Ecclesiastes 1:2 (NIV) “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
When I decided on Ecclesiastes for my Wednesday morning Life Group, I did so with trepidation. Why? Because of statements like the one above. Ecclesiastes is a book written by the wisest and one of the wealthiest men who ever lived. However, this brilliant strategist, this world class leader, this envy of all other men on earth could not resolve the ultimate meaninglessness of life “under the sun.” This kind of cynicism has caused critics to say, “Ecclesiastes is a mistake and shouldn’t even be in the Bible.” I tended to agree with them at one time, but not anymore. We need a book in the Bible that informs us that life for earthlings is not supposed to be idyllic and the Creator set it up like that.
I am watching an extraordinary thing happen to the company of BCC retirees who attend this daytime Life Group. They are opening up and talking because Solomon’s perspective on life makes more sense than the “Just trust the Lord and life on earth will be wonderful” refrain sung by leading evangelicals for years. It’s as though we are being liberated from a huge burden of shame put on us by those who said, “if you do Christianity correctly, the world will make sense, your children will be well-behaved, your bank balance will be fat, your figure will be a cause for jealousy and your career will meet your wildest expectation.” It continues with, “You will only experience temporary sadness when you have to be around the poor, pathetic people who didn’t grasp the secret of the abundant life.”
One wonderful person in the group stood up recently and talked about how they have decided to let go of anger that they have carried for a long time. I can’t fully capture here how beautiful it was without violating the confidentiality covenant we have in the group. Another member of the group unburdened their soul about embarrassment over some bad decisions they had made in their life. Afterward, a saint among us stepped up and, in so many words, said, “you know I did the same thing and I haven’t been able to talk about it.” When we find out that God fully knew that life was going to be hard for us, we don’t feel so embarrassed to admit it. It’s not like we’re abnormal because we couldn’t control the universe.
Now don’t worry, I am not going to stop teaching on the Biblical principles of parenting, relationships, stewardship and faith. Solomon does teach us to maximize the enjoyment of our earthly lives. But, in life, we need a spiritual Emergency Room. If a guy cuts his finger cut off with a skill saw, wraps it in a towel and runs to the E.R., they don’t bring in someone from OSHA to lecture him on operating machinery improperly. No, they bring out the ice and the painkillers. They replace the blood he’s lost. They bring in the surgeon who repairs the damage done. They are there to minister grace, not correction.
That’s what Solomon is doing in Ecclesiastes. He is saying, “Okay, the world is a messy, painful place, but let me introduce you to God.” He says, in so many words, “You are going to be messed up sometimes, but God is going to be really glad to see you. In fact, God has let the world be messed up so men will turn to Him for healing. Otherwise humans would go on their merry way, imagining that their genius was creating all the good fortune.” When talking about the cycles of pleasure and pain we all live through, Solomon concludes the section by saying, “I know that everything God does will endure forever; (by implication, nothing humans do endures) nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.” (Ecclesiastes 3:14) You see, God has to subject us to futility or he will lose us. We will not need him unless we need him. That’s just human nature.
The reason many people can’t get healing in our churches is because we have the moralist wagging their finger and talking about irresponsibility. We’ve got the intellectual looking down their nose preaching “wisdom,” and we’ve got the faith mystic saying, “you didn’t speak the magic formula from God’s word.” So we hide our shame like a child hides mom’s favorite, but is now a broken vase. We do need confrontation, absolutely. We need the same kind of confrontation that my fictional character with the missing finger needs. It should to go like this:
▪ Be quiet and let God speak to you.
▪ Be still and let God touch you.
▪ Stop being angry and let God love you.
You know, the guy with the re-attached finger is probably going to be a better skill saw operator than before because he brought his pain to a place where it felt safe to reveal it and his mistake was met with grace, not correction.
