepared for your death, hear the truth about yourself, work hard with patience, control your anger.” This is very similar to what we could call the way of the Kingdom of Jesus. We Christians strive to live a different way, the way the Jesus himself lived. The way of wisdom is better than any other way to live.

And so the Teacher concludes with the seventh and final “better than,” as he connects his “better than” poem to the larger point he has been trying to make in the book of Ecclesiastes: Enjoy the good times, but remember: both good and bad times are from God. Read how the Teacher describes the “better than” life in Ecclesiastes 7:13-14:

Consider what God has done:
Who can straighten
what he has made crooked?
When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, a man cannot discover
anything about his future.

Can’t find the “better than” in that one either, can you? It’s there. A literal translation of verse 14 says, “When you have ‘gooder than’ times, be happy.” That doesn’t work for English. Neither does, “When you have ‘better than’ times.” Like the previous couplet, most translators just shorten it to the word “good,” so it reads smoothly in English.

The Teacher is saying that we can and should be happy and joyful no matter the circumstances of our lives. In fact, the Teacher has taught us all along in Ecclesiastes that if we pursue the way of wisdom, we will experience that deep inner joy.

The Teacher reminds us that even though we cannot know the future, we don’t have to know the future to experience joy. God is who he is, and we can trust in him, following his way of wisdom. That is the better way to live.

As you review the poem, go back and skim through the blog posts starting here. Is there one of these “better than” phrases that speaks to you? Take it to the Lord, and say, “Lord, I want my life to follow your better way. Please help. Fill me Holy Spirit, transform my heart, so that your fruit of the Spirit flows through me in a new and deeper way.”

How to overcome anger and discontentment, and have joy – Ecclesiastes 7:1-14, Part 4

Look at the woman in the picture. What do you notice?

Longing, perhaps. Someone who is on the outside and wants to be on the inside. Frustration with life, maybe. Some who is upset enough to lean their forehead against a door. I wonder if something happened on the other side of the door that is bothering her. Is she feeling angry? There doesn’t seem to be joy radiating from her. Her posture suggests that she is discontent, wishing for something better.

This week we’ve been studying Ecclesiastes 7:1-14, a poem in which the Teacher shares very practical wisdom about how to have what he called a “better than” kind of life. In the poem there are seven couplets, each featuring a description of the “better than” life. The fourth “better than”, is found in verses Ecclesiastes 7:7-8: the final outcome or the result of a matter is better than its beginning.

Both the beginning and the ending of a journey have their own unique kinds of joy. At the beginning you’re excited to start off on a new venture. I’ve noticed at the beginning of a race, there is a lot of nervous excitement at the starting line, as you’re stretching, bouncing, waiting for the official timer’s gun to go off so the crowd of runners can begin. At that moment, you are energized, you are filled with adrenaline. The finish line is very different. You’re wiped out, you’re exhausted, you’re spent, emotionally, mentally. And yet as you cross the finish line, there is a new joy, a deeper joy, a joy of accomplishment and completion. That is a better joy. In fact, a big part of the joy we feel at the starting line is the anticipation of that greater joy at the finish.

This principle is true of more than just running in a race. This relates to a building project, a task at work, a report for a class at school. It relates to parents raising kids, seeing them graduate and get married. It relates to a sports team, to an art project, to practicing a musical instrument.

The wisdom in this is the wisdom of focusing on the goal, even if the journey is long. The Teacher is also saying that on the journey, the better way is the right way. Verse 7 illustrates two common ways people try to cut corners to get to the end faster, to avoid the hard work of the journey. They want all the joy of the beginning and the end, and they want to beat the system and avoid the travail of what can be a long middle journey. They bribe, they cheat, they manipulate, they intimidate. They know the tricks. They know if they use the right phrase, the right tone of voice, they can get what they want. The Teacher comes strongly against any underhanded method. Instead, the “better than” way, is to submit ourselves to hard work, faithful work, consistent work, which, when completed, makes the celebration even sweeter. As the Teacher says, “Patience is better than pride.”

The fifth “better than,” surprised me. He says, the “good old days” are not better than the present. Read Ecclesiastes 7:9-10. I thought for sure the Teacher would say the good old days are better. But he doesn’t. He says, “Don’t say that the good old days are better.”

That really jumped out at me because we often hear in our evangelical Christian subculture that the good old days were way better, and that parents and kids have it terrible in our day. The insinuation is that there was a time in the USA when it was better than it is now. The Teacher would respond, “Don’t say that.” Why? He simply says it is not wise to say that. What’s not wise about it?

My suspicion is that the teacher is referring to discontentment. By saying that the old days were better, we reveal a discontentment that is at work inside us. When we are discontent, we can have a negative view of society and culture around us. Examine yourself. Have you heard yourself say, “I miss the good old days when…? This world is a mess.” If so, is it possible that you’re seeing some discontentment seeping out of your heart. Pay attention to it.

Another way we show our discontentment is anger, as the Teacher mentions in verse 9. Anger can fly out of us in harsh words, in passive aggression, even in the silent treatment. Pay attention to it.

Anger is tricky. Anger can be used for good, to motivate justice, but it is such a powerful emotion that can also cause great damage. I think we see the Teacher hint at that when he says, “Do not be quickly provoked.” He could have said, “Never get provoked.” Or “Anger is always wrong.” Instead he says, “Fools let anger sit in their laps.” So we should be very cautious about anger because it is rather easy to express anger sinfully, hurtfully, to produce emotional and physical injury in another. Instead, the Teacher is suggesting the wisdom of learning to control ourselves so that when those angry feelings rise up inside us, we can observe them and interpret them before we act.

At its most basic, anger is just a message our body is sending us, saying, “Alert, Alert, be careful about the danger around you.” It could be relational danger, it could be physical danger, but most often anger arises when there has been some kind of experience where we feel our will is being crossed. To this intense emotion, the Teacher says, don’t be quick to anger. Fools are quick to anger, causing all kinds of damage in their wake. Instead, wisdom is found in self-control, putting a lasso around that anger, taming it, correctly corralling it in a healthy, productive way. For most of us that means biting our tongue, taking deep breaths, sitting on our hands, or something that helps us pause a response until we have settled down emotionally and can actually communicate in a loving way. Anger and love are not opposites. When we are settled down, rational, and calm, we can actually channel our anger toward love of another, which goes back to that truth-telling we talked about in the previous post.

So…are you feeling discontent in life? I often feel it. Do you need to make any changes to follow the Teacher’s description of a “better than” life?

Why listening to painful things is better than foolish laughter – Ecclesiastes 7:1-14, Part 3

*Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash*

I have been in a doctoral program for the last two years, and this past spring I finished my coursework and passed comprehensive exams. That means I now need to write the dissertation.

A book. I’m writing a book. And it feels like a mountain.

The first step was to write a proposal for my dissertation, and submit it to my dissertation committee. I had the first committee meeting a few weeks ago, and I needed to have the proposal in their hands a week before the meeting so they could review it. Then at the committee meeting we would discuss it.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

At that committee meeting I would hear the truth about my proposal, at least if the committee was doing its job. Each of the three members of my committee have all earned their doctorates, and some of them have been on committees like this many times before. That’s why I picked them to be on my committee. So while I knew the truth was coming, I didn’t like the thought of that. What if they hated my proposal? What if they determine I’m not academically up to it? Perhaps you know the self-doubts I’m talking about.

So I started procrastinating. I started doing anything and everything but writing that proposal. At the same time, I wanted to get the proposal done, because I hated the pressure of this burden weighing on me. It was a weird battle within me, where the “wanting to get it done” side was in a war against the “not wanting to face the truth side.” And the “not wanting to face the truth” side of me was winning. In fact, I started having more personal devotional time, not because I was hungering and thirsting after God, but because I was afraid of facing the truth about the proposal, about myself.

How many of you love to be confronted with the truth? It is not fun. The truth hurts, as the saying goes. Because the truth hurts, we can avoid it. In fact, we can become very creative and ingenious about avoiding the truth.

The Teacher knows what we humans are like, and our tendency to avoid hearing the truth about ourselves is what he refers to in the third “better than” in Ecclesiastes 7:1-14, a poem filled with practical wisdom in what we have been calling the seven “better thans.”

In this third couplet of the poem, the Teacher says that, “Listening to painful things is better than listening to foolish laughter.” You can read how he puts it in Ecclesiastes 7:5-6. The Teacher knows that humans love to bask in the warm glow of false encouragement, such as people telling us we’re amazing and great. But if this is what we hear about ourselves all the time, the Teacher calls it, “the song of fools” or the “laughter of fools.” That might sound harsh, but the reality is that there are times when each one of us needs to hear critique, feedback, and a corrective evaluation. The clear wisdom of the teacher, therefore, is that we need to be people who are humble and invite others to speak the truth to us. We need people in our lives who can confront us.

This is the difference between shepherds and prophets. Shepherds are people who come alongside and put their arm around our shoulder to encourage us. They tend to be gracious, warm and caring. And we need them in our lives. But we also need prophets.

Prophets are the people who stand in front of us and evaluate us, telling us the truth, even if it is just their interpretation of the truth about who we are. Prophets tend to be bold, confrontational. Because of that we can caricature them as if they’re just angry or opinionated, so we don’t have to listen to them. We can say, “I’ll only listen to them if they talk more respectfully to me.” Surely, the most effective prophets are the ones who speak the truth in a tone and manner that people can most easily receive. But even if they don’t speak graciously, it doesn’t let us off the hook. We still need to have a teachable posture, to receive their words, to evaluate how their view might be true, and how we might need to change.

This is what the Teacher means when he says we need to “heed the rebuke of the wise.” Do you have people in your life who speak plainly to you? Who is the prophet in your life, willing to tell you the truth about yourself? It could be a spouse, a friend, or a family member. But it might also need to be a professional, someone like a therapist, doctor, or coach that you hire to tell you the blunt, but honest, picture of who you really are.

In a sense I’ve hired my dissertation committee to tell me the truth. I didn’t get my proposal to them a week ahead our first meeting, but I did get it to them about three days in advance. Guess what? They told me the truth, and they did so with a gracious, honest mixture of both the shepherd and the prophet. I came away from the meeting encouraged, and with some assignments I had to work on to improve the proposal.

So how about you? Who is being a prophet to you? Who is your shepherd?

Why I like weddings better than funerals, and why I might be wrong – Ecclesiastes 7:1-14, Part 2

I like weddings more than funerals. At a wedding there is excitement and joy and dancing. At a funeral, while there is sometimes laughter remembering stories about the deceased, and while there can be joy that the person is suffering no more and is at home with the Lord, let’s face it that funerals are filled with sadness. Weddings are filled, however, with the promise of the beginning of a new family unit, with all kinds of hopeful expectation for a future. Funerals mark the end, emphasizing that a person is gone and is not coming back.

The first two “better thans” are very similar. First, thinking about the Day of Death is better than thinking of the Day of Birth (Ecclesiastes 7:1-2) and second, sorrow is better than laughter (7:3-4). Pause reading this post and read those two passages in your Bible.

Did you hear that? Whew. Right out of the gate, the Teacher shares dark wisdom, and I have to admit I do not like it. Celebrating death is better than celebrating birth? I want to sit down with the Teacher and say, “Wait a minute. You’ve been talking about finding joy in the Lord, and now you’re telling us that funerals are better than child dedications?” This is the kind of stuff that gives Ecclesiastes the label of the most depressing book in the Bible. Who would rather go to a house where the family just suffered a tragedy than a house where the family is throwing a celebration?

But that is precisely where the Teacher locates wisdom. As much as I disagree emotionally with the Teacher, as much as I feel within me that I would much rather go to a party than to a wake, as much as this first section of the poem is a bitter pill, I have to admit that, like a bitter pill, the Teacher’s wisdom here has the purpose of healing us. We need to hear what he has to say, which is the wisdom that we humans would do well to face the reality that we will all die.

The Teacher isn’t saying that we need to like this truth, that we need to feel good about it, but he is saying that it will be really helpful to us if we take it to heart. In other words, the reality of our mortality should give us cause to think about how we are living our lives. We so rarely think about that, because we’re too busy, or we simply find it extremely uncomfortable to think about death. At funerals, though, we can’t get away from it. At funerals we are confronted with death. At funerals we can consider, “Am I wasting my life?”

As a preacher who has officiated funerals, I always wrestle with this reality. I know I have the audience’s attention for about thirty minutes. At a funeral people are thinking about death. Because of that I know they are feeling uncomfortable. Yet, people who would almost never want to have a serious conversation about death are open to it now. Try it out with your friends, “Hey, I just wanted to talk with you about the fact that we will all die.” How would that go over? Probably not too well. At funerals it is expected, and yet even at a funeral I know people can tune me out, because talk about death is expected. The people at funerals hopefully don’t go to a lot of funerals, but they still know the drill. At a funeral, the sermon will be about death. So I wrestle with how to talk about death in such a way that people will listen.

Because the Teacher is right. We need to talk about death. His larger purpose is that we will be able to live well if we are ready for death. From a Christian perspective, Jesus’ answer to this is his repeated teaching, “Be ready.” No one knows the day, time or hour of his return, or of their death, so be ready. Live life not in fear of death, but in a perpetual state of readiness. How? By making discipleship to Jesus our first priority. By following the way of Jesus, we will always be in a state of readiness. Ignore the topic of death, and it could be possible that we are spending our lives on lesser things, or it could be that we are not ready for death. Not ready physically, spiritually, or otherwise. That’s why Jesus was often talking about it, and so should we.

Of course the Teacher didn’t know anything about Jesus. The Teacher lived hundreds or maybe thousands of years before Jesus. But the wisdom in these “better thans” is right in line with what Jesus taught, that we should focus our lives on the way of discipleship, or the way of his Kingdom.

A poem that can help you have a better life? – Ecclesiastes 7:1-14, Part 1

Have you ever longed for a better world? 2020 is a good year to long for a better world, isn’t it? Or maybe I should say it is an easy year to long for a better world? But while it is easy to long for a better world, actually achieving that better world can seem impossible. Maybe “world” is too wide a scope. So let’s talk about achieving a better life or community. Those can seem more attainable.

Even at that smaller scope, fairly quickly our longing for a better life or community is put to a halt when we realize that there are many different opinions about what constitutes a better life. Who gets to decide what a better life would be? Where do we find wisdom about how to live a better life? As we continue our study through Ecclesiastes, we have arrived at chapter 7, and the Teacher discusses the concept of what a better life looks like, sharing with us practical wisdom about how to actually live a better life. Turn to Ecclesiastes 7:1-14.

Scholars tell us that this section of Ecclesiastes seems to be a matching section to 3:1-15. Remember that one? You can glance back at it, and it should be familiar. It’s the famous poem about how there is a season for everything. In the poem the Teacher illustrates this with a bunch of opposites, starting with “a time to be born, a time to die,” and finishing with “a time for war and a time for peace.” Is the Pete Seiger song, “Turn, Turn, Turn” playing in your minds right now?

Now turn back to Ecclesiastes 7:1-4. There is evidence that we have another poem here, and one that seems to match with that previous poem in chapter 3. What evidence?

First, both have 14 verses comprised of 7 couplets.

Second, both address opposites. We see both talk about Birth & Death, Laughter & Mourning, Good times & Bad times.

Obviously, though, what we read in 7:1-14 is different from the previous poem. Dorsey sees the poem in 7:1-14 as a practical application of wisdom, based on the poem in 3:1-15. For example he says, “Yes, there is ‘a time to be born and a time to die,” as we read in 3:2; but now the Teacher says, ‘The day of death is better than the day of birth’ (7:1). “Yes, there is ‘a time to be born and a time to die,” but now the Teacher says ‘it is better to go to a house of mourning that to go to a house of feasting; for death is the destiny of every person; the living should take this to heart’ (7:2).”[1]

Do you see how the Teacher is discussing the same opposites, but he is expanding on them, talking about the real-world ramifications of the wisdom they discuss? He continues this approach in the next few verses.

“Yes, there is ‘a time to weep and a time to laugh’, and Yes there is ‘a time to mourn and a time to dance’ as he said in 3:4; but now the Teacher says, ‘sorrow is better than laughter’ (7:3), ‘the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning’ (7:4), and ‘like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of fools’ (7:6).”[1] So where the previous poem in chapter 3 observes the truth about life, the poem here in chapter 7 helps us think about how to actually live life in light of that truth.

Notice that the seven parts of the poem each have a “better than.” In the NIV you can see most of them fairly easily. As we’ll see there are a couple that are hard to find! The Teacher uses this word to help us contrast what he believes is wise and what is not so wise. Check back to tomorrow’s post as we begin to try to find all seven “better thans” in this poem. What we will discover is the Teacher’s wisdom about how to live a life that is “better than.”

[1] Dorsey, David A. 1999. The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis—Malachi. Grand Rapids: Baker. Page 195.

The ancient secret to finding true fulfillment in life – Ecclesiastes 5:8-6:12, Part 5

Look at the joy on the girl’s face in the picture above. Isn’t it wonderful? We can only imagine how she got covered in paint, but there is no mistaking that she is feeling deeply joyful about it. Perhaps we adults should let our hair down and have a paint battle from time to time. I say that because so many of us are struggling to find true fulfillment in life. We can feel trapped in the doldrums and frustration of the real world. Is it even possible to find true fulfillment?

The Teacher in Ecclesiastes would answer that with a resounding, YES, it is possible to find true fulfillment in life! To learn how, read on.

After reviewing the misguided pursuit of meaning, the Teacher returns to the solution of how to find fulfillment in life in Ecclesiastes chapter 6, verses 8-12. We begin with Dorsey’s translation of verses 8-9: “This is why the wise person is far better off than the fool; for the wise person has learned to enjoy what he has. It is better for a person to enjoy what he has than to crave what he doesn’t have—which is elusive and ethereal, like a breeze that cannot be held.”

In verses 8-9, the Teacher returns to what truly brings meaning in life. A wise person is one who learns to enjoy what he has. Do not crave what you don’t have. Instead learn to have joy right where you are. This is another way to talk about satisfaction. We can learn to be satisfied no matter the circumstances of our lives, when we have joy in the Lord. There will always be more things we can wish for. There will always be different circumstances we are hoping for. But don’t wish away the difficult spots you are in, and don’t wish for other gifts and provisions than what you’ve been given. Be grateful. Have eyes to see God in all the facets of your life, and find joy in who God is. Find joy in the fact that he loves you. Then allow the joy of the Lord to be your strength. Find strength to be grateful, to be satisfied in the fact that you bring him joy and true joy can be found in him.

This doesn’t mean that we turn a blind eye to the reality of our lives. This doesn’t mean that we don’t seek to live wisely. This doesn’t mean that money and wealth are inherently evil. It means our deepest desire and passion should be to find joy in the Lord, to find our satisfaction and stability in the Lord.

Notice how the Teacher points us to seek our satisfaction in the Lord in verse 10. Again, hear Dorsey’s translation, “God has already determined what a person should have, and what a person should be. One cannot dispute with God over these things, for his authority is greater than that of human beings.”

Upon reading that, you might think, “Joel, I don’t see anything in that verse that sounds like the Teacher pointing us to seek our satisfaction in the Lord.” Instead, verse 10 could sound like fatalism, the idea of “what will be, will be,” as if the pathway of our life is already determined, and we have no choice, no hope. But the more I study the Bible and get to know God, the more I’m convinced that he has created us with genuine free will and thus he has given us choice and hope in life. So how does free will jive with the phrase, “God has already determined”?

It seems to me that the Teacher is saying that God has already decided what is best for us. Verse 10, in other words, is a commentary on verses 8 and 9. God has made it known what is the best way to live, the way that will bring the deep satisfaction we crave. We don’t need to go looking for that satisfaction anywhere else because God, who is all knowing, all powerful, has already made the truth known to us. The truth is that God has determined that humans can only find deep, sustained satisfaction in Him.

As he nears his conclusion, in verse 11, then, the Teacher summarizes the false road that people so often travel in their search for meaning. Here is verse 11 in Dorsey’s translation, “People desire many things that ultimately are of no value to them.”

As he already taught, the Teacher here reaffirms that we humans so often search for fulfillment in money and possessions, and it while those things provide pleasure for a moment, that pleasure always fades away, and we are faced with the harsh reality of emptiness again, and again, and again. So what do we do?

I think the answer to “What do we do?” is how the Teacher concludes. But remember that this is poetic wisdom literature, and it is not as straightforward as we might like. In fact, it doesn’t seem straightforward at all. Look at verse 12. It might seem like a strange way to end this section, as if the Teacher is asking penetrating questions with no answers. Here again is Dorsey’s translation: “How can a human being even know what would be best for him in this life, during the few fleeting days that he lives like a passing shadow? How could he know what would be best for him in his future?”

It seems to me that the Teacher intends us readers to look at those questions as having obvious answers. How can a human being know what is best for him in this short life? He can’t! How can he know what is best for his future? He can’t. The teacher finishes this way as if to put an exclamation point on verse 10. God is the source of wisdom. Though humans can’t know what is best, and though humans try like crazy to find fulfillment in life, on our own we fail to do so, but thankfully there is another source of wisdom and truth. It is found in God!

So let us rejoice in God. Let us follow the joyful way of life that he calls us to. Let’s not think that consuming goods and services and seeking to live lives that we see portrayed by others will fulfill our longings. Only God can fulfill. Therefore, we can stop striving to find meaning and fulfillment in any other things, and we can rest from our striving, and we can enjoy what God has given us.

This is a picture of deep satisfaction in God. While life in our culture is rarely one in which people feel satisfied, we can learn to find our satisfaction in God, living joyfully no matter the circumstances. Here’s what I recommend. Start your day by being thankful. Spend time dwelling on your memories of God’s faithfulness. He is our only hope. Not a celebrity, not money, not a government leader. Let’s us commit anew to say, “Christ is Lord, Christ is King,” and then make choices to live like we mean it. If you’re wondering how to go about that. I would be glad to talk further. Comment below and let’s talk.

Are social media companies making promises they can’t fulfill? – Ecclesiastes 5:8-6:12, Part 4

Have you seen the recent commercials by Facebook or Tik Tok? Look at the smiles and joy emanating from the people in the commercials. What message would you say these commercials are sending? Here’s what I think the message is: “If you participate in our network you will experience joyful life, true community, fulfillment and depth of meaning.” Look at the people in those commercials. They are so incredibly happy on their screens.

The problem is that our society and culture is often described as the most depressed, anxious and lonely of all time. We continue our study of Ecclesiastes 5:8-6:12, and while we’ve looked at where to find joy, the Teacher knows that life so often distracts us, wears us down. Let’s follow his logic in chapter 6, verses 1-7, as he moves back to a discussion about the how difficult it can be to find lasting joy. Pause reading this post, open a Bible and read Ecclesiastes 6:1-7.

Did you see the Teacher’s exaggerations in this passage? He talks about a man with one hundred children or a man who lives two thousand years. While there have probably been men throughout history who have sired a hundred children, it is super rare, and furthermore, no one has lived for two thousand years. That is precisely the Teacher’s point: even if those feats were possible, in the end the person who accomplishes those feats has the same fate as anyone else. They will die.

So the teacher concludes in verse 7, when your life is focused on seeking happiness and fulfillment through accumulation, believing that money and possessions will bring you happiness, you will eventually realize that money and possessions simply do not have the ability to fulfill the hole in the human heart.

That hole is a bottomless pit that some have called the Empty Self. The Empty Self is the inner part of our being that craves satisfaction.

In our society it has become big business exploiting the hungry desires of the empty self. This is what companies tap into when they advertise to you. Much of advertising is designed to make you feel the longing, the emptiness, promising to you that the company’s product will fulfill that longing, helping you find the satisfaction you are looking for.

The psychologist Carol Moog writes about this, “I became concerned about the impact ads had on people’s self-concept, not only as a psychologist, but as a mother of a growing little girl whose idea of who she was and who she was supposed to be was going to inevitably be influenced by models persuading her to be like them as well as to buy like them…As I look at the products that were being marketed, I became more aware of how these products were integrated into my patients’ own searches for identity…for a fantasy of life.” (Are They Selling Her Lips?)

If Moog were writing in 2020, I think she would also talk about social media.

Though social media commercials a filled with smiling joyful people on their screens, disconcerting studies report to the contrary, suggesting that the claims of social media companies might not only be false, but actually devious. Netflix has a documentary titled The Social Dilemma (watch trailer here) which clearly explains the dangers of social media, how social media is purposefully engineered to make money from us, all the while addicting us to its services, even as it lies to us through its promises of fulfillment.

This is expertly illustrated in Season 3, Episode 1 of the show Black Mirror (also on Netflix). The episode is called “Nosedive,” (see the trailer here) about a woman who tries to boost her approval rating on a social media app. We are familiar how most social media apps include likes and shares. Imagine if the app kept an ongoing tally of how people responded to not only your posts, but also every interaction with you, giving you an overall approval rating. Then imagine if society starting using that approval rating as a measure to give you access, or deny you access, to various parts of society. For example, want to live in a particular neighbor? You need to have at least a score of 7 out of 10. But if you have a 6.9, you can’t live there. Or if you want to get your kids on a soccer team, you need a score of 6.5, but in the last month you’ve had a series of bad interactions with people at work, at church, and with the other parents in your kid’s school, and all of the people have downgraded your rating, so now you’re at a 6.4. “Nosedive” imagines a near-future world like that. Sound like a fantasy? Look into it. China’s already doing something like that in real life. Not to mention that our current social media apps already operate on a premise of social approval. If you get likes and hearts and shares and comments, you feel great. If you are a business page on Instagram that gets more shares, more likes and more comments, then your posts show up more often for more people to see. If you don’t get attention online, though, you can feel empty, alone, discouraged.

One of my favorite scenes in the Black Mirror episode is when the woman is talking with her brother who has what she considers to be a very low ranking life based on the social media app’s approval rating scale. But he couldn’t care less. He stopped using the app! He has freedom. He has found peace and meaning and wholeness elsewhere.

How do you struggle with the empty self? Maybe for you it’s not social media. But do you feel the emptiness, the longing? Is there any solution?

Check back tomorrow because the Teacher concludes this section with a possible solution!

The Source of True Joy – Ecclesiastes 5:8-6:12, Part 3

*Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash*

If money can’t buy happiness, what can?

In the previous post I mentioned that we humans can allow ourselves to believe that wealth is our hope, our savior, our peace, our life. As we continue this week’s five-part blog series on Ecclesiastes 5:8-6:12, open your Bible and read how the Teacher illustrates this false trust in chapter 5, verses 13-17.

Did you hear how he depicts the wealthy, grumpy miser? The miser’s passion is his fortune. His life is dominated by his desire to sit on his fortune, to count it over and over, to grow it, and not lose it. The Teacher says that this is a futile pursuit, a sad way to live. Why? Because you cannot take it with you when you die.

Clearly, the Teacher is not saying that when you have money and wealth and possessions you will instantaneously and consistently be dissatisfied. The emotion connected with wealth and possessions is way more devious than that because wealth and possessions actually can give us a great feeling. Whether it is the new car or the new house or the new clothing or gadget or game…you name it. Think about what you are longing for. It could be a meal at a great restaurant, a vacation, a TV show, a football game. They all give us a shot of enjoyment and satisfaction. They feel wonderful…but only for a time. Maybe you know the feeling I’m referring to, the feeling of fading enjoyment as a new belonging that once gave you satisfaction starts to feel old. The Teacher is saying that wealth and all that money makes possible cannot give us sustained peace and tranquility. We will always lose out, if we look for satisfaction in the wrong place. Worse, the Kingdom of God will lose out too, because when our hope and our faith in is earthly things, we are not focused on living for God’s Kingdom as we could be.

So if it is not found in money and possessions, where can we find satisfaction and peace and joy and hope?

That’s what the Teacher attempts to answer in verses 18-20. Read those verses and then continue this post below.

Did you hear the deep joy the Teacher conveys? He is describing joy that is founded on God. This joys flows from an attitude of heart and mind that trusts in God, rejoicing in God no matter the circumstances of our lives.

Has God blessed you with wealth? Than rejoice in God, not in wealth. Has God blessed you with work? Rejoice in God. Eat and drink and find satisfaction in the Lord. Find joy in all the circumstances of your life.

What to do when money keeps you up at night – Ecclesiastes 5:8-6:12, Part 2

I never used to understand how people could struggle with restless nights. I understand now. For a number of years, I’ve battled anxiety and panic, and one of my triggers is money. Will there be enough? Are we saving enough for retirement? Can we do a better job with spending? How can we pay off debt more quickly? My mind can race. I can believe that if I had wealth, I would sleep much easier. Sound familiar?

In our study of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher, as we saw in the first post in this series on chapter 5:8 through 6:12, has been talking about money. He in verse 9, and at first glance I thought he contradicted himself. See if verse 9 makes sense to you: “The increase from the land is taken by all; the king himself profits from the fields.” When the Teacher says, “the increase of the land is taken by all,” he is not trying to say that all the people in the land benefit equally from the produce of the land, or that all people have equal opportunity to benefit from the land. He is saying that the increase from the land is taken by all the powerful he just mentioned in verse 8, the leaders that have each other’s backs, making sure they control the wealth. And the king? Well, he benefits most of all. The king and the officials in power are very concerned about keeping power and wealth in their control. All of this sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? A king who leverages his position to stay in power, to get rich, on the backs of the working class? It’s like the Teacher is watching our news reports or something.

This talk about oppression and injustice gives the Teacher an opening to comment on the temptations of wealth. He says in verse 5:10, “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.”

In other words, as Dorsey says, “Wealth cannot give a person lasting satisfaction.” That idea reminds me of the phrase, “Money can’t buy happiness.” We sure try to buy happiness, though, don’t we? We believe money is the ticket to happiness. I can convince myself that if I pay off all my debt, and if I work hard to make money and if save money, I believe I will experience a deep peace like I have never known. As if the answers to all my problems is increased cash flow!

The Teacher goes on to debunk that theory. Look at verse 5:11. “As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them?”

Dorsey’s translation shows that what the Teacher is trying to say is, “The more a person has, the more he needs. Rich people expend much energy watching and guarding their wealth.” Bigger homes take more electricity, need more furniture, cost more in upkeep, need security systems. Newer cars…higher insurance rates. On and on it goes.

Money can keep us up at night. Have money and bills and retirement and the car repairs or the house repairs ever made it hard for you to sleep? It has definitely caused me to have some rough nights. That’s what the Teacher says in verse 12, “The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep.”

What’s the difference between these two, between the laborer and the rich man? The Teacher says that wealth can cause us to fixate on what it will take to keep that wealth. If we have a large investment in the stock market, and the market is volatile, or if we own property, and natural disaster is impending, we fear we are going to lose our wealth, and we start to devise all kinds of plans. Those are the worries that can keep the wealthy up at night. Those are the worries that can lead us to commit acts of oppression and injustice, because we fear the loss of protection and ease and freedom that we enjoy because of our wealth. What this reveals is that our trust is placed in our wealth. That our vitality is based on our wealth. That we believe we can find security in wealth.

But those who do not own stocks or properties don’t have to worry about them. When we moved eight years ago to live in the same school district as our church, our previous house didn’t sell, so we rented it. We didn’t have the ability to pay two mortgages. I found that year and a half renting that house to be so stressful. Every month we anxiously wondered if our tenants would pay us on time, because we needed their rent money to pay the mortgage on that house. There were many times they arrived handing us handfuls of cash the day the mortgage was due. Those were stressful times, I think for both them and us. Then there were times they would contact us with problems: the dryer broke, there are beg bugs, and we had to expend the energy and emotion and money to deal with the problems. I was so glad to get out from under that! Me and being a landlord didn’t mix well. Yes, I get that there are advantages to investments. If we could have just stuck it out, that property would be worth a lot more now, and we would have an additional source of income once the mortgage was paid off. So the Teacher is not saying that investment and wealth are inherently evil. He is simply saying that they can become fixations. They take extra time, and worry and energy. We can start to believe that wealth is our hope, our savior, our peace, our life.

What is the solution to this misplaced trust? If we struggle with sleepless nights because of worry about money, what can we do? Check back into the next post, as the Teacher is guiding us to some help!