Round In Circles

Introduction

When Cilla Black sang, “What’s it all about, Alfie?" she expressed something which every person asks at some time. Just what does life add up to? What is the point of our life? Indeed does our life have a point? What is it all about?

ð  There is one book of the Old Testament that is written to explore and provide answers to just these questions. This book is Ecclesiastes. Unfortunately, it is so little read, let alone understood, that few people seem to have recognised that it has a living message that meets the particular problems of our age.

The Old Testament is like a massive library. There is almost everything there, from the impassioned preaching of the prophets to the cool, reflective comments of the wise - and a whole world of poetry, law, storytelling, praise and vision in between. But there is no one quite like Qoheleth (to give him his untranslatable title, which is variously translated as preacher, teacher or spokesman and which we shall use throughout this series); no book in this whole great library which addresses head-on the question, “What’s it all about?” If we will learn, Qoheleth can teach us to use our eyes as well as our ears to learn the ways of God and man. His concern is with the boundaries of life, and especially with the questions that most of us would hesitate to push too far.

This book is the record of an earnest thinker’s struggles with many problems: he wrestles with them, states them frankly and honestly; and finally arrives at certain conclusions which he feels justified in holding. Qoheleth’s is a book which will help bewildered and confused people with the response: “Here is God’s answer to your questions.”

The book is particularly apt for today, because it reflects the time when it was written. Spiritually Israel had lost her way and was at a low ebb. The early optimistic purpose seen in the times immediately after the Israelites’ return from exile was a thing of the past. Gloom and hopelessness filled the hearts of many. And people expected too much from material resources. It was a time of finding fault with God’s ways.

In that situation, very like our own, Qoheleth explored the questions about the meaning of life. His aim is to see how far a person can get without any basis for life founded on God. He puts himself - and us - in the shoes of the humanist or materialist - the person who starts his thinking from mankind and the observable world, and knows God only from a distance. And he concludes that such life is pointless, not from an abstract, intellectual perspective, but practically, from having lived through that lifestyle himself. Life viewed and lived from that perspective is pointless.

A wisp of vapour, a puff of wind, a mere breath - nothing you could get your hands on; the nearest thing to zero. That is the pointlessness that this book is about. What makes Qoheleth’s reading of life disturbing is that this airy nothingness is not seen as a mere surface thing. It is the sum total.

“What’s it all about?”

“It’s pointless, absolutely pointless,” says Qoheleth. “Look, I’ll show you.”

The Circle of Life?

Faced with that conclusion, some people have retreated into a pre-Christian tribal naturalism, where the earth itself is the great reality. That is how the Disney cartoon film “The Lion King” portrays it. It is the great circle of life. That’s what gives life meaning says the Lion King, Mufasa, to his young cub Simba. All that matters is that you should play your part in the rich tapestry of life that is being woven by time.

All purely earthly things are merely passing. They are in perpetual motion, in a continual around of activity, which keeps them practically running around in circles. Qoheleth builds up his case with several examples: successive generations come upon the scene; the sun runs its course; the wind makes its circuits; the streams flow to the sea: all of them, so many and so varied that the eye keeps viewing them endlessly. They reflect and illustrate the temporary character of the earth apart from God.

Life is actually a continual round of things, a running around and around, if heavenly values are going to be left out of consideration. True, the earth stands forever, but in this connection that means nothing more than that the earth is the physical setting on which this coming and going of generations actually takes place.

The whole of the physical background to life provides a backdrop that agrees with life itself, if you leave out the spiritual realities. Life is very fleeting in all its aspects. How the years roll by! Besides, the world’s own pattern, however long the earth remains, is as restless and repetitive as ours. So many fine beginnings double back. So many journeys end where they began. So many promising paths peter out. The very regularities of the world which may speak to us, on God’s behalf, of mercies new every morning, will give a very different answer, if we look for meaning from them in themselves.

That has happened, people say, because of the discoveries of science. But is it fair to blame scientific discovery if, for many people, the loss of mystery has led to the loss of Majesty? The more we know, the less we seem to believe. Strange, don’t you think? Surely, knowledge of the workings of the universe shouldn’t negate wonder. Knowledge should stir wonder. Who has more reason to worship than the astronomer who has seen the glory of the stars through a great telescope? Than the surgeon who has held a human heart in his hand? Than the oceanographer who has pondered the depths of the great waters?

The more we know, the more we should be amazed and be moved to worship the Creator God. Ironically, the more we know, the less we worship. We seem to be more impressed with our discovery of electricity than with the One who created electricity. This is a curious, upside-down logic. Rather than worship the Creator, we worship the creation. No wonder there is no wonder. We’ve figured it all out. As Roman 1:25 puts it: They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator — who is for ever praised. Amen.

Life Under the Sun - The Treadmill

But just suppose, argues Qoheleth, that this life without God is all there is. What if God just created the universe, winding it up like a big clock and then leaving it to run? What then?

What about life under the sun? Under the sun is a phrase which rules out all higher values and spiritual realities and restricts itself only to the resources and abilities that this world offers. Using this phase is equivalent to drawing horizontal lines between earthly and heavenly realities and leaving out of consideration all that is above those lines, that is, all heavenly values.

The scene Qoheleth has in mind is exclusively the world we can observe; and our observation point is at ground level. He is addressing the general public whose view is bounded by the horizons of this world; he meets them on their own ground, and proceeds to convict them of its inherent futility.

What do people gain from all their hard work under the sun? The answer is obviously not that they get nothing, but rather that they get precious little.

In fact, considering the general run of futile things, Qoheleth assets that there is a sameness about it which marks it in all its parts. In short, it is boring. Life under the sun is life on the treadmill of existence. No wonder people have responded by saying in the words of the Broadway show title, “Stop the world, I want to get off!” And the awful thing is that some have actually done it - they have committed suicide!

No wonder many of our young people, reared in a godless, materialistic society, have become disillusioned, even cynical. If we don’t acknowledge God, we are mere flotsam in the universe, mere random products of time and chance. At best we are developed animals. At worst we are rearranged space dust. In the final analysis materialists and naturalists have only one answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life?” Their answer? “We don’t know.” They have sacrificed the purpose of man upon the altar of godlessness.

Looking for the Meaning of Life - Under the Sun

That answer reminds me of the aristocrat at the beginning of this century who visited friends at their country house for the weekend without his own personal servant, because the man was ill. His hosts provided him with a very competent manservant who tried his best to make the earl’s stay as comfortable as possible. When the aristocrat was asked before he left, if everything had been satisfactory, he replied that he had been very well cared for, but that one little thing puzzled him. When he had brushed his teeth, he had been surprised that the toothbrush the manservant had laid out for him to use hadn’t foamed. “What do you mean?” asked his hosts.

When he began to explain, they suddenly realised that this man had never put tooth powder on his own toothbrush in his life! He thought that toothbrushes automatically foamed, as you brushed your teeth! In the same way, no understanding of life, the universe and everything makes any sense unless we take into account the actions of a Creator and Sustainer God.

Nothing is truer than the fact that our natural life, our ordinary human existence with all that it has to offer apart from God, is absolutely futile, useless and unsatisfactory. If you consider purely earthly values, what is your work? What do you achieve? What is life? Merely a dreary part of a ceaseless grind, which keeps going on all about us in nature, in the coming of generations, in the sun, the winds, the streams, and in all things. Your own activity is pointless; the world appears equally futile. All this is, of course, Qoheleth’s indirect way of saying: “Do not rule out God. Life doesn’t make sense if you do.”

What do people gain? It is a fair question. “You spend your life working, labouring, and what do you have to show for it?”

“Ah,” some might say, “I’m working for my children and their children. Surely we hope to make the world a better place, or at least leave something for those who follow.” As though expecting that reply, Qoheleth points to the ceaseless making and unmaking that goes on in human history: the wave after wave of generations with their rise and fall, their up-and-coming men who are soon forgotten men; all this is set against the background of the earth, which sees each generation out and goes on apparently, for ever. No doubt it will see the last of us off the scene, and what will man amount to then?

The reason Qoheleth makes such an issue of the futility of all things becomes clearer if we recall when and under what circumstances the book was written. It was a time when people in Israel were discouraged and disappointed; faith burned with a dim light. One reason for this spiritual and physical depression was the fact that people had expected too much from purely material things, and they had been disappointed and disillusioned. If a person assesses the value of such things properly, he will not expect too much from them. And, when they fail him, as they will, he will not be unduly disappointed.

Conclusion

All this holds up a mirror to human life. Like the ocean, our senses are fed and fed, but never filled. And like the wheel of nature, our history is always turning back on itself, failing to deliver on its promise. The more things change, the more they turn out to be the same. In their new guise the old ways go on. As a race, we never learn.

The journey goes on; yet we never arrive. For, you see, under the sun there is nowhere to make for, nothing ultimately satisfying or really new. As for pinning our hopes on generations after us, in the end they will lose the faintest memory of us.

So, what is Qoheleth trying to teach us? Just what Paul the Apostle wrote to the Ephesians in Ephesians 4:17, So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. For, without God life is absolutely pointless!

Thank God we don’t have to live life without Him, unless we choose to.