As I have mentioned on more than one occasion during
our study of Ecclesiastes, the list of things its writer characterizes as “vanity”
in his thesis is lengthy. Over thirty different features of human existence are
so described, a partial list of which you can find here,
from hedonism to workaholism to discontentment and entropy.
Defining Vanity
As we sought to establish early
in this series, calling something “vain” does not mean
that it is pointless or self-defeating. Still less is the Preacher arguing that the creator
God has messed up in some way. Rather, he is saying that understanding events,
circumstances and patterns of human behavior he describes as “vain” is no easy
task. Their meaning is evanescent; near-impossible to pin down. If the Preacher
is frustrated, he is frustrated with the limits of his own understanding, which,
because of his chosen methodology, are delineated by what may be observed and
understood of the natural world through the senses and the rationalizing
human mind, rather than what may be known by way of divine revelation. That
understood, throughout Ecclesiastes the existence of a Creator, and a meaning
and purpose for mankind, are taken as givens; no attempt is made to prove these
things.
(Apologies for the repetition, but a blog post series is not
a book, and you never know when a new reader is going to drop in midway through
with no idea what we mean by this or that expression.)
Here at the end of Ecclesiastes 11 the Preacher is now
going to describe two more things as vanity: youth and old age. Why do we have
to learn before we can live, and why do we decline in body and mind so as to
lose the knowledge we have gained throughout our lives?
Don’t expect these answers to be found within the book
itself. Solomon’s treatise is an inchoate plea for the light of heaven to shine
on the universal “givens” of human existence and illuminate their meaning
for us. Ecclesiastes formulates questions the answers to which the rest of
the Old Testament provides many clues, and to which our New Testament provides the
final divine response.
Ecclesiastes 11:7-8 — The Vanity of Darkness
“Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity.”
Here I believe the incomprehensible “days of darkness” to
which Solomon refers are not the grave, but rather the declining years of our
natural lives. Chapter 12 makes this evident both vividly and poetically,
and I won’t spoil it by previewing it for you a week or two early. Youth
is being contrasted not with the sleep of death, but with “the evil days” and “the
years of which you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’.” This is the
darkness that is in view: rheumy eyes, deaf ears, tasteless meals, increasing
infirmity and uselessness, Alzheimer’s, dementia, lame legs, aching joints and a
loss of joy in the things in which one used to take great pleasure.
Bleh. Sorry to bring it up, but we’re all going there. There’s
a lot of darkness in these final passages of Ecclesiastes. Even a statement
like “Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun,” implies
that for some people the light of the sun is an unexperienced privilege, and
that one day you and I may not continue to enjoy it either.
Answers in Genesis
The reasons we decline in our later years are impossible to
explain without Genesis 3, and the Preacher has knowingly left this
chapter out of consideration, though he had surely either read it or knew
anecdotally of mankind’s expulsion from Eden. But the Christian knows that “in
the day that you eat of [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil]
you shall surely die”. What might have happened to the human race had we not invited
the wages of sin into the world and
into our very own bodies is lost knowledge. It’s the road not taken.
Those of us who have carefully observed human nature and
history find it credible to view death as one of many mercies showered on a
fallen race by a loving God who grants to all men years of opportunity to repent,
but will not test us beyond our limits, nor allow the especially-depraved
members of the species the opportunity to endlessly exploit and torment the
rest of us.
The Good Life
In the meantime, says the Preacher, we each have our allotted
lifespan. When the salad days are upon us, let us rejoice. When the darkness
comes, let us bear up, knowing that (by the grace of God) this period of our
lives is not infinite. A healthy view of life enjoys the light of youth while remaining
cognizant of the coming darkness, perhaps with resignation, but not dread.
This is sound advice even in the Christian era. It is
embarrassing to see seventy-year-olds carrying on as if they are going to live
forever, and it is equally sad to view the teen suicide statistics. Both
perspectives are skewed: the Boomer who shops in the Nordstrom teen section is
in serious denial of a reality which is screamingly evident to everyone around
her; meanwhile, the suicidal teen cannot see past the current moment of angst to
the place where numerous possibilities may still present themselves in the
years ahead.
Ecclesiastes 11:9 — Choice and Judgment
“Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.”
It is not obvious from the text what sort of judgment the
Preacher has in view. The nation of Israel in Old Testament times had
considerable experience with the judgment of God in this life and minimal
understanding of judgment in the hereafter, so it is likely the former sort of
judgment to which he is referring: the way nature is designed to respond to man’s
self-abuse.
Nature has been divinely ordered in such a way so as to visit
predictable consequences on those who presume to enjoy the pleasures of youth
too enthusiastically. Its inbuilt mechanisms serve to thin the ranks of the chronically dissolute. You
can only eat like a teenager for so long, or else the adult version of you will
look like nine miles of bad road. A man’s liver can only take so much
alcohol, and recreational drug use often
ends badly. Various sexually-transmitted diseases afflict those who
practice sexual incontinence as well as their offspring (mid-20th century,
one-third of U.S. reproductive mortality was due to STDs). The cigarette smoker
had best do his grave-shopping early; he is shaving up to ten years off his
life. To consider such consequences “judgments” of a sort is not unreasonable.
They are eminently predictable and largely avoidable.
So then, there is great pleasure to be taken in youth, but a
healthy awareness of the dangers of abusing pleasure is well worth acquiring.
Naturally, it is also true that God will bring every
deed into final judgment, though this is not a subject explored in depth in
Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes 11:10 — The Vanity of Light
“Remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain [evil] from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.”
The New Living Translation is particularly insightful in rendering
the first part of the verse this way: “So refuse to worry, and keep your body healthy.” I believe this gets the emphasis almost exactly
right.
It is vitally important to keep before us always the fact
that the potential of youth is just that: potential. It is not guaranteed to
us. All the opportunity offered by young and growing life may be utterly wasted
if we do not learn to exercise self-control where our bodies are concerned.
Never has this been demonstrated to be truer than in the
ranks of Gen
Z (born 1996 through 2014). Anxiety, depression, gender confusion, failure
to launch and suicide are all on the uptick. My sister was recently in the home
of a couple who had raised their children essentially without boundaries. The
results, now in their teens, are deeply discouraging.
Even when they have no personal knowledge of Christ, young
people raised with behavioral defaults derived from the Ten Commandments and
recommended in the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament tend to do better in
life than children governed only by their personal desires. They live longer, make
fewer catastrophic mistakes, and definitely make better life partners.
But “youth and the dawn of life” are vanity when misappropriated
and spent on self. The lack of purpose experienced by so many young men and
women raised without biblical boundaries is ample testimony that the more a
society insists on banishing all evidence of a Creator from education, the more
God’s creatures will flounder.
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