Ecclesiastes

I think the Book of Ecclesiastes is (1) a jewel among the books of the canon; (2) a shocking and politically incorrect book; and (3) largely misunderstood by the evangelical world.

1500 years before any evangelical scholars were born, before Dallas Theological Seminary was founded, the book of Ecclesiastes was included in the canon of Scripture. Modern theologians thus must deal with this difficult book--a book that, if we were honest, some of us might wish were not in the Bible! It is a book written by a man whose sole virtue is astounding honesty. But a man who has little or no relationship with God, at least at the time of his writing.

Traditionally, we believe this book to be written by Solomon. I think this likely, but it really doesn't matter. It is certainly written by someone in the line of David who ruled and had great wealth. But the important point is that this is a book written by someone who is desperate, depressed, frustrated, resigned, and slightly suicidal.

I think that evangelical Christianity, in its discomfort with this book and its haste to make it respectable, rushes to read into it some deep spiritual message from the author. The problem is that the author has no deep, spiritual message. All he has to offer is the perspective of a man divorced from his spiritual relationship with God--a message of despair, resignation, and death. We look at his occasional references to God with the hope that somewhere around chapter 3 or so, he "got saved" or something. I think this is not the case. Rather, I believe this guy was far from God all the way through the book. Even at the end, in the last chapter, when he concludes that we should fear God and obey his commandments, it's not the advice of a spiritual man who has found happiness, but rather of an unspiritual man who is resigned to the inscrutability of God. He has the honesty to record for us that his futile attempts at happiness--through wealth, women, wine, ambition, wisdom, etc.--have come to naught. But that doesn't make him spiritual. Rather, his descriptions of God are cold and contemptuous.

The Teacher (as he calls himself) is openly contemptuous of fools. Still, he notes that some fools have achieved a sort of happiness in life, largely because they are ignorant. In 3:13 he notes that some people can find satisfaction, but he concludes "this is a gift from God"--a gift that obviously the Teacher himself does not enjoy, primarily because he is smart enough to see the vanity in it. (See chapter 1.)

Chapter 3 ends with the Teacher saying things that scandalizes us Christians! How dare he say that men are like animals, that no one can be sure of what happens after the grave! WHY IS THIS BOOK IN THE CANON?!!

Ha! Why indeed? Chapter 4 almost endorses suicide. The Teacher continues in his depressed rant. In chapter 5, he bemoans injustice but offers no solution. In 5:8 we expect him to say, "If you see injustice, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!" But no, he simply explains it away as part of the corrupted nature of mankind. He condemns wealth and its futility, and he again exalts the commoner who can somehow find satisfaction--the satisfaction of the ignorant. A satisfaction that the Teacher obviously does not share.

Chapter 6 offers no solace but only more lamentation that the Teacher does not enjoy the wealth and prosperity he has. Chapter 7--one of my favorites--offers a naked honesty by our frustrated Teacher. Notice once again his description of God--as if God is aloof, inscrutable, capricious. This is not the loving, personal God that David writes of, or that the New Testament describes as "Abba! Father!". Rather, the Teacher's God is cold, unpredictable, detached. In our haste to find some evangelical meaning to this book, we try to make a short-cut and convince ourselves that the writer--somewhere along the line--got religion, and we desperately point to his references to God as the proof. I think this is erroneous. The writer's God is conceptual, not personal, and the Teacher views God as inevitable, tyrannical, irresistible, but not loving, not a God who saves. This is the view of a depressed agnostic.

Chapter 8 borders on incoherence. I picture myself standing before King Solomon in his latter days and listening to him rant the words of this chapter while his ministers lower their eyes and hope that he will shut up. In verse 15 once again, he praises those who are stupid enough to enjoy their lives. You can see his envy of the ignorant. Instead, his "wisdom"--his intellectual ability to see the futility of life on earth--has left him depressed and resigned.

Chapter 9 makes clear the writer's understanding of God: aloof, detached, and capricious. Rather than being a God of Justice and Righteousness, he is instead a God that dispatches blessing and cursing, life and death merely on his divine whim. So I ask again--is this writer of Scripture a spiritual man? Is his representation of God accurate? Of course not! This book is written by a man far from God. But stay tuned...there is a point to all this!

Chapter 10--another chapter of ranting by a king at his wit's end. Chapter 11 gives us deep, meaningful advice indeed: work hard, because you can't possibly predict whether it will pay off. Enjoy your youth and good days, because it's gonna be hell soon enough. Are these the words of a spiritual man? It reads like a suicide note.

Finally we get to chapter 12. The Teacher laments that he's losing his teeth, his vigor, his sexual drive, his sight, and eventually his life. Thankfully for us evangelicals, the writer throws out a desperate conclusion: fear God and obey his commandments. We like to believe that Solomon got religion at last! We cling to verse 13, hoping somehow that it provides a fit ending to this embarrassing rant.

But what we have failed (in general) to see is this: this book is written from start to finish by an unspiritual man. He may be saved, or he may not. That is irrelevant. But he is writing from the perspective of a man living in the devil's world. He's intelligent, and he's honest. In excess, we might say. He's intelligent enough to realize that most people live in total ignorance of the truth of their own mortality. He's honest enough to tell us loud and clear: "I've tried it all and it's all crap." Even his understanding of God is tainted by his depression. The "God" of Ecclesiastes is not the God of the rest of the Bible. From Genesis through Revelation, we see an integrated, beautiful, terrifying, gracious, loving, righteous, incomparable, merciful triune God. We see a God whose perfect character could be propitiated only by the substitutionary, efficacious death of the God-Man on the Cross. We see a God who knew the end from the beginning and who sought out those who could be saved. We see a God who is intimately involved in every detail of life--a God who is powerful, surprising, but consistent in his judgments. This is not the Teacher's God. When the writer of Ecclesiastes writes about "God", it's almost as if he's writing instead about "Fate": cold, unpredictable, detached, purposeless.

Evangelical tradition has hastened to interpret this book in the best light possible...and thereby has lost its real worth. Ecclesiastes is a valuable part of the Canon of Scripture precisely because it gives us the perspective of the lost! It is a book that is intended to be read so that we can see the futility of life unattached to God. There is NO spiritual wisdom in this book....except insofar as we can move on from it and discover that the world view of the writer is horrifying and misguided! The purpose of Ecclesiastes is to motivate us to read the rest of Scripture so that we can lay aside the depression and despair of the unbeliever and turn to the real God of the Bible and his plan of salvation in Christ! Don't try to make the writer into a spiritual giant who "gets religion". Instead, see him for what he is: the voice of the unredeemed, the spiritually dead. Then, move on to the Gospel of John and see the utter, fundamental difference!

God is NOT aloof, capricious, detached, and uninterested. He loves you, as he loved the writer of Ecclesiastes who had lost himself in sin and self-absorption. Our God created you for a purpose and has in mind an exciting, eternal relationship with you. He is SO involved that he formulated a shocking solution for your sinfulness: that he himself would become a human being and die in your place to make you righteous!! He is so vitally interested in you that he brought upon himself unfathomable pain and suffering to save you. This is the beautiful conclusion that you come to when you set down the depression of Ecclesiastes, reject the human viewpoint it voices, and embrace the gospel of peace of the rest of the Bible. Enjoy!