Theology 7372, Fall 2009

I have a problem.  When I go to a buffet restaurant I always put more on my plate than I am capable of eating.  I just can not help myself.  I look down on the buffet line and see the mountain of goodness.  Calories upon calories; fat upon fat.  As I stand there in front of the buffet line looking at the mounds of food, almost on queue my stomach begins to gripe.  As my eyes believe I can take it all in, my stomach knows there is no need for me to stand in front of a buffet line because it knows I am only coveting what I can not have. Ecclesiastes 6:9 speaks to this.  Even though all the riches in the world might be pleasing to the eye, the soul know that those riches are futile and gives those riches no worth.  But as convicting as that is, how often do I still desire what I do not need.  Not necessarily what I can not get, but what I do not need is the issue.  In this materialistic culture we live, people can not get enough things to make them happy.  I unfortunately admit this same desire, but the question remains: do I continue in my discipline  for Christ, or do I give in?

Another great day that pasts through my head. I exist inside the world before me as I hold the Bible in front of my face. I remember spending so much time with this Book of Bible: Ecclesiastes. Many people call it the existentialist book of Scripture. I’ve had discussions of how some consider it post-modern literature crafted in a pre-scientific world. While I would argue for the post-modern ideas inside this literature, I understand the reservations some would have about making this declaration. I am not calling the author or authors of Ecclesiastes post-modern thinkers that were born thousands of years before their era. What I would like to say is that post-modernism is mind-set that had been rediscovered. Existentialism is under the same belt.

The narrator of the Book denounces the greatness of materialism. Nothing in this world matters, not even wisdom. There is no point to anything at all. We are insignificant. We may become rich, yet, what good will it do once we are six feet under? I may love in this life, marry and bear many children, but what will that do? I will die, so will my wife, as well as my children. The people of this world live for now, yet everyone that comes to open their eyes in the morning will close them in death. So what is there? There is God. There is the great Deity that began this cycle of life and death.

In this rather dismal book, I see the greatest hope of all. What is the point of life??? GOD!!! It is God that matters and anything I do should be for God and not myself or anyone else. It gives me such great encouragement. By no means am I perfect or by many standards even a good man. But as long as I am working for God and reaching out to God I am rich and wealthy where it matters. This is the relationship that many cannot see because they do not look into the text deep enough. The fact that God and dealings with the heavenly realm are the only things that matter makes the relationship between man and God incredibly important the MAIN point of Ecclesiastes.

In a book which seems so focused on saying that everything we can do in life is vanity, what is there to take from it? When I first began reading it, so much of what was said seemed downright depressing, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to see that its words were truly freeing in a sense. It is so easy to get caught up in the details of life and the day to day tasks that there is a certain freedom to be gained from viewing our toils as vanity. This possible perspective is made all the more interesting considering that the person commonly thought to be the author of the book is King Solomon, someone who had pretty much everything that daily toils can produce. Moreover, when he lists the one thing that is not vanity and will last as that which is done by God, that sense of freedom becomes even greater. It was simply helpful to me to be reminded of the fact that only what God does will have any lasting impact on this world and it was encouraging to also note that the rest of it is vanity by comparison.

Well, i read Ecclesiastes and was i disappointed….. I don't understand why the author says what he says.  To the original audience, what did they understand?  They had no view of the afterlife, concluding that life was here an now only.  For this reasons, i don't understand Ecclesiastics and, in away, view it useless unless read in a conical context. The author argues that everything is meaningless because in the end it all goes away .  There is no reason for wealth or fame or talent because they will fade away.   The only true ting (meaningful thing) is a relationship with God.  Yet to me, a relationship with God (if life only exists till death) is also manginess and should be put into the same category as wealth or fame. Reading Ecclesiastes by itself is like watching a 3d movies without the proper 3d glasses If we read Ecclesiastes through the lens of scripture then the truth is finally reviled.