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I just don’t get the paradox...
A paradox is a self-contradictory statement or situation that in reality is true.
It’s something that should not happen, but in reality it does and its hard or impossible to explain.
On the surface, when I read Eccl 7:15, there is a part of me that does not get the paradox.
The paradox is not hard to see.
You can identify it in the form of a question.
Why would someone who lives her life doing the right thing perish in her righteousness, and she who lives wickedly prolong her life?
How can that be?
Where is the justice in that?
But we see it in the scriptures, right?
Just after the Fall in the Garden of Eden, righteous Able is slaughtered by the hands of his unrighteous brother, Cain (Genesis 4:1-10).
The paradox is righteous Able dies while wicked Cain lives a long life with his family.
You see the paradox a little later in the Old Testament when Naboth refuses to sell his inheritance, which is a right thing in God’s eyes, to King Ahab and Jezebel had him murdered for it (1 Kings 21:11-14).
The paradox of righteous Naboth is murdered for following God’s ways while wicked King Ahab gets the vineyard and continues to live.
In the New Testament, young Stephen is stoned for preaching the good news of God’s salvation to his people (Acts 7:59).
The paradox of righteous Stephen fulfilling the Great Commission by preaching rightly about Jesus, while the wicked people who stoned him suffer no recourse for their actions.
We also see the paradox in our contemporary world.
Think about your English Bible for a second.
How did you get it?
Who translated it from the Greek and Hebrew for you to read it in your heart language?
The man’s name was William Tyndel.
His desire was that every common person who spoke English could read the scriptures for themselves.
He was strangled and burned at a stake for doing such a noble thing.
Diedrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who stood up to Hitler and the Nazis.
He rebuked the Lutheran Church for trying to partner with the Nazis, compromising the gospel.
He shot by a firing squad by the Nazi’s just before the end of the war.
Jim Elliot, with four other men, moved to South America to reach the unreachable for the gospel.
All five of them were speared to death by three violent Woadni tribes people.
What makes this tension even more uncomfortable in verse 15, is we read scriptures that say things like,
or
Scriptures like these seem paradoxical in light of what we experience in our broken world.
In other words, maybe we are asking God, why do you allow such injustice in this world?
Why do you allow tragedy to strike the vulnerable and the innocent, while it looks like the wicked prosper?
It makes you cry out with the Psalmist:
It appears to us that living a righteous life in this world is vanity, a mirage, a hevel upon hevels, meaningless.
Solomon recognizes this in verse 15, and then he offers two ways people will respond to this paradox.
Either you will see this paradox and decided to live a super-righteous life trying to please God in order to manipulate him to give you long life, or you will throw all caution to the wind and live a life of hedonism.
Your Super Righteousness will not save you (Eccl 7:16)
This is an odd thing to say.
What does Solomon mean when he says, “Don’t be overly righteous?”
When he says, “Don’t be overly wicked,” is saying its ok to be a little wicked?
First off, Solomon is not advocating that you be wicked in the slightest bit.
He has already said that wicked living is foolish living, and the fool always perishes (See Proverbs)
What Solomon is doing here is giving you a principle for how to live wisely in this life.
Essentially, he is saying to his readers, as Duane Garrett says, “Don’t be a fanatic.”
One way we respond the the paradox in this broken world is to be excessively zealous for righteousness.
Its what Sidney Greidanus calls Super Righteousness.
You set a goal of to live a perfectly righteous life, and in doing so you believe you because you’ve done so, God is obligated to give you long life and prosperity.
There are several obvious problems with this philosophy of living.
First of all, you cannot ever achieve perfect righteousness.
Solomon makes this clear in
He also alludes to it in
Your own heart is guilty of cursing others when you have been offended.
Michael Fox is right to says, “Straining for perfection is presumptuous, a refusal to accept human limitations.”
Secondly, when you choose to live a perfect life of perfection the effect of doing such a thing is blind fulness to your own sin.
Jesus constantly confronted the Pharisees about this very thing.
He would call them blind guides.
Their pursuit of perfect piety blinded them from seeing their hypocrisy.
Jesus has to teach us to take the log out of our own eye before we seek to remove the speck in our brothers eye.
The pride of believing we can achieve perfect righteousness blinds us to our sin.
Finally, God will not be manipulated by your works.
You cannot bargain with God, not can you demand that he bind himself to a contract with you.
The Lord is in the heavens and he does what he pleases (Psalm 115:3).
God has ordained you days in his book, every one of them (Psalm 139:16).
God works everything in your life for your good and His glory (Romans 8:28-29).
The Pharisees could not understand this truth.
They really believed their zeal for God’s law would keep them from the paradox of brokenness.
jesus confronted their belief as a form of pride.
Solomon warns such zeal for Super-righteousness will destory you (Eccl 7:16).
He says of pride
Religious zeal, or being a fanatic will bring your destruction in a paradoxically broken world.
Your Excessive Wickedness will not save you (Eccl 7:17)
Here is the other side of that coin.
If your zeal of righteousness is not going to cut it, your other solution to the paradox we live in is to throw all caution to the wind and live a debauched life in sin.
It is not hard to see the logic here.
Paul points out that if Jesus is not risen then
and
If my Super-righteousness is not going to save me, I should embrace the world, embrace the pride of my eyes and the lust of my flesh.
Solomon says to do this will destroy you.
He warns, “Why should you die before your time?”
The Bible does warn you.
If you decide to live wickedly, you could suffer death quickly.
and
Think of the lifestyle of the Mobsters or thugs.
Consider the lifespan of drug dealers.
How many have been killed violently at such a young age because of their commitment to wickedness?
Duane Garrett wisely says,
“While some sin in everyone’s life is inevitable, those who embrace evil as a way of life are destroyed by it.”
Duane Garrett
Excessive wickedness is not the answer to the riddle of the paradox of living in this broken world.
In verse 18, Solomon offers the beginning of our solution.
He says
You need to take the one, that is do not try to be super righteous or super wise.
First of all, it is impossible.
Second, in the end you will be disappointed.
At the same time you need to not let go of the other.
That is, do not choose to live in excessive wickedness, as if to throw your life into the wind.
That is a fools errand and you will perish sooner than later.
The truth is, to live in this paradoxical world you must fear God.
For us, to fear God is to surrender your life to Jesus.
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