They’re Both From God

What do we accept from God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In Ecclesiastes 7:14 we read:

In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.

We live in an age of entitlement. I find it amazing that there are people in third-world countries and in communist dictatorships and Muslim theocracies who are Christians and suffering greatly and are more committed to Jesus, but Christians over here struggle if someone insults us on Facebook. We somehow got this idea that if we are Christians, life should be easier, when Jesus promised the exact opposite.

Also, I’m not saying I’m much better a lot of the times.

Sometimes I hear people saying about how they think God answered a prayer and how do they know? Because things turned out well. Wait and see. Sometimes, what turns out well at the start could lead to a disaster in the end. This includes that God is giving me a green light in my personal decision if I feel a peace about it. (Pray tell where that shows up in Scripture!) If anything, I would contend that if you’re doing the right thing, many times you won’t have peace about it. You could have a lot of anxiety about it because it could be sacrifical.

I do not think this verse is saying God is directly causing things to happen in your life, but it is saying that if good times come into your life, it is because God has allowed that to happen. When it does, rejoice. There is no sin in enjoying life.

However, remember that Job said that we should not accept just good from the Lord but trouble also. If trouble comes into your life, accept it. God has allowed it for a reason just as much. If faithfulness to Jesus only extends when good things happen in your life, then you are not really serving Jesus for Him. You are serving Him so you can enjoy benefits. When the benefits leave, so do you.

This is also the question of the book of Job. Many of us think that the question is why do bad things happen to good people. The problem is that if you look all throughout the book, you will not find one answer to why bad things happen to good people. Instead, the real question of Job comes from the accuser at the beginning. “Does Job serve God for nothing?’

If Job only served God for the blessings as the accuser said, then he would have abandoned YHWH and “cursed God and died” as his wife suggested, right at the start. He did not. He sought an audience with God to plead his case, yes, but he never abandoned God ultimately. Job passed the test. Job was faithful even when that faith seemed to gain him nothing.

Whatever is going on in your life, consider it. If it is good, enjoy it. If it is hard, use it as an opportunity to grow in faith and cling to Christ all the more.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Valuing Wisdom

Is wisdom in demand? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Ecclesiastes 7:11-13 reads:

Wisdom is good with an inheritance,
an advantage to those who see the sun.
12 For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money,
and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.
13 Consider the work of God:
who can make straight what he has made crooked?

Do you know what economics is the study of? If you said money, you’re wrong.

Economics is the study of scarcity and demand.

Unfortunately in our world, we have a lot of demand for wisdom and there’s a great scarcity.

Knowledge and wisdom are different. You can have a lot of knowledge and be a fool in the area of wisdom. Wisdom is knowing the right way to live. Knowledge can be a part of that, but if you have knowledge and don’t have wisdom, you will likely do more harm than good.

In this case, the Teacher talks about money and says that wisdom is good with an inheritance. What good does it do you to have a lot of money if you don’t know the proper way to use it? This is the case when you have people who win the lottery and their lives become worse instead of better. Some of you might say that playing the lottery is wrong either way, but aside from that, the same could be said for people who receive a huge inheritance suddenly and don’t know the proper usage and handling of money.

If you know how to use money properly, you can do a great deal of good with it. (Say, donate to my Patreon?) Keep in mind this doesn’t mean just throwing money at every problem. There can be a great danger in just giving money to people who don’t know how to use it as you can be shortcutting them in harmful ways. I recommend When Helping Hurts on that front.

If you have knowledge, wisdom helps there too. I hate to say it as someone in a PhD program, but sometimes people with PhDs can be really dumb. Why? Because that knowledge does not mean that you have wisdom. Meanwhile, there can be a little old lady in your church who might not have even graduated from high school and yet is a fount of wisdom.

Wisdom will help guide you in how to live. It will help you learn what your goals in life should be and how to best pursue them. It will help you learn to make wise decisions as well.

How do you get wisdom? One way is to learn the fear of God. It’s also to learn from those around you. Read good books that will challenge you. Listen to people who are older and wiser. I have a team of allies around me personally that when I struggle with something, I go to one of them. I also have a therapist which is immensely helpful.

Job taught us the value of seeking wisdom comparing it to silver and gold mined from the Earth. We are told to forsake all else in the pursuit of wisdom.

Perhaps we should listen. We can start having the supply to meet the demand.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Good Old Days

Should you wish to live then? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Ecclesiastes 7:10 reads:

Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

No generation is perfect. Every culture has its vices. Every culture has its virtues. It’s easy to look at some things that people did in the past and consider them ridiculous. Sometimes, some people look at them as worse. How many feminists think the 50’s were a time of great oppression for women?

Do I wish we had more of the morality today that we had back then? Yes, but we also have many things today that we didn’t have at all back then. I live in New Orleans and my parents are in Knoxville, Tennessee, but every day I can get on a device on the arm of my couch and communicate with them so that we can see each other.

I suspect many of us enjoy other advances in medicine and other areas. We have cures for diseases that killed millions in the past. Centuries ago, the Bubonic Plague was a death sentence. Today, it’s easily treatable. Hopefully, someday in the near future a doctor will tell a patient he has cancer only to hear, “Whew! For awhile I was afraid it would be something serious!”

Our means for studying Scripture and other forms of literature are far better. Imagine how much the ancients would have loved to have done a quick search of all ancient literature to see when one word showed up. Imagine what it would have been like to be easily able to see how many times the word “love” shows up in the Bible. We can do all of that.

We have far better ministry options to us now. We can print and publish more than ever. We can go on YouTube and make videos to share the gospel with people all over the world. It’s a wonder to think what the apostle Paul would have done with all that we have.

Our entertainment options are far better. I remember watching reruns of the Adam West Batman series with my Dad and thinking how amusing it is to see it announced “In color.” The video game industry has far better stories and immersion than before. With YouTube now also, you can go and watch clips of anything you enjoy easily and listen to music as well.Thanks to streaming, I can watch old TV shows and movies that I never got to see and I don’t have to please be kind and rewind.

Do we have a lot of problems? Definitely! We have abortion, marriage re-defined, pornography being everywhere, concerns about AI, everything.

However, Acts 17 tells us God appointed the times and places each of us should live. Why are you here? Because this is the time and place you were appointed to be. Is there something good from the past you wish we still had? Work to bring it back. Is there a problem you see today? Work to make it better.

Don’t yearn to live in the past, though. It’s impossible and a wasted effort. Do what you can today.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Evil Begats Evil

What comes from evil? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Today, we’re looking at Ecclesiastes 7:7-9.

Surely oppression drives the wise into madness,
and a bribe corrupts the heart.
8 Better is the end of a thing than its beginning,
and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
9 Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,
for anger lodges in the heart of fools.

I was recently watching Supergirl, seeing as I missed out on a lot of TV shows in my marriage, and I noticed something. Many supervillains seem to form a fixation on the hatred of those who they think wronged them. Sometimes, they did. Of course, we have all been wronged and hurt by other people.

The difference with supervillains is they get so fixated on the other person, even if that person was entirely in the wrong, that they think the only solution to their problem is if they eliminate the other person. It doesn’t reveal strength, but rather weakness. Revenge has become such a motivating factor in their life that they think the only path forward is to fulfill it. No one else sees what must be done and how it must be done.

That could be something similar to what the Teacher says. Oppression drives people to madness. Generally, if an employer mistreats an employee, a parent a child, a spouse another spouse, or a teacher a student, that person on the receiving end will come out worse for it. Some people do overcome to defy the person, but a lot don’t.

A bribe also corrupts. We can see that in politics. Once you become beholden to donors, then you can get put in a position where you will do anything.

Better to be patient and finish something than to start pridefully and not finish. (As I say this, I have several unfinished projects I need to do someday.) There is a danger in biting off more than you can chew. This is something Jesus warns against in Luke 14 when He tells us to count the cost before choosing to undergo something.

The Teacher also has a word about anger. He does not condemn all anger, as anger is not always wrong, but he does say that you should not be quick to become angry. Once you get angry, you can think you already know who is the good guy and who is the bad guy and what needs to be done and are beyond listening to reason at that point. Again, it seems amazing how much that is said in this book can relate to our political discourse today. There are some things that should make you angry, but you should also always strive to be in control even when you are angry.

The more I go through this book, it is amazing how much Ecclesiastes speaks to our modern times, how much wisdom it holds, and how much it is a much more positive book than I had originally thought. I encourage readers to try to approach Ecclesiastes with new eyes. Go through it slowly. There’s a lot there that can surprise you.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Accepting Rebukes

Can you take criticism? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Today, we look at Ecclesiastes 7:5-6.

It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise
than to hear the song of fools.
6 For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,
so is the laughter of the fools;
this also is vanity.

Honestly, I hate being wrong.

I know I have been wrong several times in my life, but I don’t like it. What is even harder at times is when someone else sees it and points it out. That’s pretty painful. We’ve all been there. Some people can take it easier than others. My hating it is a problem that I need to work on.

Right now in the PhD program, my big struggle is academic writing. The content of my work is there. The form it is presented in is lacking. Over this past semester, I had to har a lot of things from other people on how my writing needed to be improved in this area. Some things I do not think will change. I struggle if I make an outline as my thinking becomes disjointed in that case. When I just start writing and let it flow, it comes out better.

Yet sometimes, I still struggle. I don’t know what needs to be further emphasized and what doesn’t. I do have a team of people that I send my writings to to get feedback in this area, and if you want to be on that team, let me know. Fortunately, my professors in the midst of giving feedback also always gave encouragement. Either way, I had to sit and listen and realize that I had a lot of work to do, and still do.

Part of it is realizing that these people really do care about me and believe in me. There is still a lot of insecurity in me, no doubt, a lot of that comes from being divorced. When I would talk to my professors, I would try to always have our conversations end on a note of encouragement.

In our day and age, people cannot take criticism and it has reached the point where saying anything critical is perceived as an attack. People have this idea many times that they are above being criticized. This leads to an axiom I have in interactions with people. If I meet someone who cannot accept that they are wrong in anything, I have no reason to think that they are right in anything. There are many people I know who would rather commit ritual suicide than to admit that they got something wrong.

When people come into your life who really care about you and they tell you you are wrong on something, try to accept it as coming from a place of love. Maybe they are wrong in their opinion, but it should be considered. If the person is an enemy, they are not coming from a place of love, but they could still be right. Take it into consideration and go to someone you trust and ask. Being criticized is not the worst thing in the world. Being stuck in a wrong opinion is far worse.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Everything You Know Is Wrong

Does the Teacher reverse matters? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Readers of Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 could be surprised this is in the Bible:

A good name is better than precious ointment,
and the day of death than the day of birth.
2 It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

Jehovah’s Witnesses often make a big deal out of the “name” of God, missing the point as if what matters is phonetics, what the name is and how it is pronounced. The importance of a name was more the reputation of the one. When God says He wants His name known, He does not want people to call Him Jehovah or YHWH instead of Bob. He means that He wants His honor and glory to be known throughout the world.

What do these statements mean though about the day of death being better than the day of birth? Why does the Teacher prefer a house of mourning to a house of feasting? Who would prefer to have sorrow instead of laughter?

We have seen a number of times where the Teacher tells us to enjoy our lives. Thus, he is not opposed to enjoyment. What is being said is a general principle. The Teacher realizes that life contains much suffering and sorrow. Birth is when that starts and death is the day it supposedly ends. There is a reason people commit suicide after all. They want their suffering to end.

There is no wrong in pleasure, but there is a wrong in acting like life is all about temporary pleasures. We can easily think of the parable of the grasshopper and the ant. The ant worked hard in the warmer weather to prepare for when the winter came. The grasshopper took no thought in that and hopped around regularly without a care in the world. When the winter came, it was the ant who survived.

The Teacher then wants us to look at reality. In our day and age, it’s easy for twenty-somethings, or even people my age in our forties, to think that we will live forever. Unfortunately, it could happen to any of us at any moment. We’ve all heard of stories of people cut down in the prime of life. They had their whole futures ahead of them and then, game over.

So by all means yes, enjoy your life, but also be realistic. Do not take your life for granted. Realize that there will come a time when it will end. While Christians do have something they can look forward to, that doesn’t mean we should not take life seriously here. The Teacher reminds us of how important life here is.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

A Vicious Cycle

Does it keep going on? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Ecclesiastes 6:10-12 read as follows:

10 Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. 11 The more words, the more vanity, and what is the advantage to man? 12 For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?

I wrote about this that:

Verse 6:12 ends the chapter with another reference similar to that in chapter 1, another indication that this pertains to a cyclical view of nature. Otherwise, when the question comes “Who can tell a person what will happen under the sun after they are gone?”, the one who replies can point to the next person who comes into the world. The point is that after a person leaves the world, more people come and soon the past gets forgotten again. When it comes to the people that a man leaves behind, will a man have foolish or wise children?  He cannot know. All his work could come to nothing since one could think surely a fool must inevitably come.

The Teacher never meant that history repeats itself literally like some Greeks did. He meant the cycle of life keeps going. Sometimes it can turn out good for people, but sometimes bad. The Teacher does indicate it is a fool’s errand also to try to dispute with someone who knows more than you do, a lesson many people need to learn.

The Teacher sadly sees the cycle not as a good thing, but as a bad thing. Yes, there is order, which the ancients valued, but then what does it matter if there is order if there is no point in what anyone does? This continues our look at a fall from Eden. The Teacher longs for a time when we can be in Eden, as was seen in Ecclesiastes 2, but if the cycle just repeats, then we will never get there. His viewpoint has often been, “Better make the most of it.”

As we get closer to the end, I will give my view on this more in that I think the Teacher is showing us the limitations of Wisdom without special revelation. If all you have is that, then there is no return to Eden. This is the way the world is and there will be no savior and you might as well make the most of it. It is a sort of reductio ad absurdum asking us to really look at what we say about the world.

Fortuantely, we do have revelation. We do know that a savior has come and we do know that it is possible to not just return to Eden, but go beyond Eden. We know ultimately that everything has a point because that savior came. Ecclesiastes shows us that the Old Testament revelation is incomplete. We need something more that is found in the New.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

A Ravenous Appetite

What does it take to satisfy a physical appetite? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In Ecclesiastes 6:7-9, we read this:

7 All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. 8 For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? 9 Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Why do people work? Ultimately, so that they can eat. You can say we do many other things, but the eating is often primary. If you can’t put food on the table, it doesn’t matter what else you can do.

In the West, especially America, we have an obesity epidemic. Think fast. When was the last time you heard a sermon about the sin of gluttony from the pulpit? I haven’t heard one. I have heard sermons about many other sins, but never about gluttony. Could it be the pastor knows that he will likely lose half his audience on that one? Could it be he might be one of the biggest violators? (No pun intended, but it works out.)

Part of our culture never being satisfied does center around food. We have more of it that most people can ever imagine. My former roommate grew up in a small town and when we moved to Charlotte together, he was absolutely stunned the first time he walked into a large grocery store. If it didn’t spoil, you could likely have enough food in a grocery store to care for many people the rest of their lives.

We often have so many fads for diet fixes and we want instant results, but the solution is often simple. Eat better and exercise more. For those interested, while I am actually underweight, I do get in at least 10,000 steps every day. Yes. I have apps that measure this.

The Teacher also tells us that it’s better to enjoy what we see right before us instead of having our appetites move about looking to find more. If we get something and then we want to move on to the next fix, then we have a problem. Our culture is often built around meeting our own desires and people are just a tool to bring that about.

I realize it’s not necessarily the most pressing issue, but the church does need to do better when it comes to issues of gluttony. Many people have a hard time listening to a pastor who has a weight problem telling them how they ought to live their lives. I do realize we’re all hypocrites to some extent, but any chance we can take to improve ourselves should be taken.

Yet in the end, what is the Teacher saying? Enjoy what is there before you right now. I have said that Ecclesiastes is not really a book about pessimism. In a way, it is actually a book about joy and embracing it here and now.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Problem Of Not Being Able To Enjoy Things

What if you can’t enjoy something? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Chapter 6 starts off with another great evil the Teacher has seen:

There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: 2 a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil. 3 If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. 4 For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. 5 Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. 6 Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good—do not all go to the one place?

As I wrote about it:

Ecclesiastes 6:1, starts with a case of a man who has great wealth but cannot enjoy it and strangers end up enjoying it. As Garrett says “Nothing is more pitiful than to be rich but unable to enjoy it; no amount of prosperity can make up for a life without joy.”[1] Garrett also says that the speaking of a hundred children and such a long life represents Hebrew hyperbole. The Teacher presents a man with everything he wants materially, children to ensure his name carries on, and a long life, but unless the man can enjoy his wealth and have a proper burial, a stillborn child has the better deal. A proper burial matters since in the ancient world, how one died and received burial spoke about how the community viewed their life such that if a man dies without an honorable burial, what profit does he have?

Yesterday, I wrote that the Teacher says it was good to enjoy life, but notice that he not only says that, but he says here it’s a tragedy if you can’t. Life is meant to be enjoyed. If you have 100 sons and have all the wealth, but you do not enjoy your life, what good is it?

Let’s take time to consider this people. This is in the Bible. This is the book that belongs to us that people usually think are stick-in-the-muds who just want to suck the fun out of everything. The Teacher commands us to enjoy life. If you have everything in the world and you have not enjoyed your life, it would have been better for you if you had been stillborn in the womb.

Ecclesiastes is often seen as a depressing book, but in many ways, it’s also a joyous book. It faces life realistically. In an odd way, Ecclesiastes is also a book about joy. It teaches us the importance of seeing the world as it is and then saying “How are you going to live in this fallen world?”

The Teacher recommends enjoying your life.

I’m inclined to agree.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

[1] Duane A. Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (vol. 14; The New American Commentary; Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1993), 315.

 

Life, Work, and Wealth are Good.

What can we enjoy? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We wrap up Ecclesiastes 5 with another Carpe Diem passage:

18 Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. 19 Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. 20 For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.

I wrote about the passage that:

Verse 5:18 has what is commonly considered a carpe diem passage. Enns sees these passages as a resignation of sorts in that God has given man wealth, but he will die anyway.[1] In contrast, Perry says that “if enjoyment comes from God this must include the very power to enjoy.”[2] Longman thinks that only those who God gives wealth can enjoy it.[3] My thinking goes with the latter two since the Teacher speaks of this as something good. In verse 12, the Teacher also describes the sleep of a laboring man as sweet, which could mean that God wants the average man to have a peaceful sleep and then when he has done his toil, to simply enjoy his life.

The simple message is to enjoy what you have. If you can eat and drink, enjoy it. If you have to work in your life, enjoy it. If you have wealth, enjoy it. It is interesting that we have to be told to enjoy our lives. Is this so difficult for us to do? Unfortunately, it often is.

It could also be worthwhile in our day and age to realize that the Teacher says to enjoy both work and wealth. If you have to go to work every day, try to enjoy it. If you have wealth, enjoy it as well. (Please also do consider clicking the Patreon button and becoming a supporter of Deeper Waters.) When you have a meal regardless, enjoy that too.

It could be the antidote to the pessimism of death is to be busy enjoying your life so much that you cannot think about death. Or, it could mean that when the time comes, you will realize you had a good life. Of course, as an Israelite, the Teacher would include that this also means living according to the teachings of YHWH.

For our day and age, we need to consider wealth and work. Envy over a wealthy man does one no good. If someone has wealth and wants to enjoy it, let him. If you have a job, go to work and try to enjoy it. If you can improve matters for yourself, by all means do so, but enjoy your life in any case. It is a good gift from God to be received with thanksgiving.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

[1] Ibid., 73.

[2] Perry, 113.

[3] Longman, NICOT The Book of Ecclesiastes, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1998), 168.