Religion

Ch.2.pdf

TWO

The Most Dangerous Book in the Bible

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T.E search for the good life, the meaningful, satisfy- ing life, is one of the oldest religious themes. From its earliest beginnings, religion has tried to connect people to God, to make a vast uncontrollable world seem less threat- ening. ·1t has connected people to each other so that they would not have to celebrate or mourn alone. And as soon as human beings grew to understand that there was more to life than mere survival, they looked to religion to be their guide to the good life. In Judaism, in Christianity, and in several of the Oriental faith systems, religion is sometimes referred to as The Way, the path to living in harmony with the universe, the guide to living life as it was meant to be lived.

But we today have too often been disappointed when we tried to find guidance in the pages of our religious tradi- ~ions. They say some very wise and true things, but there ts a certainty to them which we often do not share. They I speak so confidently of the existence of a God who con- I trols the universe and reveals His will to us. They promise us_ happiness when we follow His ways and warn us of nusfortune if we do not. We read that and we would like

WH EN ALL YO U' VE EVER WANTED ISN 'T ENOUGH

to believe it, but we find it hard . Experience so oft en seems to contradict that. The Bible and the books derived from it seem to be written for believers who can hear God's voice clearly and see His handiwork everywhere. They do not seem to be written for the troubled modem soul, for the skeptical, the doubting, the confused. The faithful arc always saying, "Read the Bible, you will find answers there." But the restless, the seekers, the skeptics read it and find it a remote book, talking about things far from their concerns. The Bible's agenda docs not seem to be their agenda, and its answers do not seem to fit their questions . Then they feel even worse to discover _that something which has been so helpful to so many others does not seem to be speaking to them.

One book of the Bible, however, is unique, different from all the others around it. I would like to introduce you to the most unusual book in the entire Bible. If it were better known, it might be the most dangerous book in the Bible as well. Some people have thought of it that way. II is the Book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is a small booj(, barely a dozen pages long in some editions, tucked all the way toward the end of the Hebrew Bible where many readers never get far enough to discover it. But the person who docs find it and read it will be astonished by what it says. There is nothing quite like it in all of Scripture. It is the work of an angry, cynical, skeptical man who doubts God and questions the value of doing good. " What point is there in working hard?" he asks in the opening lines of his book. "A generation passes and another comes along, but the world remains the same forever." (Eccles. 1:4} "Man has no superiority over beasts, since both amount to nothing. As one dies, so docs the other, and both have the same fate." (Eccles. 3:19) "In my own brief life I have

The Most Da11gtrous Book tn tht Bible

seen this, that a good man perishes in spite of his goodness nd a wicked man endures in spite of his wickedness, so

~o not exert yourself to be especially good, for you may be dumfounded. " (Eccles. 7:1 5-16}

Does anyone else in the Bible talk like that? Virtually every other page of the Bible insists that our every deed, however small, matters. We arc told that God cares about what we cat, whom we sleep with, how we make and spend money. Ecclesiastes comes and tells us that God docs not in fact care about any of that. Rich people and poor, wise and foolish , righteous and wicked arc all the same in His eyes. Irrespective of how they live, they all grow old and die and arc soon forgotten. How they lived seems to make no difference.

There is a Jewish tradition telling us that when the sages met to fix the canon, to decide which ancient books would be part of the Bible and which ones would be left out, there was fierce debate over the Book of Ecclesiastes. Many found ii offensive and threatening to their faith. They not only wanted to leave it out of the Bible, they wanted to ban ii entirely, lest innocent young readers come upon it and be led into heresy by it. But somehow, even as they over- came their embarrassment at the eroticism of the Song of Songs and the Arabian Nights atmosphere of the Book of Esther, they made room for the cynicism and skepticism of Ecclesiastes.

What is this book that so upset the sages of old and so surprises the modem reader who chances upon it? It is a hard book to follow and understand. There is a unity of tone but no plot or story line and no constant development of a theme. The author jumps from subject to subject and sometimes contradicts himself, saying one thing and then its opposite on the same page. Some passages from the

r WHE N All YO U'VE EVER WANTED IS N'T ENOUGH book will be familiar: "There is nothing new under the sun "; "To everything there is a season, a time to be born and a time to die"; "The sun also rises"; ••cast your bread upon the waters." But the book as a whole is not easily understood .

We do not know very much about the person who wrote the book. We do not even know his name or when in the thousand-year-long biblical period he lived. Because he describes himself as a descendant of King David and a ruler in Jerusalem, tradition attributes the book to King Solomon, the wisest man in the Bible. A Jewish tradition claims that Solomon is the author of three biblical books. When be was young and in love, he wrote the love poems in the Song of Songs. When he matured and turned his mind to making a living, he penned the practical wisdom of the Book of Proverbs. When he grew older, he gave voice to the feelings of cynicism and futility that we find in Ecclesiastes. Some scholars feel that it was this attribu- tion to King Solomon that persuaded the ancient sages to overcome their doubts and include Ecclesiastes in the Bible.

Even his name, Ecclesiastes (in Hebrew, Kohe/et ), is obscure. As far as we know, no one else ever bore that name. Grammatically, it seems more like a title than a personal name (which should not be surprising; ancient authors almost never put their names on their work), and is usually understood to mean "the one who convenes an assembly, the one who calls people together." He may have been a teacher, a wise man who earned his living preparing the sons of the wealthy for the practical prob- lems of living. Certainly his book, for all of its pessimism, has the tone of one who would share his experience with the young, not only instructing them but warning them.

Tht Mou Dangtrous Book in tht Biblt

Whether King Solomon actually wrote the book or not (the language seems to come from a much later period), it seems clear that the man we know as Ecclesiastes was a wise man in or past middle age, trying to deal with his fear of growing old and dying without ever feeling that be had really lived. He seems to be searching desperately for something to give his life enduring meaning.

I first discovered the book of Ecclesiastes when I was about seventeen, and I loved it at first sight. I loved the author's courage and honesty in attacking the orthodoxies of his time, pointing out the hypocrisy and exposing the shallowness of so much that passed for piety and wisdom in his day. I was fascinated with his wise observations on life, his cynical comments on human nature. They seemed 50 profound and pointed, so much more honest than the pious reassurances of most of the Bible. At the time, I thought that Ecclesiastes was like me, an idealistic young enemy of falsehood and foolishness, a challenger of pomp and pretense. ·

Now that I have reached the stage in life where Eccle- siastes probably was when he wrote his book, I realize how badly I misunderstood him when I was seventeen. I looked into the mirror of his book and saw my own image re- flected back, an idealistic adolescent. But the author was not an adolescent. He was a bitter, weary man past the mid-point of his life. I caught the sharp point of his cyni- cism, deflating banality. I caught his delight in exposing the wishful thinking and outright falsehood that masquer- ade as religion. But because I was young when I first read the book, I completely missed the terror which, when I go back to read it now, is so obvious to me. This is a book by a very frightened man .

Ecclesiastes is not merely a wisdom teacher, more hon-

WHEN ALL YOU'VE EVER WANTED ISN'T ENOUGH

est and forthright than most. He is not just an enemy of cant and hypocrisy. He is a man desperately afraid of dying before he has learned how to live. Nothing he has ever done, nothing he will ever do, makes any difference, he feels, because one day he will die and then it will be as if he had never lived. And he cannot handle that fear of dying and leaving no trace behind.

"The fate of the fool is destined for me as well; to what advantage then have I been wise? That too was futile because the wise man, like the fool, is not remembered. As the succeeding days roll by, both are forgotten. Alas the wise man dies just like the fool." (2: 1S-16)

In his book, he tells us the story of his life. He writes of his successes and his frustrations, of all the ways in which he tried to be successful and make something of his life, and of all the reasons why the question, What does it all mean in the long run? was never really answered. Ecclesiastes has been called the most personal book in the Bible. The prophets and other btblical authors sometimes tell us about their lives, their achievements and experi- ences. But no one else shares his innermost fears and frustrations with us the way Ecclesiastes does.

Ecclesiastes was apparently a man of many talents. In his youth, he set out to make money, and apparently did so. He writes, "I multiplied my possessions. I built myself houses and planted vineyards . .. I gained more wealth than anyone before me." (2:4,9)

But he learns that wealth is not the answer. He under- stands that he can lose his money as easily as he gained it. Or he can die, and someone else who never worked for it will inherit it. He has seen rich people spend their wealth foohshly, and he has seen them get sick and spend their last years in misery which all their wealth could not ease.

Tht Mosl Dangerous Book in the Bfble

"There is an evil I have observed under the sun, and a grave one it is for man, that God sometimes grants a man riches, property and wealth, so that he does not want for anything, but God does not permit him to enjoy it. If a man beget a hundred children and live many years, but never find contentment, I would say that a stillborn child not even accorded a burial is more fortunate than he." (6:1-3)

Like many a rich young man, Ecclesiastes gives himself to pleasure, drinking and carousing and sampling all the other distractions that money can buy. "I said to myself, Come, I will treat you to merriment. I ventured to tempt my flesh with wine ... I withheld from my eyes nothing they asked for .. . That too I found was futile. Of revelry, I said, what good is it?" (2:1,10,2) When he is young, he has no problems spending his time in pleasure. After all, like all young people, he has unlimited time, years stretch- ing before him, and he can afford to squander some of them. But as he grows older and his time becomes more precious, he comes to understand that the life of uninter- rupted fun is only a way of escaping from the challenge of doing something significant with his life. Having fun can be the spice of life but not its main course, because when it is over, nothing of lasting value remains.

Time, which was once the source of his advantage over older people, has now become his enemy. He is starting to realize that he is running out of time. Ecclesiastes has given us those memorable lines, "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance." (3:1-4) Now this middle- aged author is beginning to suspect that the good times arc

WHEN ALL YOU'VE EVER WANTED ISN'T ENOUGH

behind him, that most of the good things which will ever happen to him have already happened, and mostly it is the time of weeping and worrying that lies ahead. Joanne Greenberg has written a short story, "Things in Their Season," the title of which comes from Ecclesiastes. (It is found in her collection, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1980.) In her story, a group of people inadvertently learn that the government is secretly taxing our time even as it taxes our income. (After all, time is money .) The more valuable your time is, the higher a bracket you are in. That is why busy people never seem to have enough time, no matter how efficient they are. The group hijacks a shipment of time from a government ware- house to extend the life of their beloved teacher, who is dying. But for Ecclesiastes, there is no way to steal time to extend his days.

Finding himself a man ofleisurc, his years of wild party- ing behind him, Ecclesiastes turns to learning in an effort to make sense of his life. Somewhere in all those books from the wisest men of the past, there must be the answer to his quest. By now, the reader senses a note of urgency m his searching. He is no longer asking, What does life mean? om of youthful intellectual curiosity. He is asking, What will my hfc mean? because he is beginning to sense the terrifying possibility that his life may be over soon and it_ wdl have .meant nothing. Now when his searches lead him mto bhnd alleys, he responds not with disappoint• mcnt but with mounting despair, The most frustrating fact of all i.s the realization that death can come all too soon and wipe out all that life has labored for. has~• ;ts o~t to test the popular proverb, "A wise man But ;h in his head,_but the fool walks in darkness." (2:14)

at he learns is that if the wise man does in fact see 40

Tht Most Darigtro us Book in 1ht Biblt

more clearly, what he sees is the futility of life. The wiser he is, the more he secs unfairness, injustice, tragedy. He is now old enough that the shadow of death is beginning to creep into his consciousness and rob everything of meaning. What good is anything I do if it cannot protect me against dying and disappearing? What difference does it make if I am wise and my neighbor is foolish, if I am honest and be is wicked? In either event, the stories of our Jives will end the same way. We will both die and be forgotten. All my learning, all my good deeds will die with me.

If wealth and pleasure did not give Ecclesiastes' life enduring meaning because they were so transitory, here today and gone tomorrow, what can we say about learn• ing? The human mind is so fragile. Not only death but even old age, a stroke, senility can make all that learning disappear. Ecclesiastes may well have seen his own teach- cn; grow old, their brilliance fading into cranky forgetful- ness. To what purpose then should one exert oneself to be wise? The rich man loses his wealth when he dies, but the wise man may lose his wisdom even sooner.

There is one possibility remaining. One senses that Ecclesiastes hesitates to try this one, for fear that if it should fail there will be no hope left. He will have to conclude that life is in fact futile and meaningless. In his last desperate throw of the dice, an increasingly fearful Ecclesiastes turns to God. I will be pious, he says. I will follow all the teachings of my religion and look for that sense of peace and tranquility which has been promised to the pure of soul. Like many men and women his age, looking back on a life of struggle and conflict and looking ahead to an uncertain future, Ecclesiastes in middle age becomes religious . He finds time for those pursuits of the

WHEN ALL YOU'VE EVER WANTED ISN'T ENOUGH

spirit for which he had been too busy or too sophisticated until now .

But they too fail him. He learns that even the highest level of piety cannot protect him from death and the fear of death, or from the oblivion to which death leads. No amount of righteous living can bring him to the point where he can bargain with God, where he can say to God, "Look at how valuable and admirable my life is. Isn't it in Your best interest that I should go on living rather than die and be forgotten?"

Is there no answer then? Is our need for meaning noth• ing more than wishful thinking, the grandiose arrogance of a species that is really no different from the "moth with no mouth"? Are we set on earth for one brief moment, to keep the species alive and then get out of the way of the next generation, so that it too will be able to reproduce and die? Has God planted within us a hunger which cannot be satisfied, a hunger for meaning and significance?

Ecclesiastes wrote his book many hundreds of years ago to share with us his disappointments and frustrations, to warn us that we should not waste our limited time as he did, in the illusion that wealth, wisdom, pleasure, or piety will m_ake our hves matter. He tells us his story with mountmg desperation, as one road after another leads to a dead end and he begins to see himself running out of ~ears and runnmg out of o_ptions. But he has not written

s book only to express hts frustration or to depress us. In the end, he has an answer. But it is an answer that makes sense only to someo h h h . . d ne w o as s ared hts earher cad ends and disappointments. That is why he offers it

to 'J: ;t end of his story rather than at the beginning the for:: ttl: o~ a man who went for a walk i~

os . e wandered around for hours 42

The Most Dangerous Book in the Bible

trying to find his way back to town, trying one path after nother, but none of them led out. Then abruptly he came

:cross another hiker walking through the forest. He cried out, "Thank God for another human being. Can you show me the way back to town?" The other man replied, "No, I'm lost too. But we can help each other in this way. We csn tell each other which paths we have already tried and t,een disappointed in. That will help us find the one that leads out."

Before we can begin to understand Ecclesiastes' conclu- sions, we have to accompany him on the false paths and dead ends he has written to warn us about. When we have learned, as he did so painfully and with so much frustra- tion, which paths do not lead out, we will be better pre- pared to find and follow the one that docs.