The nameless writer of the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes was a thinker that today we would consider to be an existentialist. Such a thinker believes that the individual person is responsible for creating purpose and meaning in their own lives. Gods, governments, parents, teachers and all secondary authorities are only advisory. Like Friedrich Nietzsche, the God is dead philosopher, most of these thinkers do not believe in a God or Gods.
The writer
of Ecclesiastes was an everyday existentialist but a God believer in the long-term. To him, in the short term, all of life is meaningless and beyond our
understanding. All of life is “a chasing
after the wind". (1:14; 1:17; 2:11; 2:17, 2:26; 4:4; 4:6;4:16, 6:9 TNIV) This was
the short-term conclusion he arrived at after observing and experiencing all
the goings on here on earth.
“All this I tested by wisdom and I said, I am determined to be wise but this is beyond me. Whatever exists is far off and most profound-who can discover it? " (7:23,24 TNIV)
The writer tested with wisdom, today we would say we are testing the evidence. No evidence was readily available to prove the existence of God, then or now. He looked around, concluding:
" The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; BUT TIME AND CHANCE HAPPEN TO THEM ALL." (My Capitals: 9: 11, TNIV)
Where did the cosmic disciplinarian God go? Surly God would be handing out benefits and bonuses to the good guys.
"There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked how get what the righteous deserve." (8:14, TNIV)
God did not and does not make sense in the short term. Our Gods can betray us, religion can betray us, governments can betray us, family can betray us, teachers can betray us, in whom can we trust? The only possible answer is the long-term God hiding in our midst.
That God, the God that snuggled up to the nobody Jesus, snuggling up so close that Jesus called this God Father. That God who promised us in the words of Jesus another reality in our world and beyond death. Jesus named that reality the Kingdom of God. We arrived with nothing and leave with everything (gg).
G. Goslaw
Landers, Ca.
