I have
been reading and re-reading Ecclesiastes to start my day and its message has
been hitting me between the eyes.
Many of
you – and I say you as I am a theologian not a counselor – got into counseling
because you are fixers. As an INTJ, I am
a fixer too; that is the core of my personality type, looking at a problem and
finding innovative solutions.
You and
I want to see problems solved, people coming through hard times to wholeness,
God’s power on display to heal and restore.
People are on a road from one place to another, learning to be more
loving, to give more grace, to understand others better, and to handle
difficulties in a way that leads through them to greater health. And as a counselor, you are helping people
move from one place to another, a new place that is better than where they have
been in the past.
Let me
say first off that I am all for it; there are places in my life that have been
fixed. These places are better than they were before.
I am growing. The power of the gospel is alive and well in me and is transforming day by day. The other day, my wife was writing an
introduction to a talk she was giving at church and she wrote about the person
she was 20 years ago and the person she is today. It was beautiful for me to hear as she read
it over the phone for my input. Because
I have lived it with her, I have seen the changes. I know it to be true. Her growth is evident.
When we
look at the book of Ecclesiastes, there are several ideas about its major
theme. The book is so depressing, so
down, so different from the book of Proverbs or Psalms in its perspective that
some Hebrew scholars have surmised that it was written by someone who had a
different theology, even a radically different view of God than other parts of
the Old Testament. Or, perhaps, one
really skeptical guy wrote most of it and later a more theologically orthodox
editor came along and added the positive bits so we could keep it in the Bible
– or something like that. In this view,
the book is full of contradictions and it is arguing that we will never be able
to understand the world or God (Murphey, 1992). I would encourage you to pick up the Bible
and just read a few verses of Ecclesiastes to remind yourself of its tone.
Choose any place you like in the book.
One
commentator writes that he is glad to have found another skeptic among the
writers of the Bible. Life does not make
sense, and you better have your fun when you can (Crenshaw, 1987).
A second
view is the one championed by most evangelicals. Basically, they argue that without God, the
world does not make sense. “The purpose
of Ecclesiastes was to convince men of the uselessness of any world view which
does not rise above the horizon of man himself. It pronounces the verdict of ‘vanities of
vanities’ upon any philosophy of life which regards the created world or human
enjoyment as an end in itself” (Archer, 1994).
In this view, looking at the nature of life through the lenses of the
life and resurrection of Christ changes everything about how we interpret the
book.
The
eminent OT theologian Tremper Longman (1998) writes:
“While Qohelet [author] sounds nonorthodox in light of the rest of the canon,
he presents a true assessment of the world apart from God’s redeeming
love.” And: “Christians can experience
deep significance precisely in those areas where Qohelet felt most
oppressed. Jesus has restored meaning to
wisdom, labor, love, and life.” Michael
Eaton (1983; see also NLT Study Bible, 2008) writes: “What, then, is the
purpose of Ecclesiastes? It is an essay
in apologetics. It defends the life of
faith in a generous God by pointing to the grimness of the alternative.” Adding a Christian world-view to the
interpretation is like a kid in art class laying different colors of cellophane
over a black a white design to make stained glass.
As a guy
that has spent a lot of his time studying the New Testament, this sounds good
on the surface. Yes, the New Testament
adds a lot to our reading of the Old Testament when we look at in the light of
Christ. But, I cannot think of another
place in the Old Testament where I need to read things in light of Christ or a
Christian worldview to make much of any sense of what is going on in quite the
same way these commentators seem to apply to Ecclesiastes.
I do not
want to discount my fellow biblical scholars ideas – there is truth here – but when I let the text just speak for itself, I
feel more like the first group of interpreters, most of whom do not view the
Bible as the authoritative Word of God.
Like the book of Job, I can’t make easy sense of it being inspired by
the same God I think I have come to know and love from the other parts of the
Bible.
There is
an even greater problem. Life
itself. The devastation life brings to
us sometimes seems much closer to the truth of Ecclesiastes than I want to
believe. When my beloved assistant’s
daughter was killed by a drunk drive a year or so ago, when my 65 year old
uncle is taking care of his daughter’s child because his daughter has abandoned
her own flesh and blood, when I visited the Rwandan genocide memorial with my
friend Pius who lost brothers and sisters, when what I thought were God-given
dreams and expectations come to nothing, the chorus “All is vanity” of the ERV
or the, “Everything is meaningless” of the NLT rings through my head. The arguments given to back this up seem very
convincing indeed. Living life, I am able
to make some sense of Ecclesiastes. This
is what much in life actually is.
Where do
we go from here?
As a
natural fixer, this is hard to do, but I am trying: I need to hold both the
incongruity of life and the goodness and plan of God together. Elizabeth Huwiler writes about the theme of
Ecclesiastes: “A
particular challenge for interpreters is the fact that Qohelet clings
tenaciously to both claims: all life is hebel
[vanity or meaningless], and yet joy is both possible and good.[i] Ecclesiastes has genuine affinity with a
modern society that is more and more at home with the incongruities of life and
the difficulty or even impossibilities of finding answers.
“Enjoy
life to the full when you can, because you better believe some really hard
stuff is coming just around the corner,” is not a message we are comfortable
with in the church. “We might have a
victory today, but tomorrow you could get run over by a garbage truck and it
will all be for nothing.” is not the message ringing from the pulpits of our
pop-gospel prosperity teachers.
As
counselors, trying to be successful people fixers, we need to listen to this
book just like we listen to Paul’s Romans 8:28.
In some way, the message is simple and clear. The world is broken. Sometimes life really stinks. No matter how hard we try, how many hours we
work, how many Bible verses we learn by heart, we will still be broken people
living in a broken world. Sin has ruined
it all. Now, that message fits in with all
we know about God and a Christian worldview that we know from the rest of
Scripture.
God,
more that we could possibly imagine, knows how broken and beyond repair we all
are. He loves us anyway. Someday, our Lord will come back in glory and
all things will be put right. Until
then, especially as those trying to bring healing to those who hurt, we will
have to try to be content holding the message of Ecclesiastes much closer to
our hearts than is comfortable or safe.
Footnote:
1 Huwiler writes: “The anguish of
Qohelet’s investigation of life is knowing that the following two observations
about life are true at the same time. … The reader is challenged to allow the
competing claims to be heard, and to find truth in the clash.” 166-67.
References
Archer, G. (1994).
A Survey of Old Testament
Introduction (p. 525), Chicago:
Moody Press.
Crenshaw, J. (1987). Ecclesiastes a commentary. Philadelphia:
Westminster
Press.
Crossway. (2008). Introduction to Ecclesiastes. In the ESV Study Bible. Wheaton: Crossway Books.
Eaton, M. (1983). Ecclesiastes: an Introduction and Commentary. In the Tyndale Old
Testament Commentaries (pp. 74-79).
Leicester: IVP.
Huwiler, E. (1999). Ecclesiastes. In Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs--New
International Bible Commentary (p. 164ff): Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.
Longman, T., III. (1998). The Book of Ecclesiastes. In New International Commentary on the
Old Testament (pp. 39-40), Grand Rapids; Eerdmans.
Murphey, R.E. (1992). Ecclesiastes. WBC vol 23a. (1xviii), Dallas: Word Books.
Tyndale
House. (2008). The NLT Study Bible. Carol
Stream: Tyndale House.
Matthew Elliott
Author, speaker, and New Testament Scholar
www.faithfulfeelings.com
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