Lenten Reflection: Hope in the God of Love and Justice
By David Lindberg, March 16, 2022.
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity….
I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem.
And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.
It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.
I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
I have said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me,
and my heart has had great experiences of wisdom and knowledge.”
And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.
…The end of the matter: all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments.
For this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil”
- Ecclesiastes 1:1-2, 12-17; 12:13-14
How do you and I suffer? How do we cope with, survive, and possibly even thrive in the midst of the darkness that surrounds our world and penetrates our hearts? These are Lenten questions, because they are questions of life under the sun. They are questions we all ask ourselves and each other. The questions we ask collectively as a society. Sometimes the questions are explicitly stated as we witness the horrors of war from the comfort of our homes, note the socio-economic disparity within our communities, or take to the streets to speak against injustice. Sometimes we ask ourselves these questions implicitly through literature, music, movies (see The Batman), and other artistic outlets. We all want to know how to suffer the darkness that is inescapable, and perhaps even step out from its suffocating presence into the glorious light of freedom and joy. But how?
The ancient voice of “the Preacher” echoes in our own age. He, like so many of us, looked out at the world in search of wisdom—a way of life that is fitting to human beings and human society—only to the harsh realization that from where he stood “all is vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14).
Nothing the Preacher examined—not wisdom or folly, wealth or poverty, sensuality or asceticism, strength or weakness—none of it mattered when it came to coping with, escaping, or merely surviving the apparent meaninglessness of life or the pain and suffering that comes with it; in the end death comes to all. There is no apparent advantage to wisdom, even if it appears better, since the wise ultimately suffer and die along with the foolish; just as the wealthy come to the same end as the poor, and often see their wealth wasted and squandered by those who did nothing to build it.
So why does any of it matter? In many respects we, like the Preacher, understand why a person would come to the conclusion that our only option is to “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die” (cf. Dave Matthew’s Band “Tripping Billies” with Eccl. 2:24; 9:7). Sadly, many of us (are at least tempted to) despair in the face of life’s apparent meaninglessness. As a result, we turn to decadent pleasure in order to numb ourselves with the rewards of achievement, the highs of sex, pornography, drugs, alcohol, food, and consumerism. Some of us are very successful at this, while others destroy our lives and the lives of others in these pursuits. Still for some, our despair grows into a cynical ambivalence and even the longing for pleasure and enjoyment dissipates until we find all meaning elusive at best; this could be a part of why so many in the West are depressed, even to the point of taking their own lives.
So, what is the answer? How can we suffer well the inescapable darkness that surrounds and penetrates us? Is there a way for even joy to find its way into this darkness?
First, there are no easy answers! The suffering around us is real, complex, and deeply troubling. Turn on CNN and see for yourself the horrors of violence, corrupt power, and war. Try to come up with an easy answer for such nonsensical suffering. Sit down and listen with genuine interest to the stories of domestic, sexual, or ecclesiastical abuse victims. Do you have the magic bullet remedy for their pain? Sit with the recovering addict, the high school dropout, the abandoned single mother, the Black or Asian American, the disabled construction worker who hasn’t worked in years, or the husband whose wife has been a quadriplegic for forty-five years of their marriage; sit with them, get to know them, hear their stories, witness their scars. What do they long for? There are no easy answers.
The complexities of the human heart and mind, as well as the ways in which our bodies carry trauma within them, make it abundantly clear that easy answers are not only impossible, they are likely to do more harm than good. Even the best answers, or ultimate truth, do not make the pain go away, do not remove the suffering or bring to an end all the shame and doubts that can linger possibly our entire lives. Take the time to listen to yourself in those moments of quiet, when the pain, suffering, doubts, and deeply disturbing questions break through whatever walls you have put up to protect yourself from whatever, or whomever has hurt or disappointed you. What kind of answers do you want? What kind do you need?
No, there are no easy answers to why suffering exists, nor how we can survive these darkness times - even if there are explanations. However, speaking from within his ancient Jewish social and religious context, the Preacher concluded that this was the “end of the matter: all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments. For this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil”.
The Preacher comes to some conclusions (hinted at all along), but only after “all has been heard.” He probably meant that the listener/reader had heard him out, but no doubt this is also after he had spent much time listening to himself and others in his exploration of “life under the sun.” He hadn’t, and he won’t let us, gloss over the complexities of life as we experience it, with all of its injustice, pain, and sadness. But, having given all of that its proper attention he concluded this (if I may paraphrase): “love God and put your hope in him!”
Why? Why should we love God and put our hope in him?
Again, there are no easy answers, but here is a brief attempt to answer that question and bring us to our own conclusion. First, we can love God in the midst of all the darkness, because we know him to be good. After all, he is the one who made all things very good and even gave to humanity the good gifts of relationship, sexual pleasure, food, wine, work and recreation. It is we who misuse them. Even still he has given them for our enjoyment. This means the very things we often use to escape the darkness are intended to be signposts pointing to the creator who loves us.
Secondly we are to love God because he first loved us. This is our duty, our purpose: to love him in reciprocation of his love. To do so puts all of his gifts into their proper place. They are no longer tools we use for our self-centered escape (understandable as that may be), but avenues of delight in him, given to us as fore-tastes of the good life for which we were created. In this context, the pleasures and joys such good things bring can and should be multiplied!
This brings us to the last portion of the Preachers conclusion. We are to put our hope in the God who loves us and the God whom we are invited to love. Why? Because he alone sees all things, even the secret things, and he will bring about justice in the end. Even all vengeance belongs to him alone. And for this we should all be thankful because it means he will bring all evil, wickedness, injustice, abuse, and sin to its proper end. He alone can bring vengeance on that which corrupts the hearts of humanity and poisons the goodness of creation. He alone can and will right every wrong and put the world to rights.
This frees us from needing to glibly explain or exhaustively seek escape from suffering, doubts, and the sin and darkness which cultivate them. The reality and hope that God will right all wrongs, having seen and even suffered with us in our pain, means we are free to be honest, to be broken, to be hurt, to name our despair, our cynicism, our doubts, and our sincere longings for something better! We no longer have to rise above such sadness, or give shallow answers to those crying out for something better, but can sit with them, live with them, and learn for a lifetime to see them through the lens of the whole Biblical story.
God created the world very good, called humanity to spread that goodness, but human rebellion in the garden brought about corruption and the misuse of that which was good and intended for good. Lovingly, God did not bring the world to an end at that point. Instead he pursued humanity in love, to the point of being not only the divine hero of the story but the human hero of the story as well. God, in human flesh, suffered with us and for us. He doesn’t just see our suffering, know our pain, and understand our doubts, he has lived them! He, the second person of the Trinity in the person of Jesus, lived the same “life under the sun” that the Preacher lived, that you and I live. Jesus knows intimately our suffering, and the temptations that come with it, and for the joy that was set before him (his resurrection and exaltation) he endured the humiliation of death on the cross (Hebrews 4:15; 12:2; Philippians 2::5-11).
It is worth repeating that Jesus did all of that for us. He did it so that evil, sin, and death could be defeated. He did it so that the forgiveness of sin could be an experiential reality for even the worst of us who put faith in him. He did it so that in and through him God could bring many sons to glory—those men, women, and children who have a share in his joy, who participate in his resurrection, and who will one day reign with him in the new heavens and new earth (Hebrews 2:10; Revelation 21-22; 2 Timothy 2:12).
So, how do you and I suffer? How do we cope with, survive, and possibly even thrive in the midst of the darkness that surrounds our world and penetrates our hearts? These are Lenten questions, and while there are no easy answers there remains the ultimate answer of Jesus and the Gospel. The final Word of God who loved us, suffered with and for us, and gave his life for us in order that in him we might have hope both now and for eternity.
