Truth vs. Truth

The book of Ecclesiastes may be more important now, at this stage of human history, than ever. Now, if you’re like me, when a preacher or speaker says something like that . . . eye roll, “Come on Rene.”

Philosopher Charles Taylor said there are basically two ways of looking at the world, as something to conform ourselves to, or something to conform to ourselves.

For most of human history, the first view has prevailed, that we are to shape ourselves to what is bigger than us, but more than ever, we now think that everything else should be shaped to fit us, that we can mold and shape the world to our liking.

Think about it like this, agrarian societies (farming societies) throughout history knew they had to plant a certain crop at a certain time and harvest a certain time later, based on the environment that was beyond them, and they had very little control over the outcomes, no control of weather, little over soil, no control, and so they were keenly aware of their inability to form the world to their desires, but their need to conform to what the world offered them. In having no control over crops they then even had no control over life or death, entirely at mercy of environment - world was what it was and the individual needed to conform to it.

NOW, with the invention of Irrigation, water can be moved or stored until necessary, increased knowledge of soil science and pesticides means the land can be manipulated to be what we need it to be, more controversially, genetic manipulation allows productions of foods immune to parasites. As a result of things like this and new technologies, the modern man has come to believe that he can basically control the world. Similarly, Diseases that used to be untreatable are now virtually gone, childbirth doesn’t risk the life of the mother at near the level that it did forever, etc. These are all very good things, but because of these things, it is increasingly easy to think reality is something that we can manipulate, and not something we need to conform ourselves to.

In one of the best books I have ever read, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, a book that explains our current culture better than any I have read, Philospher and Theologian Carl Trueman says we can see this clearly with the modern statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body.” This statement, which has at least become a statement that everyone has heard discussed, is a result of this newfound desire to manipulate reality instead of conform to it.

If someone would have said that to a doctor a century ago, doc would have said that’s a problem with your feelings/mind, we need to bring it in line with your body …

There has been a significant change in our current culture to this end. The most important thing is our feelings, and conforming everything outside to what I feel inside, when historically, it has been the opposite. Throughout history, our sense of self has been defined largely by outside things and others, now its all about our feelings.

This of course has overflown into the church, by the way. Church is no longer something much bigger than and beyond us, something that we are to conform ourselves to, something we are meant to be a small part of, rather, it has become the servant of the individual, we judge worship and sermons as if they’re tv shows meant to entertain us, focusing still on our feelings and picking churches that conform to us.

Trueman says, In short, church went from a place to be formed to a place to perform. And many church leaders have conformed church to the individuals, instead of calling individuals to conform to the church.

The prevailing ideology of our culture is not that you should discover Truth (big T) and then conform yourself to it, as it has been historically, rather it is that you create truth (little t) and conform everything else to your truth.

The message of Ecclesiastes, as we have seen, is that life is Hevel, it is not malleable, it is not controllable, it is something not to conform, but be conformed to, not something to mold, but to enjoy as the gift of God.

Further, God is not a God that we can mold and conform to our liking, but a God that we must conform ourselves to.

Here, we must not give in to the way our culture views things, we must stand for and yield to Truth.

The message is that TRUTH is found in God, that the only life worth living is the one with God at center and the one that enjoys God, and that all things that are not grounded in God are grounded in nothing and are no more than vapor.

Perhaps Qohelet’s strongest example and underlying foundation for the hevel of all things disconnected from God is Death.

Death Proclaims Our Impotence

2:15-17 3:18-22? 9:1ff

Death is an ultimate reality which in the end, renders the striving life futile.

Human or Animal, Wise or Fool, Rich or Poor, Successful or Failure

We like to think of ourselves as gods, but in the end we end up no different than animals, at least under the sun. Is 49:12

All we have to do is live long enough, and we will be bereaved, and eventually all of us will die ourselves, yet D.A. Carson points out that death has become about the last taboo subject in Western society. We can talk casually about sex, fornication, bigotry, many other obscenities, but if you bring up the death of someone you love, the air gets thicker, things get heavier, people shut down, not knowing what to say.

This is the one area that mankind has made no progress in, Psalm 90:10 – 3000 years ago

Farming easier, travel easier, but we cant seem to solve the death problem, 100% of us still die

Death mocks us, knowing in the end it will win, and all of this striving will come to nithing.

Christians throughout history have thought it good for people to be aware of death, and that we will die, that it reminds us of the REALEST things, the TRUEST things and not the trivial ones that occupy our minds constantly.

During WWII – C.S. Lewis was invited to speak to students at Oxford who were questioning why they should continue studying. . .

At first, studying seems to be an odd thing to do during a Great War. What is the use of beginning a task which we have so little task of finishing or even if we ourselves should happen not to be interrupted by death or military service, why should we, indeed how can we continue to take an interest in these placid occupations when the lives of our friends and the liberties of Europe are in the balance? Is it not like fiddling while Rome burns? Now it seems to me that we should not be able to answer these questions until we have put them beside certain other questions which every Christian ought to have asked himself during peace time…Every Christian who comes to a university must at all times face a question compared with which the questions raised by the war are relatively unimportant. He must ask himself how it is right or even psychologically possible for creatures who are at every moment advancing either to heaven or to hell to spend any fraction of the time allotted them in this world on such comparative trivialities as literature or art, mathematics or biology. If human culture can stand up to that, it can stand up to anything… The war creates no absolute new situation, it simply aggravates the current human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice, human culture has always had to exist under a shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. . . We think of the streets of Warsaw and contrast the deaths there suffered with an abstraction called life, but there is no question of death or life for any of us, only a question of this death or of that, of a machine gun bullet now or a cancer 40 years later. What does war do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent, 100% of us die and the percentage cannot be increased. It puts several deaths earlier, but I hardly suppose that that is what we fear, certainly when the moment comes it will make little difference how many years we have behind us. Does it increase our chance of a painful death? I doubt it. As far as I can find out, what we call natural death is usually preceded by suffering, and the battlefield is one of the few places where one has a reasonable prospect of dying with no pain at all. Yet war does do something to death, it forces us to remember it. The only reason why the cancer at 60 or paralysis at 75 do not bother us is that we forget them. War makes death real to us, and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the Great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us always to be aware of our mortality; I am inclined to think they were right.

Your day to day life sometimes lures you into a mirage of control over things, death reminds you of your impotence.

Death Proclaims God’s Omnipotence

3:18-22? 9:1ff 8:8 - Verse

There is 1, only 1, that was not born and does not die. Only 1 that is ABOVE death, reigning over them all.

Job 12:10, 34:14-15, Ps 104:29, Ac 17:25

This is both a comfort to the child of God who has yielding to Him, and a warning to those who ignore reality and continue to try to manipulate the times to their own advantage. “You are not in control” is terrifying to the one desiring to control things, but a relief to those of us who trust the One who is in control.

Ecc 9:11-12

Life is unpredictable, and that is terrifying.

We are like the fish who is swimming along looking for food like everyday and then out of nowhere gets caught in a cruel net – literally evil net

We are like the bird who is flying along with great plans for the day and then out of nowhere gets snared.

Evil times, bad times could be awaiting us outside of these doors today.

Life is unpredictable, and that is terrifying.

Unless, there IS one in control, who predicts everything correctly, and who loves you.

Death proclaims that we are out of control, but moves our eyes upward to the one who is in control even here.

God declares that omnipotence over death once and for all in Christ