I have a departmental meeting every Wednesday morning. The meeting usually lasts anywhere from two to three hours. Given that we have twenty-three hall directors on campus, there are usually a total of about thirty people in the room for the meeting. Some meetings are all business and focus on the administrative/task-oriented side of the work we do. Others are more about just being ourselves and learning about what that means. Today's meeting was more of the latter.
There was a guest speaker/presenter in our meeting today who is currently on campus to do some work with the counseling office in regards to sexual assault prevention. She asked us to bring to this week's meeting our favorite book. This caused me pause as I tried to figure out which of the books I've read, exactly, is my favorite. Slightly winning out over The Autobiography of Malcolm X was the book of Ecclesiastes.
I didn't want to be the guy who brought in the Bible as an entire piece of literature and claimed that it was, in its entirety, the most enjoyable book I've ever read. There are two reasons for this... One, I haven't read the entire Bible. How could I say that it's altogether great if I haven't experienced it altogether? Perhaps there's a really boring chapter I've not read yet in Mark all about how Jesus spent an entire weekend just eating Cheetos on His couch. That'd be fine, I suppose, but not really what I'd call page turning material. Second, the Bible is not entirely very good or even interesting. Have you ever tried to read through Leviticus, Deuteronomy, or Numbers? Yikes. So, I picked Ecclesiastes as its own piece of literature and called it my favorite.
Later on in the meeting the guest presenter asked us to write a "message of hope" on a piece of paper and to put it in a "jar of hope." We each then drew out one of the messages from the jar and kept it as our own for encouragement.
On a side note, if you weren't already aware, student affairs is probably the most disgustingly cliche, feel-good, "I'm okay, you're okay," working environment out there. It gets pretty ridiculous sometimes, but it's not always as ridiculous as it sounds.
Anyway... What message did I put into the "jar of hope"? A lyric from Modern Life is War, of course. "The world isn't against you, my dear, it just doesn't care." Super positive!
So, there's a little background for you. I'll now move on to the meat of this entry.
Ecclesiastes is my favorite book because I think it's highly misunderstood. Taken for what it is (like the "hope" quote I chose), it comes across as a very depressing and defeatist text:
"Everything is meaningless... Utterly meaningless."
"It was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere."
"The day you die is better than the day you are born"
It's hard to explain why anyone would find this sort of writing to be encouraging or hopeful. Most people aren't built-up spiritually by having their entire existence labeled as meaningless. But I am not most people.
Ecclesiastes was the first book that I read in the Bible after I began to fully dedicate myself to the pursuit of Truth. Appropriate, considering that I was at a point in my life then where I had been looking for things and ideas to validate my (our) existence, and which might serve to better the condition of humanity as a whole. God's response? "Everything is meaningless." In other words, "nothing you can do or say will ultimately make you worth anything more than you are."
Ecclesiastes focuses heavily on the injustice of life. It talks a lot about how things are unfair, how pursuits are fruitless, how life is hard, and how those who toil are less valuable than those profit without labor.
Take just a minute and think about the world in which we live. Can you give a better description of this world than Ecclesiastes has already offered? Is our history not rampant with inequity, inequality, unfairness, and failed ambition? Does wealth buy happiness? Do we really learn anything from those who have come before us, or do we continue to make the same mistakes they made (if not exactly, at least in spirit)? If so, can you really say that our history as a people up to this point has really meant anything?
Now, living a meaningless existence does not absolve us from the responsibility of filling our duties to ourselves, God, and one another. Everything is meaningless, but that doesn't mean that we can't be good people regardless of that fact. Life can be good within the idea that everything is meaningless.
Ecclesiastes reminds us that "God created people to be virtuous, but they have each turned to follow their own downward path." Despite the meaningless which we choose to pursue, I find a lot of hope in the fact that God created us to be virtuous. I'm prone to believe that the intended abilities of a creation are not lost even if the creation begins to find other ways of exercising its abilities. I may choose to make some fairly poor decisions and to run away from the meaning I can find in God, but God has made sure that He didn't create me in such a way as to make me able to run away from Him for good. Despite the meaninglessness of the life I may choose, I can still find God in all of it and be blessed accordingly.
So, my hope in Ecclesiastes is that I will not ultimately be crushed by the weight of meaninglessness which I carry through this life.
Life will inevitably be characterized by ups and downs, good times and bad, prosperity and poverty. The point is not to focus on gaining anything or trying to always be on the up side of things. If you're making that your goal, then your life is meaningless. The point of Ecclesiastes is that we should simply live our lives and enjoy the things that God has given us. Don't take anything too seriously. Chill out. Calm down. Just enjoy the ride "Trust the process," as one of my grad school professors always said.
The lyric I chose to put into the "jar of hope" is simply a different version of this same idea. "The world isn't against you... It just doesn't care."
I've never known anyone to feel like the victim of the world if they weren't taking themselves too seriously. Adopting a victim mentality means saying, for the most part, that your goals and ambitions are more important than those of anyone else in the world and, if they're not met, that you've somehow been ambushed or slighted unfairly. Ecclesiastes reminds me that pursuing the ambitions of my human mind is like "chasing vapors." I can try to get my way, but it's not likely that I'll be entirely satisfied. Even if I did get my way, I can never really guarantee that things will go exactly the way I'd like. I can't guarantee anything, so trying to is ultimately meaningless. The world is apathetic to my plans. It doesn't care enough to sabotage them or to help meet them. If anything, I'm my own biggest enemy for pursuing the desires I have for myself. Who really knows what's best for them in the long run?
At the end of all of this, I ultimately find hope in the fact that God is above all of the meaninglessness and triviality of my day to day existence. I am thankful for the fact that I have a wife, a child (almost), a job I love, and that I'm able to pay my bills. Take any one of those things away, and I still have all of the others. Take two away, and I'm still breaking even. Take away three, and I still have the knowledge that life is a series of ups and downs, and that things will get better. Take away everything that I have, my possessions and the very air in my lungs, and I am still blessed with a God who has provided me salvation.
The point of experiencing all of this meaninglessness is that we learn that there is meaning in Him.
Everything is meaningless!
Stay Gold,
MMK
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