Life, Death, and the Futility of Everything: Part 3

Hey All,

Today we pick up with the first passage in Ecclesiastes to look at wisdom; Ecclesiastes 1.12-18:

 ¹² I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. ¹³ I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the sun. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! ¹⁴ I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

 ¹⁵ The crooked cannot be straightened;
   what is missing cannot be made up.
 ¹⁶ I said to myself, “Look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” ¹⁷ Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.
 ¹⁸ For with much wisdom comes much distress;
   the more knowledge, the more pain.

Verse 12 serves as the formal introduction for Ecclesiastes with Qoheleth invoking the Solomon imagery we discussed last week. The reason to use Solomon as window dressing for his world is simply that if anyone would know the highest of highs and lowest of lows that this futile life has to offer it would be Solomon. During his reign Solomon reached the very pinnacle only to end his reign in ruin. If you've seen Scorsese's The Aviator you've seen something akin to Solomon's trajectory. Qoheleth moves on to the mission statement in verse 13 to apply his mind to study, using wisdom to view all that is done under the sun. The verse ends with a summary of Qoheleth’s findings. The summary illustrates Qoheleth’s unflinching look at creation. Even God will be brought into Qoheleth’s gaze.

Qoheleth serves as a good example for us today in that we should not be afraid to ask hard questions, to look unflinchingly on everything, to be “as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Qoheleth is an exemplary model of a wise serpent and yet, as is often the case, Qoheleth is a crap dove. This is important to note as we continue our journey into Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth has many things to teach us, show us, reveal to us, nevertheless we must remain discerning and fully present as we wade further in. I find that when approaching scripture I must remember to view it ultimately through the lens of Love. This is the only way I know to find something resembling the balance of wise serpent and gentle dove. To do otherwise too often leads me to despair and that is not my goal for us today. The goal is to look on the world as it stands under the sun and hopefully arrive at a place of acceptance.

¹⁴ I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

 ¹⁵ The crooked cannot be straightened;
   what is missing cannot be made up.

My knee jerk reaction is to recoil at verses 14 and 15. I so desperately want to believe that Qoheleth is wrong here. Seventeen different Bible verses flash in my mind contradicting this simple observation. It is only when I remember that Qoheleth is limiting our view to things under the sun that I begin to adjust my view and see what Qoheleth is pointing to. When I look at the world we live in I begin to see Qoheleth’s point. What is crooked cannot be straightened out. What is missing cannot be made up for. I look at the time I’ve spent in the trenches of alcoholism and addiction and see all my brothers and sisters who were brought down in spite of very real desires to quit. I remember the bloated bellies in Africa. I see the arms scarred by cigarette burns. I see the eyes of victims. I remember Christmas Eve 1999.

I was stationed in Okinawa Japan at the time. I was a Combat Photographer in the Marines. One of the duties my unit was assigned to was to take crime scene photography for the Military Police. I was low man on the totem pole so I drew photog duty over Christmas. I got the call around midnight to meet the Corporal out front with my camera. When he showed up I asked what we were looking at and he muttered something about domestic abuse. When I got to the station I was escorted back to a room by a Staff Sergeant who told me to make sure I took pictures of everything, every cut, every scrape, every bruise, everything. I think he saw that I was scared and he asked me if I could handle it. I said I could. So, I walk into the room and before me was a man covered in cuts, bruises, and scratches. The dude looked busted up. Apparently he and his wife had an argument and she snapped. I’ll never forget the embarrassment and pain in his eyes. He made a bad joke about falling down the stairs into a door knob. I introduced myself and explained to him that I had to take pictures of him and the importance of me documenting everything. The wonderful thing about a camera is once you’re looking through that view finder you kind of check out. Everything else falls away and “the shot” is all that matters. After about 10 minutes I’ve got every cut, bruise, and scratch. I quickly said goodbye and walked out the door. As I was coming out the wife was being escorted down the hall and she noticed me and started cussing me out. Once I got home I dropped the camera and pager off with another Marine. I sat down opened a beer, lit a cigarette, and started shaking.

Up until this point I knew humans could be swine but it was more of a theoretical knowledge based on facts I’d heard about on the news, WWII pictures, and hearsay. Now I had seen it for realsees. I went on to take and develop far worse crime scene pictures but for whatever reason that Christmas Eve is the touchstone I return to as the example of just how crooked the world is and how things cannot be made straight. Abuse cannot be undone. A stolen childhood cannot be returned. A violation cannot be erased. The blood on our hands never really comes off. Some wounds are so deep the scars will always be present. There are no take backs or reset buttons. What is crooked stays crooked and there’s nothing we can do about it.

  ¹⁸ For with much wisdom comes much distress;
   the more knowledge, the more pain.

The more we learn about the world around us the easier it is to despair. The more we open ourselves to the struggles of our brothers and sisters the more we sense in some very real ways just how broken this world is. The distress and pain that Qoheleth identifies is rooted in the knowledge that we can’t make things okay. We know the world is not okay and that no matter how much we pour out of ourselves at best we’re still screaming at the tide to change. We’re never going to be smart enough. We’re never going to get it all right. The more wisdom we gain the more in touch we’ll be with just how ignorant and small we really are. We’re not strong enough, wise enough, good enough, or big enough to make things right. The big brother and pastor in me wants to skip ahead to Chapter 12 and offer up some platitude about how God works in mysterious ways and how all things are being made new. But you know what? The children of that couple will always remember that Christmas Eve in Japan. They will never forget the way those tears tasted. That husband will always remember the feel of his wife’s blows. The wife will always taste the anger. That Christmas Eve happened, it’s in the books, the parents may reconcile, amends may be made, justice may even be served, but none of that can add the love and grace that was missing. None of that straightens out the crookedness of that night.

The best thing I can do for my fellow brothers and sisters is bear witness. To stand up, accept that the world is all manner of broke, acknowledge that things are not as they should be. I can admit that their pain is valid. Recognize that those events that are the root of such pain happened and that their pain is real. I should not brush it off as being in the past, not that bad. Nor should I state with a certainty that I cannot possibly posses that it will get better, or that it’s all a part of God’s plan. It’s not my place to try and make it right, it is in my place to love and allow folks the dignity and space so that they may come to grips with the crookedness of the world and grieve all that it is lacking.

Have a good one,

Carl