God met me powerfully in Ecclesiastes
God’s means of meeting me in period of dark depression, relational tension and internal chaos has been a book that’s often avoided for it’s perceived bleak tone and irrelevance to daily life. To me it’s been anything but irrelevant and bleak. It’s been an anchor of hope.
Ecclesiastes’ deep resonance
Ecclesiastes’ deep resonance with my own life experience has been the catalyst for my recent research project — an excuse to camp out in its rich application and think through how its wisdom can be brought to bear in everyday conversations with others. (Actually, it’s focus was limited to pastoral conversations but it’s conclusions may be more broadly applied to our personal ministry with one another.)
“Ecclesiastes you say? Surely not! Isn’t that super depressing, super bleak, super confusing, super hard to know what it’s even doing in our Bibles?”
That’s how some react when I mention Ecclesiastes.
But there are other reactions:
“That book left a deep imprint on me in a time of dark depression. It gave me permission to feel.”
“When I was faced with the monotony of my repetitive work I felt like Ecclesiastes understood me.”
“Transicence. Breath. Unmet longings. Ecclesiastes helped me understand these experiences.”
“In the pain of life I was lost seeking out the meaning of my suffering. Ecclesiastes set my fears at ease. I won’t always understand when and why. Life is broken. Experiences are deeply painful. But I can continue in faith while things remain uncertain.”
“Ecclesiastes illuminated my pursuit of gain. It laid me bare and showed gain for what it really is — using God and twisting what he’s made for my own ends. Instead it’s set me on the path to freedom. I’m starting to understanding everything is a gift from the hand of a generous Giver.”
It is these later types of experience that I’ve had with this much debated book of the Bible. Rather than seeing the Teacher (Hebrew Qohelet) as a poisonous pessimist dripping with venemous so-called ‘wisdom,’ I contend he offers real wisdom to welcome. Seasoned with life in a broken world the Teacher is a realist unpacking the nature of life as it actually is in a fallen world created and sustained by a good God.
Consider the extended testimony of a young man whose family experienced many setbacks and much affliction:
“… [He] discovered kinship in Qoheleth that he could not find among living peers. He took Qoheleth’s forthright observations to heart. Qoheleth’s laments became his own. He embraced the full measure of Qoheleth’s thematic affirmation: “Vapor of vapors, says the Preacher, vapor of vapors! All is vapor.” The man nourished his faith on the wisdom of Ecclesiastes and anchored his confidence in the God “in heaven” whose frowning providence upon humanity became the sustained intimate acquaintance of his young family. He learned that faith in God is not a sedative to deaden pains incurred in this sin cursed world. On the contrary, faith in God actually intensifies one’s senses concerning the disparities, inequities, and travails, for this world is not as it first was fresh from the Creator’s hand, nor is it what it shall yet be in the new creation.”
Ardel Caneday, ‘“Everything is Vapor”: Searching for Meaning Under the Sun,’ 28.
I have followed in this young man’s footsteps. In 2015 we uprooted leaving our hometown to retrain for pastoral ministry in the big smoke of Sydney. We felt the upheaval. We arrived with heavy fatigue. The rigour of theological study, demands of young children, and emotional energy sapped through forming one new friendship after another felt overwhelming. Prolonged broken sleep had become our unwelcome but unrelenting companion during the night. I sank into a deep depression. I disengaged emotionally from our marriage. I felt numb. When I did feel at all I was cold. Joyous chapel songs on Monday morning left me alienated, frustrated and a tad fearful that something was wrong with me (“Why doesn’t this seem to rub anyone else the wrong way as it does me?”).
But then I met Qohelet. I was intrigued by his honest exploration of ‘all that is done under the sun.’ I wrestled with his reflections and seeming contradictions. I delved into the depths of his use of hebel (frequently translated meaningless or futile). And I found comfort. I found understanding. I found hope. I found corrective thinking. I met with the Creator of this world in the midst of brokenness and mess. Or rather He met with me.
In this way a project was born. A project not born purely of intellectual curiousity but a project born of deep personal conviction. A project born from a passion that others may also personally encounter the Creator in the pages of Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes and the decline of personal ministry
But why connect Ecclesiastes to pastoral conversations?
In short, I think it’s timely.
I’m convinced we’re living in a time when the Western Evangelical world may be rich in its stated theological knowledge (and yes, we do have a wealth of resources) but that it’s growing embarassingly thin in its functional theology expressed by our day-to-day living. Our personal every-member ministry has been dying a long and painful death as we’ve sacrificed depth of friendship and mutual counsel with one another on the altar of the ‘next big thing.’ (See Michael Horton’s excellent book Ordinary: Sustainable Faith for a Radical, Restless World for a very convicting critique of our restlessness with God’s ordinary means.) It has been as Eugene Peterson pintpointed back in 1998:
“Spiritual counsel, easy prayerful conversation between companions engaged in a common task, is less and less frequent. But when Jesus designated his disciples ‘friends’ (John 15:5) in that last extended conversation he had with them, he introduced a term that encouraged the continuing of the conversation. ‘Friend’ sets us in a nonhierarchical, open, informal spontaneous company of Jesus’ friends who verbally develop relationships of responsibility and intimacy by means of conversation. Characteristically, we do not make pronouncements to one another or look up texts by which to challenge one another; we simply talk out whatever feelings or thoughts are in our hearts as Jesus’ friends.”
Eugene Peterson, The Wisdom of Each Other, 17.
Scripture sets forth a pattern of mutual truth-speaking, mutual counsel and mutual encouragement—a pattern in decline. Our friendships with one another are to have this kind of open, loving trust and humility such that it is entirely natural to bring biblical wisdom to bear on a friend (see Col. 3:14–16). After all this very means of encouragement is designed to protect us from sin’s deceitfulness (Heb. 3:12–13). It is on God’s heart as His means of maturing us (Eph. 4:11–16). So it’s about time the we recovered such ordinary but rich patterns of personal ministry (of which pastoral conversations are a subset).
But as I’ve indicated I think Ecclesiastes (like other wisdom literature) is under-appreciated in our churches. Who do you know who has engaged with it recently? Can you think of a time time when it’s distinct wisdom formed part of the counsel you received from others? Or perhaps a time when its counsel was on your lips because you saw its immediacy to another’s struggle?
What better way to work towards reinstating our own practice of personal ministry than anchoring ourselves in one book—one rich portion God’s counsel to us—that we may revel in it ouselves and then naturally see connections beneficial for the lives of our friends?
Are you with me?
If so, let’s work to recover a functional appreciation for biblical wisdom. Let’s start with Ecclesiastes.
Let’s also recover a sense of God’s intention for us as his people in deepening our relationships with one another; in cultivating depth, openness, honesty and the space for such spiritual counsel.
Specifically, let’s learn together the import of Qohelet’s rich realism — how his explanation of life in a fallen world understands, comforts, convicts and challenges each one of us. Let’s take his message to heart. And then let’s move toward one another in friendship seeking to counsel with another with his wisdom.
This story is part 1 of a multi-part story. I’m going to break down my project (avalable in full here) in regular digestable portions of for discussion and reflection. So stay-tuned for part 2.
For discussion
- What’s your immediate reaction to Ecclesiastes? Is it place you go to for real wisdom? Where has it resonated with your experience (if at all)?
- Do you agree with my critique of the Evangelical world — a. the increasing gulf between our confessional and functional theology expressed in daily life? b. That personal ministry has been in decline in our churches?
I look forwarding to hearing your thoughts!
