A Command To Live With Gusto

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave where you are going there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.  Ecclesiastes 9:10.

I guess one could look at this sentence and see despair or bitterness but I see more an encouragement to live with all our might.  We have this life that is either given or just happened to us so what else is there to do?  Look at the previous verses where Solomon directs his readers again to eat, drink and enjoy their lives with their wives and children.  There seems to be a pattern here we miss much of the time.  Whether we miss it due to religious nonsense or misguided spiritual enthusiasm I’m not sure, what I do know is most religious people get their “religion” mixed up with living.  Instead of the religious convictions helping us live more fully we let it be a hindrance.

What did God make life for?  I mean what purpose does it serve?  What every creative being does: create and enjoy.  Look at the command He gave Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.”  Does that sound like a restriction to you?  If the original directive poured out a life which was at its core is full of creative positive things, what are we doing with the gift Christ gave us at the cross?

Jesus came to redeem us.  The word redemption means to buy back or restore through payment what was sold.  Christ bought us back from something we sold ourselves into, slavery to death, which in His view wasn’t just physical but spiritual, social and mental.  God breathed into the clay and humans became a living being.  While I don’t claim to grasp the significance of that in its entirety, I do get that whatever we were before wasn’t equal to what we became.  God created life and pronounced it very good; anyone who condemns the human physicality outside of the sin destroying it misses the lesson of redemption.  Paul’s declaration that we will be raised with Christ’s new body gives us a clue as to what we can expect this redemption to look like.

Over the years I’ve often wondered what we are made of—the various parts of us.  The general explanation seems to be we are body, soul and spirit as if these three things are separate ingredients to life itself.  I’m no scientist nor am I a theologian so I know speaking my opinion probably means very little to those who read this blog, but I found this explanation which works for me and might for you as well.

“God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”  John 4:24.  Genesis 2:7 claims the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.  Now we have Ecclesiastes declaring that in the grave there is nothing for us but existence—if that.  If there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, then what do we have?  One of my favorite questions to those who claim we are eternal beings is, “If that’s true, do you remember your existence before you were born, outside the body?”  Some scoff at me because immediately I’ve referenced a “heathen” idea but the question is valid in this context.  If our spirits are eternal, we should have memory of pre-existing the body.  Besides my uncle who believes, as many do, in reincarnation, none of my Christian friends have any memory of a past existence.

I believe the human spirit is eternal but we are like a computer chip or software which contains all the raw essence of being with no memory or storage to reference identity.  The physical brain makes up the up the “hard drive” of our being thus allowing us to find identity in our history—i.e. experiences through memory such as habits, relationships, education, etc., without which we are simply raw spirit/soul.  Knowledge is stored in the brain bringing a sense of connection to the world around us.  This is why when we see Alzheimer’s take over a person’s brain the memories become all jumbled up and the person’s access to their identity gets confused.  It’s also why we see mentally disabled people struggle to operate in the world around them with any sense of logical interplay.  Without memory or the synapse to connect those memories we are intelligent novices, babes without input or output; nothing but a dry sponge.

All that said, I don’t understand eternity or the afterlife.  As much as I’ve studied the subject over the years I still have questions—which some Christians would tell me I must just take the answers to on faith.  My problem with relegating everything I don’t understand to “faith” is our plausible deniability for the truth.  What we don’t understand or grasp must be dealt with honestly, not swept under the philosophical rug.  Take some time to listen to those who develop brain injuries or some other condition which affects their access to the brain’s memory centers and you’ll see what I mean.  Did these people lose their intelligence?  Dp they suddenly lack I.Q.?

You see the problem?  Simplistic answers don’t solve the riddle nor do they get us any close to understanding.  I will not accept any explanation without questions because I find wholesale acceptance foolish and counterproductive.  Something happens to us when our bodies deteriorate, something profound.  A spirit without its body loses access to memories of anything it (genderless on purpose) experienced on earth precisely because the combination of spirit and body create the living being.  So that relative or friend we lost to death can’t remember us without a renewed body, such as the one Jesus was raised with which carried the scars of the cross in it.  The scars remind us, which speaks of memory for eternity.

I won’t pretend to have answers I don’t.  I won’t tell you I understand death or the afterlife because I don’t.  What I will tell you is that God has it in hand and that the resurrection of Christ solved the problem of death and futility—both are a reality without Him.

Our lives are fleeting in the eternal scheme of things so we must take every opportunity to create a life worthy of being alive.  Though I love stories in the form of books, movies or TV, I find too often we live vicariously through these stories instead of creating our own.  If Jesus came to give an abundant life, numbing our minds by watching others live should be a crime.  I’m not against listening or telling stories as a shared experience but the lack of active participation in the story being written all around us.  What I am against is the mind numbing day to day drudgery which no one offsets with passionate pursuits.

If the condition of dementia, psychosis and brain damage give us a clear enough picture as to what it means to be a living being, then death of the body means death of identity, history and meaning.  What God promises to resurrect is identity and meaning washing away our sinful history and making all things new.  Will we remember the fact of our redemption?  Yes.  Does that mean we will remember our life on earth?  I don’t know.  But what I do know is that we have the opportunity to live to the full here—without reservation or hesitation.

Whatever we find we are able to do—or even impossible without extreme effort—we must do with gusto.  The Bible gives everyone the green light so go for it!

The Trouble Is…

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun:  The same destiny overtakes all.  The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.  Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten.  Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.  Ecclesiastes 9:3-6.

 

I grew up memorizing verse 5 because my denomination believed in soul sleep or unawareness in death’s state.  Since then I’ve puzzled over the two or three basic interpretations of this passage in conjunction with others that seem to say the exact opposite.  I’ve concluded I just don’t have any definitive answers as to what happens to the dead once they die.  What the state of the dead is, as in where their spirits/souls go at death, we only have clues but no concrete enough evidence for a verdict.  I know, I know, there are plenty of stories about people who have had visions of heaven on the operating table but these stories could be based on chemical or a dying brain’s hallucinations fed by preconceptions.  I’ve also met and heard of people who have had visions or dreams, which could be inspired by desire more than actual visions.  I’m not cynical just merely pointing out the human capacity to interpret experience as fact even when it’s illusion.

So here’s my take on it and you can do what you will with it:  I don’t necessarily buy into purgatory but I do believe the soul goes back to God who gave it.  I also believe that the dead are barred from contacting the living again because of two passages, Isaiah 8:19-22 and Luke 16:31.  The first passage talks about consulting mediums, spiritists and witches to contact the dead, which in our modern setting is equivalent to a séance or psychic.  The second comes from the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man where the rich man begs Abraham to send someone from the dead to warn his brothers about his suffering.  Abraham refuses and tells him, “If they won’t listen to Moses and prophets, they won’t listen even if one comes back from the dead.”  Jesus gave them clues they missed because when He was resurrected they displayed their firm disbelief—or you could call it rebellion—by claiming the disciples stole His body while the soldiers slept.  They refused to believe even when One came back from the dead.

What I get out of these is that death is a final goodbye to being involved in everything done under the sun.  At this point in my Christian journey I worry very little about the state of the dead, the afterlife or rewards and punishments.  I do have my opinions, obviously, but I’m not worried about being right about them since I know the rules above are universal.  Yet all that said I believe what matters most about our reward in eternity is how we live right now between birth and death.  I don’t believe God worries as much about all our victories and defeats as He does the continuous trend which dominates the journey while we live.

I like Solomon’s conclusion in every point he makes, since his emphasis pushes the idea that eternity is in God’s hands so what we do now is what matters.  None of us knows what comes next really.  Oh we can claim we know by faith, which is a valid argument to me, but actual factual (that rhymed) knowledge is non-existent.  I was growing up with the view that if I didn’t have all my facts straight before I died or Jesus comes, my salvation would be in question.  Then I realized the very people teaching me this “fact” worried about whether they had their facts straight all the time.  Some flat out didn’t include all the evidence available to draw the conclusion they preached.  That last issue disturbed me.

I am now at a point where I allow myself to care about truth but don’t worry about my grasp of it as much, since I know I don’t have all my facts straight anyway.  Paul and the rest of the apostles claimed we were growing in our knowledge of Jesus and the truth of the gospel.  I take it from this none of us have our ducks in a row where truth is concerned—even them.  Growth implies immaturity or a need to become, so if the apostles were growing, what can I expect for myself or others?  Getting all the facts lined up doesn’t mean anything if we sequence them wrong.

I want to explore this a little more so bear with me please.  I watched a movie years ago (and own it now) where a scientist was working on a formula for renewable energy based on cold fusion.  The protagonist in the story wondered why she hadn’t published her findings and she said, “I have to work out the sequence first.”  The formula was intact but the sequence made a difference.  As far as I can see the truth about our dominant characteristic, humanity barely gets their facts complete before they draw conclusions about what they mean.  This is dangerous because then we have a Galileo problem on our hands all over again.  You know the problem?  Galileo discovers the sun doesn’t really move around us but we move around the sun yet the opinions based on the known facts of the day put his life in jeopardy to the point where he has to retract his claims.

He was right of course and the people threatening him were dead wrong.  Those who fight against truth are…?

Most of us wouldn’t consider ourselves evil because of the connotation we put on the word.  Our interpretation of it comes from extreme examples such as Hitler, Genghis Khan, Ted Bundy, or pick your favorite example from history and modern times we would all agree committed great crimes.  The Bible calls anything outside the character of God evil, which means that Adam and Eve became evil the moment they ate the fruit.  This doesn’t imply they were mass murderers or heinous people (though through their one act of disobedience they guaranteed the death of everyone) rather it signifies a departure from the character of God.

One of my favorite sayings follows Solomon’s assertion about madness above:  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.  Humanity keeps attempting to solve its problems by dent of human effort, planning or philosophy.  Oddly enough (insert sarcasm here), history has never demonstrated a period where their efforts, planning or philosophy actually worked but we keep trying.

This is madness.

Humanity is basically insane with ignorance, superstition and pride.  Our ignorance remains in spite of the leaps in knowledge we have made over the last century.  We struggle with panic attacks in our collective psyche because we are ignorant of the outcome.  We have a few facts for example about climate change yet without an historical precedent we don’t really know what they mean.  Every scientist I’ve listened to recently gives the disclaimer “This is our best guess” about the facts they have uncovered.  This should inform the rest of us that they are making educated guesses from the facts based on their ability to assess them not from conclusive historical or even empirical evidence.  The heated arguments over what the facts mean dominate our public forum.  Very few voices are reasoning for a moderate approach—that of taking care of pollution while not being paranoid about it.

Again, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.  I celebrate the increases of knowledge and understanding but I see our inability to deal with our ignorance as a liability.  Circumspection is a good way to live.  Surrounding ourselves with as much perspective as possible allows us to see the facts differently while at the same time giving us the freedom to forgo conclusions which might be more harmful than helpful.

Humanity in general is mad—in every sense of that word.  We are angry about our ignorance, helplessness against the elements, state of being and general luck of the draw.  We resent being out of the loop, relegated to the fallible, stumbling, and often times devastating efforts on our part to solve our problems.  Death is a cold comfort for most, while a few welcome it with open arms.  Yet even those who welcome it do so in ignorance, thinking death as a better alternative to their life on earth.  That’s not guaranteed.

All this is to say, in my opinion there is no solution but God alone through Jesus Christ.  All other solutions might be part of God’s method but without Him to guide our efforts we are going to blow ourselves up.

The Great Equalizer

So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him.  All share a common destiny—the righteous and wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.  As it is with the good man, so with the sinner; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them.  Ecclesiastes 9:1, 2.

 

After nursing school and a stent in Alaska working in an alcohol center’s detox unit, I ended up as a nurse assistant between the spring and fall quarters at college.  During my tenure there I met a man who, from all accounts, had been one of the most influential and well-to-do men in the area.  I don’t recall his name because, you know, he was a patient and it’s been 30 years or more, but what I do remember is he was dying a slow painful death from prostate cancer.  As a nursing assistant they would assign me a wing or set number of rooms to take care of and I’d be pretty busy keeping up with all the patients.  Even so, there would be lulls in the craziness where I could go talk to my friend/patient for a while.

As I got to know him I found out he was a believer.  This set us up for many cool, thoughtful discussions.  The day before he died he asked me to read Scripture to him.  I chose Psalm 71 since it spoke to old age and death a bit with hope.  I watched as the words washed over him bringing peace in his physical agony.  The next day he died and for the next month or more I chewed on the significance of a life lived well.

In the end it really doesn’t matter who we’ve been or how brilliant our career, life or family connections were, death takes us all.  The great disaster among the greatest disasters of all time levels the playing field to the point of dust.  I mean, we hear this pretty much all our lives without probably taking it in.  Until, of course, someone close to us dies or we face death ourselves, then life takes on a whole new meaning and value.  My friend/patient spent all his money on a cure, then, once the cure failed, the rest of his money went to the health support system to ease his pain while he died.  Everything he worked for came down to spending it on his death in the end.

Solomon calls death’s equalizing effect a great evil.  In a sense it definitely is, on the other hand, I’m kind of glad death sets limits on us.  Think of it:  what if some of the most despotic rulers lived eternally?  What would the world be like if they had been able to not only continue in their power grab but had no end in sight for their rule?  At the same time, many good people who blessed the world with their wisdom, kindness, generosity and good example also died.  Almost everybody agrees that evil people should die but good people?  It seems a shame.

We humans enjoy being self-actualizing beings.  As wacky as it sounds on paper (or in this case a blog entry in cyberspace) even the more righteous among us love self-determination.  Weird isn’t it?  We say we believe in a God who set the limits of the heavens and boundaries around our lives all the while taking the reigns of life’s horse by worry, anxiety and often just pushing our way through the crowds to whatever we call success.  All our accomplishments will be forgotten as likely as not before one generation past us dies out, yet we still fight to make a mark.

Working to be remembered is good, I believe.  The entire law and history in the Bible stories tells of men and women who will be remembered.  David grew humbled and thankful when God told him his line would be remembered for not only his deeds but those of future generations in his line.  While I’m sure most of us in America barely grasp the significance of that experience, we do however get the need to be known, recognized and canonized in history.  A Jew of David’s era found his or her identity in their nationality, customs and family traits.  David’s progeny took their identity and pride of heritage from Israel’s greatest king—him—as a means of value, claim to power and generally their relationship to others in the world at large.

Yet David died, so all we have now are stories. Nothing remains of his possessions and even the stories get garbled or distorted as we project our modern grasp of life onto the past.  His historical value continues to be contemplated in books, articles, documentaries and movies, each of these, in turn, adding myth to the legend.

Death, the equalizer, leaves us with only one perfect memory, God’s.  I think this is why Jesus taught so fiercely about seeking God’s will, opinion and perspective over other people’s viewpoints.  If I’m concerned with God’s view of me over all the others, my decisions will reflect it; how I live will reflect it.  Jesus came to bring reconciliation between God and mankind, and then to have that peace overflow to humanity.  The world is not a peaceful place as of this writing, to my knowledge.  The sheer hate demonstrated by people of different faiths, ethnicities and tribes is still very evident and clear.  I don’t think I will see peace in the world in my lifetime unless Jesus comes back to take over.

But, no matter.  The truth of death’s great leveling agent cannot be denied.  If we believe in God, a god or just mankind as an accident of evolution, we are all in the same situation:  we will all die.

So, what do we do with this fact?

Frankly, not much besides use it to inspire us to live.  What we do between birth and death, however, can make the difference for those who come after us as well as our own lives.  Here’s the deal breaker for me:  Life isn’t about birth or death, it’s about what we do with ourselves while we breathe.  What happens between the lines is often more important than the lines themselves, you know what I mean?

When Solomon declares there is nothing more that a person can do but to eat, drink and enjoy one’s life while we got it, I think he establishes another pure fact of God’s design.  I know, I know, Evangelical Christianity constantly harps on the verses which declare we must glorify God, but that’s just it—everything I am and do can be a part of that process—especially my happiness.

The Meaning of Life, the Universe, Everything!

When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe man’s labor on earth—his eyes not seeing sleep day or night—then I saw all that God has done.  No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun.  Despite all his effort to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning.  Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it.  Ecclesiastes 8:16, 17.

 

I’m slowly beginning to see what Solomon meant by this statement.  The world as a whole is full of humans looking for and finding “paths” to truth, happiness, spiritual awakening and a host of other things which help us explain and cope with our reality.  We see gurus making millions selling their particular brand of enlightenment only to find it’s just a new face on an old method.  It makes me wonder how many of us really pay attention to how these “truths” work themselves out in the real world.

The older I get the less I trust answers which appear too easy or explain complicated stuff with a one or two sentence write off.  I’m also beginning to see all these philosophies, religions and lifestyles as different packaging on same of product.  Growing up in a Christian church on the fringe of denominations and acceptance put me in a unique place where I experienced strong boundaries with staunch, rigid and sometimes merciless guidelines (some of which were unspoken rules) of conduct.  My denomination tried to have an answer to everything, down to how to poop in a healthy way.  While in this lifestyle-cum-doctrinal-philosophical-spiritual “compound” (metaphorically speaking), I never questioned the validity of it even when it chafed or seemed unnatural.

I grew up with intelligent highly educated people who were fixated on their particular brand of Christianity to the exclusion of all others.  Though there were the “fringe” teachers within this fringe culture who taught a step or two outside our little box, when the chips were down even the liberal thinkers among us agreed our “truths” were sacrosanct and valid.  I thought we held the answers to almost every question.

That is until some questions from outside our little subculture began intruding on my comfortable world.  Within a three year span everything exploded inside me.  I began seeing the world around me as it was—or may be just a little clearer than before because I’m not bright enough to grasp reality just yet.  The safe haven of my heritage began to crumble and look more like a castle made of sand, shored up with driftwood.  I realized the answers weren’t quite as simple as I’d been taught and a lot of truth existed outside the box in which I was raised.  At first, I got scared, even while curiosity drove me to explore.  It was frightening not to have all the answers—or even some of them on certain subjects.

Now I know why our teachers, leaders and preachers didn’t want us to listen too much to outside rhetoric or entertain questions.

Revelation upon revelation intruded itself into my myopic view.  The teaching I grew up with denounced rose colored glasses as false revelation but I began to see my heritage was based on glasses too, just of a different shade.  I’m pretty sure I grew a bit obnoxious as the wave upon wave of truth washed away my dysfunctional perspective.  I began to see humanity as a whole—not partitioned or segregated into “us and them” but as one big sea of mass confusion about the meaning of life.  Every religion, teaching, and discovery in science begged the question of why we existed in the first place and what, if any, the purpose would be.

In the course of reality prying my eyes open I realized humanity just couldn’t help being hungry for meaning, purpose, or value.  The search of thousands (years or people, take your pick) either supported or dismissed gods or a God, leaving a myriad of questions and unanswered facts scattered everywhere.  Another thing which struck me in this rebirth of sorts was how myopic people remained after finding their “answer”.  It didn’t matter how crazy or thoughtful their new truth was their fixation became complete once they were convinced of their “new” idea.

Very few saw the problem in the background of their new façade.  I’m not sure if I really see it correctly but reading Solomon’s assertion here, I think this is what I discovered:  The way we believe our truths may never change even though the “truth” we accept might.  The storefront changes but the person remains the same.  I call the new habits or rituals a façade because I usually don’t see the difference in the person.

Almost without fail none of the people I saw who changed religions, ethics, philosophies or lifestyles were truly happy.  They remained as defensive, angry and often imbalanced as before, the only difference was what they put their energy into.

I don’t understand the meaning of life.  I don’t see the point exactly.  As a follower of Jesus I get that I live to Him and die to me, and this has a depth of meaning I’m still grasping, but the why of me I don’t grasp at all.  I’ve heard explanation after explanation to the point where they begin to blur together and sound the same after a while.  I have yet to hear one explanation which is not a derivative of an old one.  Nothing changes, really, except may be the words we use and the foundation on which we believe we can stand.

Christians follow a god/man named Jesus, the Son of the Father God, who is the Jewish deity.  Muslims claim to follow the God of Abraham, who they call Allah, which technically would be the God of the Jews as well, though there is some dispute about this.  Hindus have so many gods with one father of them all that it’s not expedient to mention them save to say their religion is pretty diverse.  Buddhists serve the light or enlightenment, I’m not sure they even have a sentient being they call god or not.  Agnostics serve the now, wisdom and knowing stuff.  Organized atheists fight everyone but the agnostics who they try to convert through their form of logic.

Every single one of these religions or philosophies is man’s attempt to explain the unknown with the known.  It’s like we can’t help drawing to conclusions about the unknown and unknowable, though we attempt some sophisticated rhetoric to explain our conclusions.  What’s sadly funny to me is how vehemently the members of each of these teachings will defend their belief and attack all others.  In several conversations with peace mongers I noticed their ire goes up the moment someone disagrees with the more fringe assertions of their viewpoint.  Though peace mongers won’t get physically violent they have no problem setting fire to a person’s self-worth and disparaging their ancestry verbally.

Our chosen or inherited ethical conclaves of reasoning mean a lot to all of us.  Most of our negative reactions to challenges or downright opposition stem from our fear that someone will destroy the foundation for which we took a lifetime to build.

Solomon points out humans have sought answers since time immemorial, and though we scratch the surface, we still don’t get it.  Here’s a man who is preaching the benefits of wisdom and knowledge acknowledging his own inability to grasp the eternal mystery.

And here, my friends, is where I landed all those years ago.

My first order of business during those years of upheaval was to get comfortable with the things I didn’t or couldn’t know.  If you read this blog regularly, you’ll see me espouse openness to all views.  The reason I do this is because I don’t know for a fact without a shadow of a doubt my chosen path is correct.  Sure I accept by faith that Jesus is the Way, Truth, and Life but I can’t prove it scientifically—as in put it in a test tube or lab to get repeated results.  I see all these viewpoints as either intelligent or desperate attempts to explain what is beyond our control or knowledge.

Atheists disparage Christianity and other religions as simple minded because much of our default “answers” don’t fit into the style of logic they have come to accept.  Paul categorizes this type of reasoning as part of the Greek’s efforts for wisdom and knowledge.  Believers in gods of all stripes argue from their POV without grasping the need for a common language between arguments.  For instance, using the Bible in a discussion with those who don’t accept Its authority merely sets us up for a circular conversation.  If the other folks use a different source of authority for their viewpoint, we have an impasse.  Set 5 Christian theologians in a room from various denominational perspectives and you’ll have a pretty lively debate—which often times gets heated.

My point is that we forget other viewpoints in our efforts to communicate our truth.  We ignore other ethics have truth because they don’t have our truth.  Yet none of this really solves the problem of why any of us believe our various teachings anyway.  It’s the search for reason, purpose, meaning and some sort of grasp on what reality is.  I didn’t give up, nor will I, on this quest, but I have come down to this:  I’m comfortable with knowing I won’t have the answers for everything and therein lies part of my peace.

A Happy Recommendation

So I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.  Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun.  Ecclesiastes 8:15.

Reading this for the first time my reaction was different than it is today.  In the beginning, when I was a young man and fledgling Christian, my take on everything filtered through the heroic stories of martyrs, missionaries and sacrifice for God.  I wanted to be one of those heroes, ignoring whatever didn’t seem to support “self-denial”.

Time passes and either we become more entrenched in our beliefs or we adjust to the reality around us.  I’m attempting to do the latter while holding onto certain ideals of the former from Scripture which I believe are true, albeit holding them lightly since I know my interpretation of the facts could be skewed by bias undetected.  I’ve come to understand self-denial differently for one thing.  The underlying teaching we are to be unhappy here so that we can experience the joy of eternity has lost its grip on me because I see God differently now.  Where before I interpreted Solomon’s words as earthly (Christian catch-word meaning sin-infected or base) and lacking the message of Jesus, I now understand Scripture through the eyes of my Master a little better, which is to say He taught this happiness stuff too in a clarifying way.

The idea that suffering for Christ is somehow more worthy than being happy in Him has been steadily growing silly to me.  I know, I know, the preachers of all stripes teach us there’s a difference between joy and happiness…but there really isn’t.  Where the problem lies with us is our sinful nature not the mores of God.  In the beginning He created us to be happy, productive and to live a long time, we are the ones who messed this up and lost track of His intentions.  Where we go wrong is narcissism, selfish ambition and a host of other things we would rather do than conform to the Author and Finisher of our faith.  Now this is not to say we hate God, rather our self-absorption gets in the way of being our true selves.

For instance there is absolutely nothing wrong with being good in business, making lots of money, living a comfortable life, and being happy.  Where this style of living becomes harmful is when we come to the belief we are somehow the author of all of it rather than the recipient of God’s bounty.  Then there’s the problem of attitude, where we come to the belief we are somehow deserving of all the bounty.  And, when we take into account Solomon’s pretty sobering pronouncement that the race is not to the swift, the battle to the strong, nor does wealth come to the brilliant or favor to the learned or food to the wise but time and chance happen to them all, the reality of our place takes the edge off any form of conceit.  It’s the luck of the draw or, rather, life hasn’t accosted some folks same way because they were—by chance of circumstance or choice—out of the way when the wind of change came around.

Solomon is an example of what wealth, power, and wisdom gone awry does to us.  He wasn’t necessarily more evil than other people or weaker in certain areas than everybody else.  No, what happened is he gave into evil by degrees until his wisdom did him no good.  I believe Ecclesiastes is his attempt to shed light on hard lessons learned.  The book becomes a confession of what lead to his own downfall, though not one of self-revelation, his rhetoric here reveals what wisdom can and cannot do for a person submitted to it.

This is the most compelling point he makes to me, because, let’s be honest, it appeals to my missionary/martyrdom conditioning:  Even if we are poor and have barely anything to speak of, happiness can be an option if we keep it simple and decide to be satisfied with the essentials.  The recognition that wealth and power are fleeting or tenuously held at best, can comfort those blessed with one or both by helping them live in contentment.

The recommendation in our text above declares happiness to be a state of being rather than the cause or effect of circumstances; a choice.  I don’t believe Solomon is talking about all circumstances or every situation because he does say just a few verses prior that oppression can weigh heavily on people.  I do accept, however, a person can live in such an attitude of happy contentedness with what he or she has instead of being discontented with what isn’t.  I might be wrong but I believe the message of Matthew 6:25-34 or Luke 12:22-34 at their essence speaks to this principle Solomon espouses.

In my short life I’ve met people representing all spectrums of human strata.  I’ve met wealthy people who are happy or unhappy as well as the poverty stricken dominated by either state of mind.  Some people are happy in nature because that’s how they are wired, I get that, but some choose to find satisfaction in with what is in front of them.  Others of us struggle because of our “wish list” of things we think will fulfill us.

Let me speak to a couple of mine.

I am a romantic soul.

When you read the word “romance” what’s the first thing that comes to mind?  Love, marriage, hearts, flowers, kisses, etc?  Hmmm…then you don’t grasp the real concept of romanticism.  For instance, I read Huckleberry Finn nearly 10 times by the age of 12 or so.  Forget the lack of food, income or anything else, I wanted to float down the Mississippi River on a raft lost in the idyllic life of adventure.  So, when I say “romantic soul” understand it encompasses more than just love feelings for a woman.

How this works out is my perception of a music career.  I romanticized the rock n roll lifestyle to the point of putting it up on a pedestal with the belief that the only place I would ever be satisfied would be there.  I was wrong of course, in the process of growing up I found satisfaction in other places as well.  Yet (and this is a big addendum) I’ve experienced the musical stage and know it is about the only place I’ve ever felt at home.  Some of you might look at artists as odd and strange, which many of us are; but what you find uncomfortable is my comfort zone.  I have never felt as at home in the company of people until I began to hang out with other people who were creative in the arts.  For me it represents that life of floating down the river with Huck and Jim, free of the worries of politics, slavery, oppression and judgmental attitudes.

The other area of romanticism is marriage.  While I was married, I loved being married.  Yet it was a troubled union and not very fun to be with a woman who claimed she loved and liked me but did everything to undermine the man I am.  Still, even after that disaster, I put marriage up on a pedestal in my emotions.  Intellectually and spiritually I know real life is nothing like my imagined relationship, but my emotional/passionate side still hopes.

I guess what I’m driving at here is that happiness can be a state of being rather than tied conditionally to a situation or lifestyle.  I’m happy in a general way.  I don’t like being single—and in saying that I’m not advertising—but I’m still happy.  It’s been a condition of mine for years.  I’m not always in a good mood, joyful or even satisfied with things around or inside me, but I default to happiness—by choice if necessary.

We can’t do very little about the tide of human opinion, the political leanings or even the choices our spouse, children and extended family will make. However, we can choose to be content with our internal world, and at peace with God and mankind as far as it depends on us.  In this, I believe, is the source of all happiness.

Who Can Tell?

Since no man knows the future, who can tell him what is to come?  No man has power over the wind to contain it; so no one has power over the day of his death.  As no one is discharged in time of war, so wickedness will not release those who practice it.  Ecclesiastes 8:8.

 

The biggest revelation of Ecclesiastes for me is the concept of time and chance.  I know that might not resonate (I like that word today, it somehow fits my head space) with some of you but for me just the idea that every good or bad thing which happens is not somehow dictated to me through God’s control-freakish hand is a comfort.  The concept leaves room for improvisation (a musician’s creative dream) and options for a myriad of combinations.

Say there’s only eight options for everyone to choose from in any category.  The combinations are more than simply 8 x 8 since each choice can be combined with more than two options at a time.  In fact, one could arguably go with all eight at once.  This leaves the outcome open to a nuanced state of the equation.  For instance, if I combine six out of eight, the outcome will be different than with four, depending on the weight of the two added to the four.

Solomon explains the problem of predicting the future by bring up the wind as an illustration of the death clock.  No one understands what makes the wind so unpredictable; God’s “algorithms” are much more sophisticated than anything we’ve ever invented to date.  A person’s time of death is subject to past or present choices made either in innocence or contrivance that affect the now.  It is also subject to the whim of other people’s involvement in the now.  For instance if I eat too much raw meat, the chance of getting heart disease increases, though we can’t consider it a foregone conclusion.  I’ve known people who ate badly all their lives and barely struggled with their health yet also know of many who have done pretty much the same thing and died early.

Also the involvement of other people in our timeline dictates what may happen to us as well.  Say one of us gets in a fist fight with someone and that other person throws a right hook which breaks his or her neck, the day of the person’s natural death becomes trumped by the results of the fight.  What couldn’t have been expected happened.

Again, as a means of illustrating further the unpredictable nature of our lives (for us that is), he brings up the tenaciousness of wickedness as another example.  Now his declaration sounds like a prediction of the future but actually points to something else entirely.  What Solomon sees is a trend or well worn path which predicts a general outcome rather than a specific one. He mentions in a later verse that the wicked oftentimes receive in this life what the righteous deserve and visa versa.  The nature of time and chance dictate this “bad” outcome due to sin/wickedness being a part of the equation of the aforementioned time and chance.

In one of my earlier discussions about this subject I spoke of crossing the street and the choices which led up to doing it safely or being harmed by it.  In true Hebrew fashion Solomon revisits this factoid in order face deflect the human desire to know the future.  His conclusion is it can’t be known.  We need to get over it, accept it and move on.  Only God knows the future—because to Him it is the eternal now.  Even prophecy in Scripture doesn’t give any details only “headlines” as my mother likes to call them.  Without those details we all crave so much, we end up with far too many interpretations of these prophecies that it confuses everyone as to what Christians really believe.  I have no desire to go into all the differences on this subject.  Suffice it to say, I don’t know who’s right and I really don’t care.  If you read Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah or any other prophetic book you desire, you won’t get anything but the headlines and speculating on the details might be a fun exercise but any conclusion will be off.

Just like the Pharisees and other leaders of Israel in Jesus’ era, we get the specifics right but not the manifestation or the outcome.  When Jesus arrived, they recognized Him as a man of wisdom, knowledge and power, but rejected Him because He didn’t fit into their conclusions about the facts.  With either spiritually jaundiced or veiled eyes they tried to interpret the things of God and failed to accept the very one they looked for.

This taught me a lesson about my own understanding of Scripture:  no matter what I know, I can always grow; no matter what I think I understand, I must hold my perspective and conclusions loosely so that truth can do its work in me.  Bias is dangerous and out of line for those coming out of spiritual blindness.  Humility is the evidence of not only spiritual growth but sight.

There is a good reason we don’t know the future:  We can’t handle it.  We would try to change the outcome which is self-defeating because then our “changes” would make what we “know” about this future a lie, thus making our ability to change it suspect.

The “No Matter What” Part of Wisdom

For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a man’s misery weighs heavily upon him.  Ecclesiastes 8:6.

 

In the place misery and hardship hit us the hardest and longest is where wisdom’s rubber meets the road.  It’s easy to be “wise” when we live in isolation (wise man or woman on a mountain somewhere in the Himalayas) or life is going so good with no disasters in sight; it’s quite another when tragedy strikes.  Wisdom often isn’t necessarily a given for those who have life going their way, rather its biggest impact is for the time when everything seems to be against us and we’re floundering.

The above text speaks to a person who sticks with a king though the decisions this leader makes create a bad atmosphere or go against all wisdom.  While a person is going through heartache or misery, they still have to live and cope with the world as they find it.  Not every situation allows for either a quick solution or any kind of mutually beneficial resolution.  What we know in retrospect is not what we know without experience.  Even the idea that somehow we should be able to know what only the experience of the now will teach is a fool’s paradise.  Hindsight always plays “what if” no matter what the circumstances faced.  The guilt we all feel when we can’t control the outcome may be palpable and real, yet unrealistic in the grand scheme of things.

Solomon points out that a king’s word is supreme (see why in my previous post) so fighting such power does no good.  Timing based on wisdom becomes the key here to knowing when to act and when to wait.  Yet this isn’t as easy as it sounds.  In my own lifetime I’ve seen bad decisions bring profit, flying in the face of history and all conventional logic.  And, if the truth be known, it wasn’t the decisions themselves which brought the profit but the luck of the draw—that old time and chance philosophy.  The scariest part, of course, is that those involved in the bad decision(s) declare the outcome as justification for continued bad choices, again defying all commonsense.

Some decisions, unfortunately, take a generation or so to see any returns on the investment.  Like in the case of Hezekiah with the Babylonian envoys who came to the Jerusalem to understand why their clocks (sundials) went backwards (read this story in Isaiah 38, 39).  His decision to show off his wealth instead of declaring God’s bounty and grace resulted in his country being a target for the Babylonian armies a few generations later.  What’s so disheartening about this story is his attitude of “at least it won’t happen in my lifetime.”

With this idea firmly in mind, it’s no wonder we see some pretty bad behavior from his successor and son, Manasseh, who is reputed to be one of the most wicked kings in Jewish history.  (His story is remarkable in that later he repented and turned back to God who restored him to the throne.)

We humans love to kick the can of consequences down the road for our immediate gratification.  For instance, no one in their right mind would declare the cars of yesteryear clean burning and non-polluting, which simply means what we are not able to breath and makes us sick if we take in too much of it (carbon monoxide) can’t be good our world.  Yet we hear people arguing that it hasn’t really affected the atmosphere.  Now I’m not a doomsday prophet or anything of that sort, I just believe in commonsense.  If we can’t stand behind a vehicle and breathe normally without getting either nauseous or passing out, then having a 100,000,000 of these things our roads going 24/7 has to do something.  Not to mention all the fuel burning in our fireplaces or keeping our electricity on.

I’m not in any way defending or decrying global warming fanatics, what I am saying is we can’t abuse our world without consequences of some sort.  I don’t know what effect all this pollution has on our planet, but it can’t be good.  Denying the harm is both silly and dangerous.  It takes thoughtful people to invent things like this, granted, but it also takes thoughtful people to build devices and machinery which operate safely and with environmental wisdom.  The wind farms all over the place displace wildlife and hurt birds; coal has already shown its toxic side; solar is awesome but it takes acres and acres of panels to equal just a small portion of what coal and water dams do easily.

Fiscally our country is kicking the can down the road, which will create a huge disaster for our children or theirs.  You can’t overspend and over borrow then expect to get off with a free pass.  And by saying this I’m definitely not defending the Republican viewpoint of the world nor will I condemn it.  In this matter of spiritual truth their view is fairly immaterial.

Jesus said, “Wisdom is justified by her deeds.”  And His wisdom is being proved out in the real world constantly.  A man who loves will continue to do without or without the permission of his king, family, friends or any other entity which holds power over his life.  And make no mistake, other people hold power over us whether we admit it or not.  Anyone in business can tell you how hard it is to get a start up off the ground.  The sacrifices are tremendous, the advantages very few in the beginning, and the pay off costly even in the long run.  If no one comes to a market to buy, the market will cease to exist, thus proving we cannot survive without one another.

A king is simply a man trusted to rule over the people he serves.  That last word is vital to understanding the best way to see power of any sort:  those in charge do so to serve others not themselves.  Unfortunately, too often those in power either live to please themselves or believe in some god-awful philosophy or ethic which makes them force their “good” down the throats of all—much of the time at the pain of death or confiscation of the “opposition’s” property.

Daniel advised Nebuchadnezzar; Joseph served under Pharaoh; Esther became the wife of the king of Persia…Time and again wisdom has been served by those who would not back away from the unpleasant, though it cost them dearly.  Those mentioned here are but a fraction of the biblical heroes and heroines who served God despite all odds.  They influenced Hebrew history because they stuck with their place instead of running away from the awful circumstances they found themselves in.  The message here is clear:  We cannot desert our nation, work, family or friends just because we find sinners there.

We are the salt of the earth.  What does salt do?  It flavors and preserves.  Wars have been fought over rights to salt; whole nations have been destroyed by other nations coveting their salt sources.  Jesus used this parable as an illustration to tell us how valuable we are and to stress that we are the flavor of God in the world set not only to make it palatable but to preserve it.  If the world loses the flavor of His love (which is the essence of His holiness), it will be destroyed as too evil to exist.  I believe this truth is one of the reasons holding back the winds of strife right now.  Many Christians somehow have come to believe they must create heaven on earth through earthly government but the fact is our very lives are salt which preserve the people of earth’s life.

So do not be in a hurry to leave the presence of those on earth, for according to our Master we are the reason it hasn’t been destroyed.  Don’t be in a hurry to leave an unpleasant situation for God can use us anywhere.  Be a light in a dark place.  It’s a waste of time to turn on a light in a well lighted room.  It’s much better to shine where the light will do more good.

Don’t Be In Such A Hurry To Walk Away

Do not be in a hurry to leave the king’s presence.  Do not stand up for a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases.  Ecclesiastes 8:3.

Solomon warns us not to be in a hurry to leave the presence of a ruler for they do as they please.  There are good reasons for this:  1) who will influence them differently if all they have around them are “yes” men and women?  2) What if this particular ruler is different and truly needs our perspective to make a wise decision?   3)  What if the only voice of reason is yours?

We can’t guarantee our influence or the outcome, but if we quit the game, we lose by default.  If we continue playing the game, we might lose anyway but at least we put in our best effort.  I personally don’t want to live with the former as a memory over the latter because on my death bed I want to know I did my best to live for what I believed in.  We who follow Jesus know the Way to Life.  If we refuse to live in the world and participate as a part of its journey, we refuse to be the salt and light our Master told us we should be.  Our witness is not about preaching with words but living examples of righteousness, kindness and truth.

            Whoever obeys his command will come to no harm, and the wise heart will know the proper time and procedure.  For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a man’s misery weighs heavily upon him.  Ecclesiastes 8:5, 6.

What does this say to you?

What it says to me is if we “leave the king’s presence” in a hurry due to our misery and dissatisfaction with the current trends, we lose whatever voice we might have had to turn the tide of authority to good.  Look at the stories of Daniel and Esther.  Daniel became a ruler in the kingdom of Babylon, first, then Persia.  Both nations were heathen, meaning Daniel probably dispensed with commands of a king he neither agreed with nor supported on specific issues.  Yet look at the results.  Esther became the wife of a man who worshiped violent, immoral and pretty much capricious gods, yet she saved her people by being a place she otherwise would have preferred not to be.

Where has God called you to be?  Remember the above examples from Scripture and settle your mind on being a light in a dark place.  If lights shine where there is already plenty of light, they get lost in the brightness.  But if a light is placed in a dark corner of the room, it dispels the dark—even if it’s just a little bit.

Wisdom: The Latest in Fashion

Who is the wise man?  Who knows the explanation of things?  Wisdom brightens a man’s face and changes its hard appearance.  Ecclesiastes 8:1.

 

I find it strange to think about how often dark thoughts permeate even the brightest moments.  Or, that sense of entitlement which comes along with being human may have nothing whatsoever to do with what I think about myself overall but it sure spits out a lot of nonsense at times.  For instance, I might be aware that few people really pay attention to me but still think that the prettiest girl in the school should be my girlfriend, even though she probably couldn’t pick me out of a lineup.  It’s this odd juxtaposition which causes so many people not to work in harmony with one another.

A guy who won’t date that girl over there because the person in question is just too “weird” or out of sync with what he thinks of as cool, pretty or acceptable declares his own self-image.  It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have the evidence to back it up from his social circles or even internally, the fact that he considers himself to be above the girl states he thinks he deserves “better”—whatever that is.  And, using a guy as an illustration doesn’t mean girls are off the hook because they do the same thing.  The other thing I’ve noticed is taste differences are squashed by the strongest mouth in a proverbial room.  As far as I can tell, there are as many tastes in food, love and career, etc., as there are people in the world, yet we see many people dumping their own tastes for the sake of not being criticized by those who appear more “in the know” or popular.

Both sides are foolishness.

Wisdom explains the reasons for life, the universe and everything.  Sure there are some “reasons” which escape our grasp or even ability to find out, yet when we study the big picture, the reason for much it begins to be clear.

Just take science for instance:  a lot of what we thought was supernatural turned out to be nature working in small ways.  Leprosy is not God’s direct judgment on anyone but a virus which kills the nerves; bubonic plague is simply an infection spread by fleas and other insects—which is easily treatable by the way when caught early enough.  Elves, if they ever existed, were creatures of myth leaving no trace anywhere on earth—no fossils.  The earth rotates around the sun as do all the other planets in our solar system, which in turn rotates around the Milky Way galaxy, which then rotates around our universal core.  Flies do not spontaneously generate from meat, as thought in even medical circles during the 19^th century before Pasteur proved otherwise.

Wisdom eliminates the need for conjecture, assumption and tabloid gossip fodder since by it we examine the essence of things to wring the truth from them.  It isn’t that it knows all rather it recognizes what it does and what doesn’t know, or, what can’t be known in the present moment.

We can conjecture all we want about the habits of a famous person but until we actually live with them in the daily we don’t know.  How often do we assume about another person’s motives only to find out they weren’t even on the same network as us thought-wise?  We assume what we understand the universe, God, the after life, and a host of other concepts either invented by us or discovered in some incremental way, then jump to conclusions about the meaning or purpose behind it all.

When I was a kid we were taught that God would be taking everyone to a heaven somewhere beyond our universe.  I’ve heard variations on this theme my entire life and believed it till I read the Scriptures to find out that “God’s dwelling” will be with men.  It’s stated in two major books—Isaiah and Revelation.  There will be a new heaven and a new earth, for the old is passed away and the new has come.  The New Jerusalem will come and rest on earth where the earthbound Jerusalem is now.  I assumed the people who taught me heaven only came after death or Jesus’ return knew what they were telling me to be fact, when in fact it turns out they ignored certain scripture references in order to promote their own bias.

Wisdom sees through the inflated opinions we have of our own theology.  Even though I know my original grasp of truth was more than likely mistaken, my current attitude towards eschatology (the study of prophecy), end time events, and what eternity will look like are more “wait and see” than anything else.  I took a warning from Jesus first advent:  The people in-the-know recognized Him as someone special, saw His miracles then crucified Him anyway because He scared them.  We don’t like to be wrong.

I’ve decided He’s right and I’m wrong and I’m in this walk with Him no matter what comes.  I don’t understand the big picture nor can I grasp all the details of prophetic truth.  What I do know is this:  Jesus loves me.  I know His word changed my life and gave me a different attitude about it.  I know that His promise of heaven beginning in the here and now on earth is a fact in my own heart—whether or not anyone else appears to accept it or experience it.

Have you ever seen a woman who you didn’t consider to be a “beauty” by whatever standard you measure such things, suddenly become gorgeous once you get to know her?  By the same token, women who fall in love with a man often don’t declare how “handsome” he is rather they focus on a trait that just endears him to them.

Wisdom changes a person’s appearance by its very nature to create a more peaceful, happy and contented outlook—Solomon claims it softens one’s hard facial expressions.  By dent of this very result, I hereby declare wisdom as the most effective fashion upgrade of any in the history of human effort.

In Search of Many Schemes…

So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate and to search out the wisdom and the scheme of things and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly.  Ecclesiastes 7:25.

 

To illustrate his point, Solomon uses the following analogy:  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.  Before anyone gets all huffy about this “diatribe” to women, remember Proverbs 31 praised the woman of virtue.  Solomon collected the sayings in that book, which means he wasn’t against women in general, just bad girls.  If you want to compare the amount of times he spoke against women to men, the weight of evidence will be on the male side.

Then what’s he trying to say about women and men in this rather hard observation?

Well, for one thing he’s not saying women are bad in general.  So let’s ask a question:

 

Is the woman the trap or is the man’s desires for her the problem?

 

I say both.  James 1:14…but each one (man) is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.  Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

Our biggest “fail” as humans is our unwillingness to look our own desires full in the face.  Or, to be more precise, to look at ourselves in the mirror—literal or figurative—and see who we are without blinders, philters or anything which might hinder a true reading.  Solomon declares that women can snare, trap and chain a man, yet he also chides men for being fool enough to go looking for easy sex.  Oh, he doesn’t mention that word but it is implied.  Men act as their own worst enemy in a quest for sex without consequences.  I’ve know a few women who want this too, but women pursue sex for slightly different reasons than men as a general rule.  That’s not to say a woman can’t be narcissistic because everyone knows better than that; rather, their general goals make sex a means.

Earlier in this chapter we read: There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.  If this is true, then when Solomon says at the end of the chapter:  Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things—while I was searching but not finding—I found one upright man in a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all.  This only have I found:  God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes.  Ecclesiastes 7:28, 29.

What we see here is a “connect the dots” kind of logic.  If there is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins, then even that one upright man in a thousand is in search of sex outside godliness.

Why is there not an upright woman with that upright man?

Because, though God made mankind upright, they have gone in search of many schemes.  We are the product of our own desires.  Our world’s condition is a direct result of mankind’s search for anything to quench the thirst for pleasure outside of God’s design.

I refuse to condemn any sinner for being such since I know I am one myself.  If everyone who claims Christ as their savior looks in His perfect mirror, they will know the truth and humbly accept they have no right or place to condemn anyone.  Wisdom is justified by her deeds.  A man who conforms to wisdom realizes his own weaknesses; a woman who does the same recognizes her own failures to hit the bulls eye.

The biggest fail in my view is the refusal to admit our own sinfulness.  For if we not only admit it but gladly point it out—not in general but in fact, we become a true light for grace, mercy, forgiveness and restoration.