Wednesday, December 6, 2017

VANITY OF VANITIES

Hands down, Ecclesiastes has become my favorite book of the Bible.  Of course, I don’t believe it has a great deal of competition.  It’s not perfect, but In my view it has the most to say about the fundamental human condition.  In addition, it provides some practical advice for dealing with our existential circumstance.  In that sense it is the most modern of scriptural texts.  But I didn’t always feel the way about Ecclesiastes as I now do.

Growing up in the Seventh-day Adventist church, I was taught that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, that everything in the Bible is literally true.  If the Bible states something, then that must be the truth.  Period.  End of discussion.  Of course, this approach poses problems.  Besides the fact that scripture is filled with a multitude of transcription errors resulting from two millennia of repeated hand-copying, it is filled with statements that appear contradictory or that are wholly inconsistent with modern understanding or moral standards.  So advocates of scriptural inerrancy find themselves citing certain statements that are consistent with their religious beliefs while conveniently ignoring a host of others that are not.  This is what is known as cherrypicking, and the SDA church was expert at it.

In church sermons and study lessons as well as in the religion classes at the SDA school I attended, we spent much time learning the familiar Bible stories—Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Noah and the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah (though certainly a highly bowdlerized version), Moses freeing the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage, Jonah and the great fish, Daniel in the lion’s den, etc., etc.  These stories were, of course, all considered to be entirely factual.  After all, they are in the Bible.  But there were other portions of scripture that we spent very little time studying.  These included many of the arcane and often outrageous rules of conduct God supposedly prescribed for the Hebrews in the Old Testament, as well as most of the R-rated history of the Hebrew people fighting for elbow room among the various tribes living in the Palestinian region.

One of the books largely missing in action during my religious upbringing was Ecclesiastes.  The only verse I recall having to memorize was Ecclesiastes 9:5, “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing . . . .”(KJV) The SDA church taught, contrary to a number of Protestant sects, that when a person died, they did not immediately go to heaven.  Instead, they were in a “soul sleep,” awaiting Christ’s second coming.  (After all, if individuals went to heaven immediately upon death, what would be the significance of Christ’s second coming?)  And this was the prime scriptural text the SDA church used to support that position.  But of course, the quoted text was not the end of the verse; it was not even the end of the sentence, which continued, “ . . . neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.”  Well, I suppose that could be interpreted in various ways, and I’m sure those who want to will do so.  But that ignores the book’s overall point of view.

And that’s what I wanted to touch on here.  Ecclesiastes uses the term “vanity” no fewer than 38 times in what is really a relatively brief text, at least as books of the Bible go.  The term “vanity” actually has a number of meanings, including that of excessive self-regard, narcissism, or self-absorption.  But in Ecclesiastes the term is used in a different sense.  It is more analogous to pointlessness, meaninglessness, or futility.

The author, who touts his own worldly success, points out that at the end of the day both those who succeed and those who fail, those who have wisdom and those who do not, all wind up in the same place and, as the writer states, “The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.” Ecclesiastes 1:11 (NRSV).   As he says, “Vanity.”  Moreover, although the author credits God with the creation of the world and with designing our role in it, he does not argue for any ultimate goal or resolution to which we are heading.  He certainly was not talking about any afterlife.

Well, assuming this life is all there is—if “vanity of vanities! all is vanity”—what then is the author’s advice:

Ecclesiastes 5:18: This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; for this is our lot. 

Ecclesiastes 9:7-10:  Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. . . .  Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

This is not pessimism; it’s pragmatism.


© 2017 John M. Phillips

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.