Let’s Talk About Work

What is work? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My first form of my paper was looking at what Ecclesiastes had to say about work and play. I have since changed that trajectory, but I have the old paper and what it said about work.

Many readers can resonate with what the Teacher says in his writings on work. They go and they work all day and, in the end, what for? They provide for their families, certainly a good, but why? Does anyone really care about the work that they do? If they quit or their boss fires them, the boss can just find someone else to replace them.

To start at the beginning of work, terms need definitions. Unfortunately, the difficulty here is that many writers do not define work. In a volume edited by Meilaender, work gets first defined as co-creation.[1] He also has in the book a writing from Dorothy Sayers who says that in the Christian view of work that “Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do.”[2] She also calls the secular vocation sacred.[3] Probably the fullest definition of work I came across comes from a more popular work from Lester Dekoster who work as “The form to which we make ourselves useful to others.”[4]

These definitions are unfortunately too broad or too vague. For Sayers, how many people live to do what they consider work? If so, then what happens when a person takes a vacation from it? What happens when the time comes for a person to retire?

Regarding co-creation, if a small child gets out fingerpaints and starts painting on paper, does this get included under co-creation? If he paints all over the wall and Mommy must clean it up, has he still done work? The child can consider it creative still and perhaps rightly so, but the work still gets wiped away and takes away from the clean walls of the residence.

Lastly, while DeKoster has a fuller definition, the problem comes when on the same page he says that this gives meaning to life. Does this imply that a newborn infant who does no work gives no meaning to life? What does this say about someone who retired, or someone severely disabled through whatever means that cannot do work? Does the person who works an exhaustive schedule and works overtime have a life with greater meaning? Do we not hear countless stories of people who worked relentlessly while their children grew up? Do we not hear of people described as “Married to their jobs?” We relate to these questions since some people are workaholics or their work keeps them from really getting to live their lives. DeKoster has a definition that leads to people only being meaningful in work.

One could define work as that which aims towards an end beyond itself. The problem that comes to mind immediately for this one is to consider that of a married couple wanting to have a child and thus engage in sex, but they would not likely count that as work. While they could say that they are going to work in jest, one hardly suspects that they will say that work takes place in the act, even with a hope for something beyond the act. One could argue that the act can differ in that the good of the couple uniting in love counts as a good regardless of if the desired child comes or not. Other activities like having a meal or something light like going for a drive to enjoy autumn leaves could qualify as well, but that does not make them work.

I do not want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, so I intend to use the previous definition for the time being. The benefit of such a definition lies in that it says nothing about meaning. Not being able to work does not mean that one does not have meaning in life or give any meaning in life. The other benefit comes in the fact that work traditionally takes place to reach an end. The man who works every day can work to provide for his family. The women from the church getting together to make a quilt for a new mother are engaging in work even without pay. Another aspect of why I consider this definition beneficial will come when I get to play. I ask the reader to keep that in mind as we move forward.

In our world today, a problem comes when we find our identity in work. When two people meet for the first time at a social gathering, one normally asks the other at one point, “What do you do?” and the other answers by saying “I am a” and then giving their profession. No one asks this with the expected response of “I watch Netflix videos” or “I visit art museums” or “I enjoy Assassin’s Creed games.” The assumption is that what someone does comes in relation to work instead of their hobbies. Work takes precedence.

Picture a world where someone says that they are a house painter. Then along comes an event like COVID-19 and the government decides to shut down the economy. They cannot find work. Not only that, but their job also gets defined as “non-essential.” What does this say about them? Does this mean that society can function without their job and does not need them?

In The End of Burnout, Jonathan Malesic says that “A waitress who lost her job due to the pandemic had no less dignity than she did before stay-at-home orders forced her restaurant to close.”[5] If work gives dignity to a person, then the waitress having to stay home has no dignity. We can agree with the condemnation of sloth, but not all lack of work comes from laziness. The government forced people to take respites from work in the shutdown, and their dignity and humanity remained intact.

Malesic argues that our society puts too much emphasis on work. He considers work burnout not to lie in a problem with the body, but of something wrong in the soul. If work becomes the path that we take to flourishing and fulfillment, what if it does not deliver? If we do all the work and still find emptiness inside of us, then we have made work an idol and that likely drives us to despair.[6]

From a Christian perspective, one could argue that God Himself made sure man did not think this way by instituting the Law of the Sabbath. Even animals had to take a Sabbath rest. (Exodus 20:10) Not only that, but Sabbath Years occurred as well. (Exodus 23:11) In these years, God forbade the working of the ground. God commands this for the good of the land, the people, and the animals.  We also need to consider that this comes in a society populated of people who lived day by day and could not go to a supermarket and get food easily nor had refrigeration to preserve food. This society consisted of day-wager laborers who received a command to stop for one day and that God would provide for them.

Despite that, God still sees work as a good. In the beginning, God plants a garden and calls man to work. Witherington writes that somewhere along the line, work got seen as a negative and considered a result of the fall.[7] The account in Genesis 1:28 telling man to “be fruitful, increase, fill and subdue the Earth, and rule over other living creatures.” These verbs show commands that God gave man to do prior to the Fall. Genesis 2:15 says that man was put in the Garden to work and take care of it. Also, one could argue that in the first part of this command, God gave man the labor of having to have sex with his wife and produce children. Many men if asked to do a job that involved working a garden and eating from any tree except one and having sex with his wife would sign up immediately.

What changed in the fall was not the existence of work, but the nature of work. From that point on, work would be a toil.[8] Genesis contains several alienations. Man gets alienated from himself in that he loses the purpose he originally received in the garden so that now the identity of man at birth comes not in YHWH, but in Adam. Second, alienation from his spouse with these two sometimes having opposing desires. (Gen. 3:16) Most importantly the third, in alienation from God due to sin. I save work for last not because of importance but relevance. Work no longer comes naturally to the man and consists of a joy, but now the ground itself works against man, and man must toil for what he has.

The problem for us comes then in knowing that we should value and celebrate work as a good. We should encourage people to work and we should discourage sloth. We should also have a way of providing for those in need, but that goes beyond the reach of this paper.[9] At the same time, we should not have it so that people who cannot work get treated like lesser citizens and that people do not find their whole identity in work.

An interesting cause of finding identity in work could come in the materialism that our culture has accepted. Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism at the start of the 20th century. In it, he says that in the time earning money became akin to a religious calling. It no longer needed a religious system to back it and considered religion an interference just as much as state intervention.[10] Could this show that if man lives in a universe where people deny God’s reality that his identity must find a foundation in something earthly? In the past, man could say he had identity in the image of God. If man has no sure identity, a logical place to build an identity then comes in work.

If correct, then perhaps work has become an idol for some people. Could this mean that the stigmatization of play that we see comes not from the notion of play itself, but from the view of work? If work has a quasi-religious status and play detracts from work, then ipso facto, play becomes a problem and could even take on the identity of a sin in such a culture. At best, one could treat play as something fine for children, but the adults know better.

Malesic also sees from Maslach, the originator of the original burnout measurement index, that work becomes a way to find value in the world. Maslach recognizes the importance of having psychological needs met at work, writing, “The person who lacks close relationships with friends or family will be far more dependent on clients and colleagues for signs of appreciation.”[11] Malesic then says that when a person does not feel appreciated on the job or lacks community with coworkers, their ability to do the job deteriorates as a result.[12] Apathy sets in for workers which leads to a vicious cycle of less appreciation.

Malesic writes about working with a community of monks in New Mexico at a monastery called Christ in the Desert. These monks set specific work times and when the bell rings, work for the day stops. He writes about this saying “I asked Fr. Simeon, a monk who spoke with a confidence cultivated through the years he spent as a defense attorney, what you do when the 12:40 bell rings but you feel that your work is undone.

‘You get over it,’ he replied.”[13]

These monks do not doubt the importance of their work, but they have no franticness saying that everything must get completed entirely. If one thinks everything has to be done completely, it can lead to exhaustion. The workers who know that they have a reprieve can then get more productive when it comes to their other monk duties, like prayer, and then do more when they return to work the next day. They are also able to practice leniency on themselves and not demand of themselves more than they can do.

Next time, we will cover something hopefully more fun, play.

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

[1] Gilbert C. Meilander ed., Working: Its Meaning and Limits (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 2.

[2] Ibid., 43.

[3] Ibid., 45.

[4] Lester Dekoster, Work: The Meaning of Your Life (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Christian’s Library Press, 1982), 1.

[5] Malesic, Jonathan. The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives. University of California Press. Kindle Edition, 14.

[6] Ibid., 14

[7] Ben Witherington, Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2011), 2.

[8] Ibid., 3.

[9] For those interested in such an approach, I recommend The Conservative Heart by Arthur Brooks and When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. Good books on economic principles to better help include Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and anything by Thomas Sowell.

[10] Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 72.

[11] Malesic, 30.

[12] Ibid., 65.

[13] Malesic, 176.

This is Madness!

Or is it Sparta? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this section, the Teacher writes about considering madness and folly. As I wrote in my paper on the topic:

The Teacher then turns to consider madness and folly. He does not tell us what all this consisted of and unfortunately, commentators do not have a clear idea either. Bartholomew says it consists of behavior considered senseless and irrational.[1] Perry probably gets closest when he says this could refer to the opposite of wisdom.[2] Another problem with understanding what the Teacher means by these terms is that the words for madness and folly show up nowhere else in the Old Testament except in this book.

The Teacher says nothing about how this testing takes place. It would seem obvious that this could not take place with the usage of wisdom. How does one wisely explore the opposite of wisdom? Could perhaps the Teacher have gone out and observed the Fool from the book of Proverbs and learned from the experience of others?

However he gains his information, there comes a surprising change in the book when the Teacher declares wisdom better than madness. (2:13-14) The person who has wisdom can see where he walks. The Teacher makes the comparison saying that a life lived in the light ranks above one lived in the darkness.

Unfortunately, while the life of wisdom comes out better than the life of folly, in the end, what difference does it make? Perhaps one could say that if Solomon wrote the book, he might have in mind a situation like the one described in Proverbs 7 where a young man gets seduced by the wayward woman and does not realize that her house leads to death. True enough, but even if one lived with full wisdom, they too will one day go to a place of death. What good has happened to them in the end overall? How can one say that they lived a better life if the result of both folly and wisdom occurs at a cemetery? Hence, the Teacher again ends this section saying it describes life under the sun.

So is it better to be wise? Yes. However, no matter how wise you are, in the end, you will still die. There have been many great men of wisdom that we have no idea about today. Right now, I am going through a book called The Moral Argument. I have read so far about many people that I have sadly never heard of. I suspect most Christians haven’t heard of them either.

Not only that, but even the ones that people do remember, we tend to not know many of their philosophies today. Aside from biblical figures, who we don’t know as we should, we can also include Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and even the great scientific minds as well. Consider how many people consider the Middle Ages to be the Dark Ages unaware entirely that there were plenty of people doing great scientific work in that day. Ask people to name a medieval scientist and they will likely say Galileo, who didn’t even live in that period!

So what about another option? If pleasure doesn’t deliver and wisdom doesn’t, what about work?

We’ll discuss that next time.

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

[1] Bartholomew, 130.

[2] Perry, 79.

 

Solomon’s Garden of Eden

What were the pleasures of Solomon’s garden? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A large portion of my research was on Ecclesiastes 2. Thus, you will see I have a lot pre-written on that already. Here then, is some of what I wrote on the topic:

Looking at these verses from Ecclesiastes, the pointing to Eden might not come across immediately, but Meek contends that the author fully intended it. He notes repeated phrases showing up like “to plant”, “to make”, “gardens”, “trees of every kind”, “to water”, “to sprout”, and the overall theme of a ruler creating a garden.[1] The Teacher chose of all places to go to for pleasure to use language picturing a garden and not just any garden, but the original one that was meant to be a paradise. Kim and Hoang present a contrast of God saying everything is good in the creation account and the Teacher saying everything is vanity.[2]

A difference between the two accounts is that in the Genesis account, it is God who is the creator. In the Ecclesiastes account, the Teacher focuses on himself as the one who did this. This could indicate that the Teacher had a desire to go back to Eden. After all, if any place in Israel’s history represents joy, surely Eden deserves that honor. So what all went into creating this new paradise of joy?

Also, nothing in this passage serves a necessary function to a working city. At most, one could speak of providing food with trees. Instead, this could be akin to a man today saying “I built theaters, arcades, skating rinks, parks, and museums.” All of these can benefit a city, but a city can function just fine without them also.

What of the women in the passage? Goldingay sees the passage as describing “girls and girls” and sees a parallel in Judges 5:30. There, the text can also mean “A womb, two wombs.” Goldingay then says that that could mean that the Ecclesiastical verse could mean, “A breast, two breasts.”[3] If Goldingay has the correct interpretation, this could refer more then to the delights of sexual pleasure that are physical rather than such important aspects as childrearing. Perhaps a parallel lies in Proverbs 5:18-19 where the young man warned against adultery gets told to cling to the wife of his youth and “May her breasts satisfy you always.”

Such a reading of seeing sexual pleasure as meaningless regardless seems odd if the same person wrote the Song of Songs, a book devoted to the joy of sexual pleasure. Hence, some writers think that women are not even in view here. Miller says that the language used of delights refers to fine things and never refers to people. He sees the terms of women more likely referring not to women but “every human luxury, chest upon chest of it.”[4] If Miller has the idea correct, then a life of luxury is what the Teacher has in mind.

I will not attempt to say which side has the right interpretation of this debate, seeing as brilliant scholars who know Hebrew take different positions. If Solomon wrote the book, this could indicate a looking back on life after the errors of his ways in 1 Kings 11. That could mean that Solomon reflects on his life after his heart strayed and decides in the end that what happened was pointless. On the other hand, many kings often had plural wives and remained faithful to YHWH (David comes to mind), so if the authorship remains the same, then Solomon might mean that in his own lifetime, his pleasure, including sexual pleasure, did not satisfy him even before he fell away from YHWH.

For the sake of argument, let us include sexual pleasure in the list of what the Teacher engaged in since usually this gets esteemed as one of the greatest goods in our society today. The Teacher nowhere denies that he enjoyed what all he partook of. He just looks back at the end of that enjoyment and asks “What was the point?” “Why bother?” In the end, did he really get anything truly good out of it?

Ryken describes the Teacher as someone who would be on Fortune magazine as the wealthiest man in the world. He would have supermodels as his constant companions. He asks his readers if they find what the Teacher has tempting. Ryken then sees a parallel with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.[5] (1 John 2:16) Despite all that the Teacher has, he never says, “This I found worthwhile.”

Something to consider lies in that while the Teacher does declare his efforts as meaningless, he does not say that the goal was wrong in itself. No indication comes up considering pleasure an evil. The Teacher does not say “Therefore, one should not build gardens.” He instead says that this was a meaningless endeavor. Why?

Earlier in this paper, Maier was cited about suicidal millionaires. If he showed them the passage from Ecclesiastes under discussion, would they look and say “Yes. That’s me.”? The meaningless the Teacher speaks of comes from having it all and seeing that you have reached the end. People behave like children on Christmas morning and after opening the last gift ask “Is that it?”

The section ends with another “under the sun.” The Teacher concludes that in this mortal realm, you can live for all intents and purposes in Eden, and still not find satisfaction since death will still come to you. Eden without the tree of life in it just becomes at best a temporary respite on the pathway to death.

And by the way, have a nice day. This is also just the first part of Ecclesiastes 2. We’ll see what else lays in store in this fascinating chapter.

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

[1] Meek, Ecclesiastes and the Search for Meaning in an Upside-Down World, (Peabody: Massachusettes, Hendrickson Publishers, 2022), 6.

[2] Nga Thi Hong Hoang and Sung Jin Kim, “An Analysis of the -iterary Allusion in Ecclesiastes 2 to the Creation/arrative in Genesis 1-2 3hetorical 3ole of the Creation Motif in Ecclesiastes 2***, ACTS Theological Journal, (2019), 20. https://research.ebsco.com/c/trvdli/viewer/pdf/n7hbgqgy2f

[3] Goldingay, 147.

[4] Miller, 55.

[5] Philip Graham Ryken, Ecclesiastes (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2010), 50.

 

Longing for Eden

Is Genesis 2 pointing back to Eden? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In our modern age, we often think the only way you can refer to something is to explicitly say it. For the ancients, this was not so. The book of Ecclesiastes never once refers to Eden, so the casual reader going through can understandably wonder why I think the book speaks about that subject. So, here is what I do have from my research on this topic.

So in my paper, what I say about this is:

Looking at these verses from Ecclesiastes, the pointing to Eden might not come across immediately, but Meek contends that the author fully intended it. He notes repeated phrases showing up like “to plant”, “to make”, “gardens”, “trees of every kind”, “to water”, “to sprout”, and the overall theme of a ruler creating a garden.[1] The Teacher chose of all places to go to for pleasure to use language picturing a garden and not just any garden, but the original one that was meant to be a paradise. Kim and Hoang present a contrast of God saying everything is good in the creation account and the Teacher saying everything is vanity.[2]

A difference between the two accounts is that in the Genesis account, it is God who is the creator. In the Ecclesiastes account, the Teacher focuses on himself as the one who did this. This could indicate that the Teacher had a desire to go back to Eden. After all, if any place in Israel’s history represents joy, surely Eden deserves that honor. So what all went into creating this new paradise of joy?

Also, nothing in this passage serves a necessary function to a working city. At most, one could speak of providing food with trees. Instead, this could be akin to a man today saying “I built theaters, arcades, skating rinks, parks, and museums.” All of these can benefit a city, but a city can function just fine without them also.

The imagery here is indeed pointing to Eden. This time, the author realizes that Eden has been lost and decides he is going to work to bring it back. I contend that this means he wants to create the best living scenario for human beings that he can. What if in our search for meaning, we brought back all the joys of Eden?

We could compare this to what is called the Experience Machine, an idea dreamt up by Robert Nozick. Imagine you could be hooked up to a machine and you could experience anything that you wanted in the world of the machine. Sex, power, money, fame, talent, whatever you desire. Whatever brings you the most pleasure, you can have. Should you choose the Experience Machine?

Some people say yes, but a lot say no. Even if you have what can bring you the most happiness supposedly, it still is not the real thing itself. You can have it all and still in the end, be miserable due to the Law of Diminishing Returns.

But we should let the text speak more about the pleasures of this garden. We will do that next time.

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

[1] Meek, Ecclesiastes and the Search for Meaning in an Upside-Down World, (Peabody: Massachusettes, Hendrickson Publishers, 2022), 6.

[2] Nga Thi Hong Hoang and Sung Jin Kim, “An Analysis of the -iterary Allusion in Ecclesiastes 2 to the Creation/arrative in Genesis 1-2 3hetorical 3ole of the Creation Motif in Ecclesiastes 2***, ACTS Theological Journal, (2019), 20. https://research.ebsco.com/c/trvdli/viewer/pdf/n7hbgqgy2f

The Search Begins

What can wisdom do for you? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The Teacher decides he is going to begin the quest for meaning. I do call him the Teacher in this and if you’re wondering why, it’s because while I do hold to Solomonic authorship, my arguments do not depend on the Teacher being Solomon. That is my position, but if I found incontrovertible proof that this was someone just impersonating Solomon, I would not have to revise my understanding of the book.

The Teacher does say that the business man has been given is unhappy. No beating around the bush again. Not only that, but he attributes this to God. God has given something to man that is sad. Man has a desire to find meaning in the world. Man has a desire to make sense of it all. We are not all philosophers, but all of us to some extent have this desire in us.

If something is crooked, it cannot be made straight and something lacking cannot be counted. This points to a futility then in the search of sorts. If God has done this, we cannot undo it. If God has given us a desire to find order in the world, we cannot shut that off. If God has given us a desire to find meaning in life, we cannot shut that off. Some people do think life is meaningless, but that does not mean that they want it to be. There is a difference between wanting life to be meaningless and concluding, even wrongly, that life is meaningless.

In a statement that is definitely reflective of Solomon, the Teacher says he has acquired wisdom and knowledge beyond any who came before him. If the Teacher cannot figure out the answer to this question, then who can? The Teacher has said he is not going to hold anything back in his quest. He wants to know what makes a life worthwhile.

In the end of this section, he makes a negative statement about wisdom. Today, we would describe it as saying “ignorance is bliss.” There is a reason we often protect children from some realities of the adult world as they grow up and let them experience them gradually. It is because of the perceived innocence of children that we don’t want their childhoods destroyed by painful realities. We treat it as something unnatural when a child comes to know the nature of death all too soon.

Many of us who have knowledge do enjoy what we have, but at times, it can also be painful. Sometimes to have good theology can produce pain. Consider how C.S. Lewis once said his fear was not that God did not exist. It was “Yes. He does exist, and this is what He is really like!” Of course, there is some false information in that, but the knowledge that God exists doesn’t always bring joy. Sometimes it brings fear and sorrow. Sometimes knowing God is good is painful when one realizes what is being allowed and one cannot make sense of it.

But the Teacher will try.

Next week, we’ll really get into his searching.

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

Under the Sun

What does this mean? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A large portion of my research was devoted to understanding the phrase “under the sun” which only shows up in Ecclesiastes. The term shows up several times in Ecclesiastes. Goldingay sees it referring to this sphere of life and what people can know from an earthly perspective.[1] Miller says it refers to “existence in this world in contrast to the realm of God (heaven) and the realm of the dead (Sheol).[2] Perry relates it to “this mortal world.”[3] It occurs twenty-nine times in twenty-seven verses, first appearing in 1:3 right after saying “everything is meaningless.” The Teacher asks what profit does a man’s toil provide under the sun. Garrett says about this passage that “The phrase “under the sun” is comparable to “under heaven” in Exod 17:14; Deut 7:24; 9:14 and refers to this world. The phrase is also found in Elamite and Phoenician inscriptions. After a life of hard labor, no one can show a net gain; everything one has is vapid.”[4] The idea entails that men can work hard all their life and, in the end, it profits them nothing. They die anyway.

In essence, we could say that the Teacher is setting the scene here. This will also take more precedence when we get to chapter 2 and I point to a further tie-in to Genesis. At this point, the Teacher is taking his wisdom and applying it to the world around him. What does he find that is worthwhile to do in this life?

In a sense, the Teacher could be doing a reductio ad absurdum. He could be saying “Let’s suppose that we have wisdom, but all we have is this world. Where does that get us?” It would be amusing to see what he would say to atheists today. If he saw one of those bus campaign slogans saying something like “There probably is no God so just go on and enjoy your life”, would he roll his eyes or be angry or just cry in sorrow at what he saw? He could just as easily ask “Why?” After all, if this life is all that we have, what’s the point? Why should I enjoy it? How can I enjoy it?

I suspect it would be more like the ending response because the Teacher does not really hold back on anything. He has the guts to follow through his conclusions where they lead. However, in all of this, his questions are not about the existence of God. He is still a faithful Israelite. His questions are about the meaning of life for man. His questions are asking what it is that a man desires in life and why does he desire this? If he gets what he desires, will he be happy?

If he isn’t, well tough luck. That’s the way it is. The Teacher will not sugarcoat the truth.

So let’s keep going tomorrow to see what his investigation gets us.

[1] Ibid. 115-116.

[2] Douglas B. Miller, Ecclesiastes (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2010), 43.

[3] T. Anthony Perry, Dialogues with Koholet: The Book of Ecclesiastes (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 57

[4] Duane A. Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (vol. 14; The New American Commentary; Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1993), 284.

What’s New?

Is there anything new under the sun? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Ecclesiastes starts in a way that seems strange to us, beyond the meaningless aspect. Let’s see what the Teacher says next.

What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
4 A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
7 All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
8 All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.

Some readers might be confused wondering “How can the Teacher say there is nothing new under the sun?” We especially wonder about this. After all, we live in an age of invention where there is something new practically every time you turn around. We do things today that if science fiction had existed in the Biblical times would have been considered such. We do some things that were considered science fiction in the 20th century.

The Teacher says that the work a man does is useless. Why? We will see more on this as we go along. However, to answer the question about anything new, the Teacher is talking about nature. He describes the way of what we call science today on how the sun rises and sets, the wind blows, and the rivers flow. Such happened thousands of years ago and unless Christ returns, they will do so one thousand years from now as well. Science itself depends on the regularity.

And as for generations, we can say that yes, we have history, but so did they and how many people today do not know their history? In my Dad’s age, the Beatles were the big phenomenon, yet just recently I had someone tell me they did not know who they were until high school. If we do not know the popular history, how much more do we not know the real significant history? When you read something like the Federalist Papers, our founders put us to shame. They knew about ancient Greek and Roman battles and people and events. They assumed we do as well.

We don’t.

In a sense, the Teacher says we have the whole same-old, same-old going on. A man can do something great and then be forgotten about by the next generation.

Consider the poem, Ozymandius:

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
In his day, this king was no doubt, big stuff. He had a statue dedicated to him and called on people around him to look at all he had done. Look and see how small and petty you are! Look and shrink back in awe. You are not worthy to be in the presence of the great king Ozymandius!
Except all that is around him now is ruins. Instead of looking with awe, now we look with pity. If you are thinking “I have never heard of this”, then the case is made. The statue depicts Ramesses II. Don’t know who that is? Again, point made.
Will the internet change this? Probably not. For those of us who care about information, we have found an invaluable resource. For others, the internet has not increased knowledge so much as ignorance. Now people can read something online rejected by the best experts across the board in the field and think they are on the cutting edge of knowledge. (Think Jesus mythicism)
Perhaps the Teacher is right in that sense. Nothing has changed.
But next time, the Teacher himself will enter the investigation.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Meaningless!

What does the Teacher mean? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So you are hypothetically going through the Bible for the first time. You have never read it all before and you are going through the Wisdom books. Job started you off introducing you to the main character. That makes sense. You start off Psalm 1:1 and read:

Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

That’s a good start to a book about worship and introduced you to the book as a whole. Proverbs 1:1 is just an introduction, but the next few verses spell it out for you.

The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel:

2 To know wisdom and instruction,
to understand words of insight,
3 to receive instruction in wise dealing,
in righteousness, justice, and equity;
4 to give prudence to the simple,
knowledge and discretion to the youth—
5 Let the wise hear and increase in learning,
and the one who understands obtain guidance,
6 to understand a proverb and a saying,
the words of the wise and their riddles.

7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Makes sense. After reading about the woman of great character, you’re eager to see how wisdom continues. How will the next book, the book of Ecclesiastes start off?

Well, the first verse is an introduction. Okay. Let’s see what the next one says!

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

Um. Is this the Bible? Surely this is the start of a story where we’re going to see the opposite. Right?

Unfortunately for you, no. As you go through the book, you wonder if this could be the most dismal book you have ever read. Why is this in the Bible? Not only that, it started off saying everything is meaningless! What’s going on?!

(FYI, a lot of material in this series will be pulled from what I have written for class from here out so you’ve been warned.)

The word for meaningless is hebel. הֶבֶל (1:2) Bartholomew says this has been given a variety of interpretations such as “meaningless,” “useless,” “absurd,” “futility,” “bubble,” “trace,” “transience,” and “breath.”[1] Enns prefers to read it as “absurd.”[2] Goldingay sees a parallel between the life of man, Adam אָדָם, and then the word hebel, seeing it as the name of Adam’s son, Abel. He sees an opening with Genesis and that Adam appears more frequently here than anywhere else in the Old Testament.[3] Goldingay views the life of Abel as a mere breath that shows up and disappears just as quickly.

The idea brings to mind futility ultimately. However you want to interpret it, it is not a pretty picture. The Teacher, as I will call him, is looking at reality and saying “What is the point of anything here?” We will expound on the next few verses soon, but notice that there is no remedy being given in this blog? I’m not at all saying the Teacher is right, but I am also at this point not saying he is wrong. As we go through, I hope to give more explanation to what he’s saying and why he’s saying it and how it fits with the whole of the biblical narrative.

I hope you’ll join me.

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

[1] Craig Bartholomew, Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2009), 105.

[2] Peter Enns, Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2011), 31.

[3] John Goldingay, Ecclesiastes (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf And Stock, 2021), 113.

 

Exploring Ecclesiastes Introduction

What is going on in this book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Since I have spent this semester doing a research paper on Ecclesiastes, I figured as I am in the final weeks of a rewrite of my paper, I could share with you all the fruits of my labor. I had never engaged in an in-depth study of this book in any way before, and I really found it fascinating. There is so much that is debated about this book and yet, at the same time it seemed remarkably contemporary to me.

In this also, I am not going to answer questions about authorship and date of writing, though I do hold to Solomonic authorship. That does provide some interesting thoughts on the text at times, but that does not affect the overall exegesis of the text. My interpretation will remain the same, but I could say at certain points that this brings a remarkable facet to the text if Solomon is the actual author.

As of now, my thinking is that the Teacher, as I will call him in this work, is giving a sort of reductio ad absurdum of life. He is saying that if all we have is wisdom alone in this world, what can we expect? I will also be making a case that the Teacher longs for Eden. I was quite surprised to see just how much this book interacts with Genesis.

This book speaks often about evil, but it does not do so in an attempt to make arguments for or against theism. It is taking a hard cold look at the world and realizing the truth. This world is messed up. There are realities in this world that do not make sense.

Despite this, the Teacher generally does not attempt to explain all of this. He goes through the book asking the question of what makes a life worthwhile. Where can meaning be found “under the sun”? (A term that we will be looking at as we go through the book.) Going through the book can leave one thinking that everything is hopeless, but is it?

Also, how does this fit in with the Wisdom tradition? It’s placed in our Bibles between Proverbs and the Song of Songs so it does fall under the rubric of Wisdom literature. How? Wisdom is usually seen as the path of joy, but in Ecclesiastes, it looks like we are on the path of pain.

Finally, how does the book fit in with the grand narrative of Scripture? I suspect that that will not be answered until we get to the very end. We need to face what the Teacher is saying head-on. If we dilute everything early on by bringing in the New Testament, then we are like people interrupting a story saying “Don’t worry. The hero fixes everything.” We need to face the pain.

So join me as hopefully tomorrow, Lord willing, I will begin looking at this amazing book. I hope it will also give you insights into it and why we have it in our Bibles and how it can affect your life. For me ultimately, i have found it to have a highly positive effect on me and I plan to explain that as we go through.

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

Book Plunge: The Bible and the Ballot Chapter 13

Can’t we all just get along? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The time has come to wrap up this book looking at the topic of racism. As I write this, right now in America there have been two fundraisers recently. One involves a black boy who killed a white boy saying it was self-defense. Another involves a woman who was threatened to be cancelled because she used a racial slur. Now I happen to think both people did something wrong, but they do show where we are at. Some are donating to both sides because of the race of the person.

So biblically, there is a lot I agree with Longman on.  I do agree that there is one race, the human race. I do agree we are all descendants of Adam. I do agree that we are all sinners and we all need redemption in Jesus.

I also agree on bad arguments such as the mark of Cain and the curse of Ham. Unfortunately, once again, while I agree with Longman on what Scripture says so much, when we come to application, it is a different matter.

First off, he speaks about affirmative action. Could it be right to punish one people group for what their ancestors did by giving preferences in affirmative action? Longman argues, yes.

His argument looks at the figures of Daniel and Ezra. Both of these people are righteous in the Old Testament. Yet when they pray, they repent of the sins the community did as if they themselves did them. They were suffering for the sins of the people before them.

Well first off, this was a punishment done by God. It doesn’t mean we can do the same thing.

Second, the society of the past was much more community oriented. If anything, affirmative action breaks the community by putting one race in the community against another and favoring one race over another. Perhaps Longman should have considered a parallel in Acts 6, such as Hebrew widows getting more support than the Hellenistic ones.

Third, is the program even helping? How long should it be in place? All of these are questions we should be asking. We can ask if minorities are getting into jobs and getting into schools, but what does it matter if they get a job if they are not capable of it? What does it matter if they get into a school if they don’t graduate? I am not saying all are like that, but these are questions Thomas Sowell also asks.

As for reparations, the same applies. How much is owed to a person? Who owes it? Technically, everyone alive is likely descended from someone who was a slave and someone who was a slave owner. That’s because slavery was a worldwide system and all races enslaved any other race they could, even their own. This also will not heal any divide. It will instead make it worse.

In the end, Longman’s book shows me he should really stick with Scripture. If he had just said this is what the Bible says and think about it as you vote, that would have been a whole lot better. Instead, when he gets to application, I see it as apparent he sticks with one side only and doesn’t understand the nuances of the positions he takes.

Next time, we start something new.

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