Egypt's Unworthiness, Part V

The Pointlessness of Piety

The Preacher’s sphere of reference—life “under the sun”—does not even offer meaning in spirituality, religion, or the search for God. Paul told the Romans that the study of nature (all things under the sun) is sufficient to demonstrate the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient deity, but his conclusion is far from comforting. There is an almost palpable lack of joy in the closing words of Ecclesiastes:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil (12:13-14).

Though the Enlightenment promised us a god we could discover through unaided reason, the deity we found was anything but a comfort to those wrestling with the vanity of their own existence. This deus nudus – or “naked god” – as he has been called, seems more like an it than a who, a piece of celestial machinery that allows 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Malcolm in the Middle, and countless other atrocities. Though the god we uncover by the efforts of our own rational deduction may inspire awe or fear, he certainly doesn’t make a very good case for why we should love or trust him. This God, the apostle explained to the Romans, does not save anyone, for the Book of Nature reveals a naked God of law, of justice, and of seeming indifference to human pain (1:18ff).

The existence of an x, a First Cause, or an Unmoved Mover who is more like “the Force” than like a Father may cause men and women to begrudgingly assent to his existence with their heads, but they will never trust him with their hearts. This generic deity does not invite trust in the truth but suppression of it, for the observation of brute facts and the “invisible hand” of Providence indicates that he cares no more for the good guys than for the bad or the ugly. Kreeft points out that “innocent little bunny rabbits and human babies do not fare well against predatory coyotes or leukemia…. The good die young, and the better you are, the more likely it is that you will be martyred.” It is for this reason that Solomon offered this advice:

Do not be overly righteous, nor be overly wise: Why should you destroy yourself? Do not be overly wicked, nor be foolish: Why should you die before your time? (Ecc. 7:16-17).

Nature’s God appears as an absentee landlord, an insignificant Other who may be there, but who is certainly not here. A god who, like “the Truth” in The X-Files, is “out there” is far from being “a present help in time of trouble” (Psa. 46:1). And even if he is out there, he appears to be too indifferent to listen, too holy to help, too transcendent to touch, and too vengeful to invoke. This also is vanity.

The “time-ishness” of time, therefore, serves to rob even the most noble of earth’s pursuits of any ultimate value, for the bigger the barns we build to store our bounty, or the more abundant our moral bank account appears, the more damning will be the “Thou fool!” that we will hear from God’s lips on that final Day (Luke 12:16-21; Matt. 7:21-23).

Egypt's Unworthiness, Part IV

The Pointlessness of Philanthropy

If serving oneself is vain and fruitless, what about serving others? Surely it is in philanthropy—love toward our fellow man—that ultimate meaning and purpose are to be found. But Solomon tried this as well, turning from self-gratification through the pursuit of wisdom, pleasure, and power to the benefiting of others.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)

But this, too, was to no avail. The reason is simple enough: if the pursuit of pleasure yielded vanity and void, what good is there in sharing these findings with others? A man may sincerely desire to bless his blind neighbor by offering to lead him by the hand, but if he himself is also blind, his efforts will yield no fruit (Luke 6:39). Kreeft writes, “How can the gift of vanity be any more than vain? … Once I find the summum bonum, it must be shared, yes, but I cannot share it before I find it.” Multiply zero by any other number, no matter how high, and the result will still be the same.

Another reason why altruism is pointless in the world of Ecclesiastes is that it is not only the one who seeks the good of others who is ignorant of the meaning of life, but so are those whom he seeks to help. “What good is it to hand down the mite of wisdom that I have attained if posterity is as foolish as I am?”

Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will rule over all my labor in which I toiled and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 2:18-19).

The good works we perform for our fellow man, therefore, are not only filthy rags in God’s sight because of his surpassing holiness (Isa. 64:6; Tit. 3:5), but considered on their own merits, they are not even helpful or worthwhile in any ultimately meaningful sense.

Egypt's Unworthiness, Part III

The Vanity of Time

As odd as it may sound, it is precisely man’s identity as a malcontent that makes him unique among God’s creatures. As Roman Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft has pointed out, fish do not complain that their natural environment is too wet, nor do birds inwardly resent the breeziness of the air. But we humans share a collective sense of frustration with the intolerable ticking of the clock. As the wizard Gandalf mutters when setting out on a pressing errand in the film The Two Towers, “For three-hundred lives of men have I walked this earth, and now, I have no time.”

Perhaps you have been haunted by the inexplicable feeling that your very environment, the only environment you have ever known (namely time), is foreign. Could time, the very stuff of life and building block of society that greets us every morning with the buzzing of the alarm clock, and then pushes us through each day, actually be an enemy? As bizarre as it sounds, I suggest that it is, and as the Preacher argues in the book of Ecclesiastes, this enemy adversely affects all of our toil under the sun. In a word, time renders all of man’s earthly pursuits utterly pointless. Let us consider, then, time’s effect on three of man’s greatest quests for meaning in life: pleasure, philanthropy, and piety.

The Pointlessness of Pleasure

In Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 we read:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

The vicious cycle described here engenders the frustrated cry, “What profit does the worker have in his toil?” (v. 9). Being born and then dying, sowing and then reaping all argue for the vanity and futility of existence under the sun. It would seem to follow then—and millions would concur—that the only reasonable response is rank hedonism: “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” (Ecc. 8:15, cf. Luke. 12:19). But is this answer valid?

At first glance it would seem so, for pleasure is one of those goals whose attainment is close at hand, exciting, and easy to obtain (it is almost the exact opposite of wisdom in this respect). In fact, Peter Kreeft has remarked that “wisdom is a mountaintop; pleasure is a plain. Wisdom is mysterious; pleasure is plain. Wisdom is a walking stick; pleasure is a plane.” In other words, of all man’s pursuits it is pleasure that offers the most immediate gratification.

How, then, could Solomon decry pleasure and insist that it contributes to man’s “vexation of spirit”? He had it all: He had wine, houses, vineyards, gardens, parks, fruit trees, pools, male and female slaves, singers, 700 wives, 300 concubines, herds, flocks, silver, and gold (Ecc. 2:1-11). And yet Solomon learned what all serious hedonists eventually learn: “Behold, all is vanity, and chasing after wind. Nothing was gained under the sun” (v. 11). As is nearly always the case, pleasure becomes need, fun becomes addiction, excitement becomes boring (a word, Kreeft argues, to which no ancient culture had any equivalent). Few today realize this, for the poor still hope that riches and pleasure will bring meaning. But the rich know better, for they alone have tried and failed. All the immediate gratification under the sun will be stolen away over the course of time.

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