Ecclesiastes 8:17 – No One Really Comprehends and God’s Revelation

Ecclesiastes 8:17 – No One Really Comprehends and God’s Revelation

Feb 26, 2023 | Epistemology - Trust

In my recent read through the book of Ecclesiastes, I came to appreciate the seemingly contradictory perspectives of the author, who most accept as Solomon given how he identifies himself in the first verse: “The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem.” There were no kings in Israel’s long history who had the wealth and peace during their reigns to have the time to contemplate how meaningless life is “under the sun.” It takes a man of wealth and leisure with plenty of time on his hands to get to a point where he would conclude:

2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?

Here’s a cynic Woody Allen could appreciate. Yet the Teacher combines a healthy dose cynicism with a humility that realizes how little we as finite human beings can really know “under the sun.” Doing a Bible word search, we find the Teacher in our English Bibles using the phrase in the 12 chapters of the Book 27 times. I think we can safely say life on earth, not one oriented toward a heavenly city, is the dominant theme. Yet we also find him using the word God, Elohim in the Hebrew, 37 times. It is interesting, though, that he never uses the Israel’s covenant name for God, Yahweh, but the generic reference to God, El. Given his international celebrity, it’s likely his intended audience went beyond the people of Israel.

Speaking of word searches, he also uses the word meaningless some 30 times. The ESV and KJV translate that Hebrew word as vanity, defined in a variety of ways as empty, valueless, hollowness, worthlessness, futile. The Hebrew word means vapor or breath, and is also translated in various ways as such as empty, delusion, fleeting, fraud, or futile. We get the point, over and over and over again. Yet in the midst of all this futility and frustration he ends with what ultimately matters:

13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.
14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.

What prompted me to write about Ecclesiastes this time through was the Teacher’s statement in chapter 8 that after he had seen all God had done:

No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.

This hasn’t stopped human beings from trying to do just that for all of recorded history. The speculative history of philosophy, and the many varieties of religion over the ages speak to the futility of this endeavor. Man is an ultimate meaning seeking creature, even if most of the time he gets it wrong. The problem is that because of sin and man’s rebellion against God, we don’t seek Him. Jesus told us as much when he said to Nicodemus that we can’t even see the kingdom of God unless we are born again. No one chooses to be born or has any say in the matter, and Jesus doesn’t use his metaphors carelessly.

Which brings us to the Christian concept of revelation, that God has broken into the box of reality in which we find ourselves to reveal what it’s ultimately all about, or else we would be forever benighted. That word means being in a state of moral or intellectual darkness, unenlightened. If not for God breaking into the box of human existence to tell us what it all means, we are stuck with speculation and endless guessing leading nowhere but to more speculation and guessing, bumping into walls of existence concluding maybe there’s nothing outside the box after all. Human beings throughout history without revelation have concluded if there is something outside of the box, it is either not knowable, or if it is some kind of God not definable or personal, more of a force than a being we can related to on a personal level. I love the box metaphor which I learned a long time ago from the great Dutch Art Historian Hans Rookmaaker. The box of which I speak is closed and hermetically sealed because of sin, there is no way out, we are stuck.

If you want to really appreciate the value of God’s revelation to his creatures, become familiar with the history of philosophy and religion. In my Christian journey I’ve gotten to the point in my appreciation where I thank God almost every morning when I pray that he has revealed himself in three ways: creation, Scripture, and Christ. Creation drives us to Scripture which reveals God’s plans and actions in history to redeem his creation in the person and work of Christ. And as C.S. Lewis so perfectly put it:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Yet as the author of Ecclesiastes knows, comprehending, fully understanding, what goes on “under the sun” is not so simple, and in fact ultimately impossible. Yet we know enough per the Teacher just from creation (“under the sun”) that God is there and should be feared and obeyed. We also learn from Paul in Romans 1 that all human beings know enough to be “without excuse.” Then God breaks into the human heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, opening our eyes to the true ultimate meaning of existence: a redeemed relationship with our Creator through the person and work of Christ. Only a work by God outside of creation, what we often call super-natural, is the only way the box doesn’t remain our metaphysical prison.

The beauty of Christianity (the facets of stunning beauty of the diamond of salvation are limitless, literally) is that while we can know, have true knowledge because of God’s three-fold revelation, we as Paul says, “see through a glass darkly.” That is the King James Version of I Corinthians 13:12. Other translations use the word mirror and only seeing in it a dim reflection. In the first century there were no mirrors as we have them today. The Greek phrase Paul uses is esoptrou en ainigmati (ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι). The first word is glass or mirror, and in the ancient world were made of polished metal so it was difficult to get an accurate reflection. The second word means riddle or enigma. In the words of the Teacher, we really can’t comprehend what we’re seeing.

Yet what we can comprehend because true knowledge is revealed to us, we know in absolute humility and use in the love and service of others. We often hold our knowing far too firmly. Some even have a hard time admitting they could possibly be wrong . . . . about anything! As I’ve been a while along this journey with Jesus I know more then ever how little I really know, and I am far better able to know what I don’t know than what I do. In fact, Paul says it is better to be known by God than to know him, and only the latter leads to the former, even as we love because he first loved us.

The “Health and Wealth” Gospel of Proverbs

The “Health and Wealth” Gospel of Proverbs

Feb 15, 2023 | Epistemology - Trust

As I was reading through Proverbs recently for the first time in a long time, it almost made me believe there is such a thing as a health and wealth gospel. Notice the g in gospel is not capitalized so we’re not confusing it with The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and our eternal salvation in Him. Nonetheless, when we do certain things we can have a reasonable expectation certain other things will follow as day follows night and that is good news. In a very real sense, there is no blessing from God that we do not earn.  In the Bible it’s called sowing and reaping because most of the audience to whom Scripture was written had to do that to live. We do too, it’s just not in the ground, unless of course you’re a farmer.

This, in fact, is the inheritance of Judaism and Christianity. We don’t live in the heathen/pagan universe the Hebrews were born into when Yahweh called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees. God rescued us from the dead-end worldview of a universe without hope through the Hebrew people. Because of the importance of the Jewish nature of Jesus’ world, in Uninvented I referenced a book by Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Change the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. Cahill describes how the ancient world, no matter what culture or part of the world, knew nothing of an almighty, all-powerful Creator God until the Israelites came along. Heathens, by contrast, believed in gods, plural, who were just like them, only more powerful. Now humanity had agency, meaning they could change things, and that did in fact change everything! It was Christianity that brought this Hebrew conception of reality to the entire world, and without Christianity the world would be a much less pleasant place.

However, I must offer one caveat before the non sequiturs start flying. I am not saying all sowing guarantees reaping wonderful, positive results. We can’t guarantee anything and are in control of nothing. We can live out Proverbs to the T, grow wealthy and prosperous, and a plane can fall out of the sky on our house and kill us. A farmer’s beautiful crops can be wiped out by a tornado or hurricane, or locusts. The point in a way isn’t even about the results of our sowing, although of course it is. Rather it is trusting God. This trusting Him, or not, is the most important lesson I’ve learned in my four plus decades walking with Jesus, and learning just how much I suck at it. I’m always tempted to worry, doubt, fear, anxiety, i.e., not trusting Him, so daily I repent of my lack thereof, and plead for God to help me to trust Him.

I can relate to the story of Jesus healing a boy of an unclean spirit told in Mark 9. The father is desperate to have Jesus heal his boy who had a spiritual and physical malady since he was a child, and he pleads with Jesus to heal him. He specifically asks if Jesus can do anything about it, and Jesus said if the man can believe, all things are possible for those who believe (i.e., trust). I love the father’s desperate reply (in the KJV):

24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

I often pray, sometimes desperately, Lord, I trust you, help thou my lack of trust! And that includes in the cause-and-effect relationship of his creational order in my life. I now read the book of Proverbs through the lens of trust in the God who made the reliable reality spoken of in it.

It was some years ago that I slowly began to learn this lesson because I’m a slow learner. Once I do get something, though, I really do get it. I’ve always been the kind of person naturally lacking trust in God, who was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yeah, this or that great thing happened, but maybe disaster is right around the corner. To say this is dishonoring to God would be a massive understatement. Somewhere along the way in all my listening to learn, I heard someone reference Proverbs 10:22, and I was instantly convicted:

ESV: The blessing of the LORD makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.

NIV: The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, without painful toil for it.

NIV 1978: The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it.

The idea is simple but obviously hard for many of us to accept: God just flat out wants to bless us! As I very often talk about here, he doesn’t want us to live in worry, fear, doubt, or anxiety, and even commands we don’t engage in such harmful futility. What do those things come from after all? An imagination of disaster, and disasters that 99% of the time never happen! We live in the future unpleasantness that doesn’t exist instead of the present pleasantness that does. How dumb is that! We’re sinners, it comes naturally.

Clearly God wants us to succeed at life. What that looks like will obviously be different for each one of us, but he hasn’t kept the recipe for success a secret. We can be sure of one thing, though; it isn’t going to fall out of the sky on our head. Nor will we get “lucky,” hit the lottery, or get to home without going to first, second, and third.

The first several chapters of Proverbs talk about wisdom, and how important it is to search for it and seek it and do everything we can to get it. It is we’re told, more precious than gold or silver. If we do seek it, work at getting it, we’re promised the payoff will be huge. I guess the question for all of us is, how hard do we really seek it and work at getting it. The plethora of resources at our fingertips today is stunning. The contrast is remarkable even to fifteen or twenty years ago, unimaginable even in the last century. Growing in knowledge that leads to wisdom is available to anyone who really wants it.

I have a strong conviction related to this seeking of wisdom. The more knowledge I have about more things, the more resources God can use teach me wisdom. However, growing in our knowledge must lead to a deep humility. Isn’t it obvious why that would be the case? The more we know the more we realize we don’t know. It’s like coming upon a trickle of water in a dry land and following it to its source only to find out it’s as massively large and as seemingly endless as the Great Lakes! In this vein I Corinthians 8:2 has become an encouragement to continue to realize how very little I really know: “If anyone thinks he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know.” Our knowing should be done lightly and with humility, and our knowledge used in service and love for others. Having this privilege is part of the health and wealth gospel of Proverbs because humility and loving others is woven throughout its pages.

Lastly, if we really want to be healthy and wealthy in a God honoring way, we have to be willing to question everything, and be willing change our minds about things we once held as certainties. This is a corollary of I Corinthians 8:2. Because we know so little about everything, we should at the least be willing, in humility, to consider new information and knowledge. Certainty is a good thing, but it can become a bad thing if we hold what we think we know so tightly we become deluded into thinking we own it. As if we were so omniscient that we could not possibly be wrong. Proverbs at the least teaches us that we need to be continually reminded what a gospel of true health and wealth looks like.

 

Jordan Peterson, Christianity, and the Human Psyche: It’s Complicated

Jordan Peterson, Christianity, and the Human Psyche: It’s Complicated

Nov 22, 2022 | Epistemology - Trust, Uncategorized

Jordan Peterson exploded on the scene six or seven years ago because he refused to bend the knee to woke orthodoxy. At the time he was a typical Canadian liberal, but the left drove him to the right. YouTube helped get his ideas into the mainstream, and his book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos, released in 2018 made him a sensation. It was especially meaningful for young men who have had their masculinity emasculated by the woke leftist secular culture. In case you’re not familiar with him, Peterson is a clinical psychologist and ex-professor. A 2019 documentary about him is a good introduction to the man, what drives him, and the reaction to him.

The Covid tyranny, which was especially bad in Canada, was what drove Peterson to finally fully embrace conservativism. Like many of us, he’s been red-pilled. And like many ex-liberals (liberal in the classical sense, not the progressive perversion of it) he has been stunned by the leftist takeover of what used to be a politics that believed in liberty. He’s realized a cultural version of Marxism is now what drives the left side of the political/cultural spectrum. The video below is a discussion specifically about the trans insanity that dominates Western culture and education. I’m not writing about that specifically, only to give you a good example of how the man thinks, and why it’s appealing to me, and so many others.

Although not an orthodox Christian yet, as far as I can tell, he’s an extremely effective apologist for Christianity. He comes at everything from a deeply psychological and nuanced perspective, and more than most he realizes Christianity is the foundation of Western civilization. More than that, he argues it uniquely gives meaning to human existence in the deepest sense (which is a favorite phrase of his, as is technically). If you watch/listen to the video, you’ll see how he challenges his interlocutor’s agnosticism/atheism. She fails to realize the only reason she’s repulsed by the trans insanity is Christianity!

What makes him especially appealing to me is that he gets the complexity of human existence and the human psyche. In fact, he says that in the video, that it’s complicated. Christians, as well as human beings in general, are given to simplistic thinking in dichotomous terms, either/or, one way or the other, black or white. We are perfectly free to view people this way but it’s not an accurate assessment of the human beings we encounter throughout our lives. This dichotomous thinking also applies to what we think we know or the knowledge we have.

If we’re to love people as we’re commanded, it helps to realize and accept that life is terribly complicated and messy. As they’ve grown up, I’ve taught my kids that every person they encounter has a history, and they are who they are as they stand in front of them because of that history. They’re not being, and you pick the annoying trait, obstinate or frustrating or petty or domineering, just to annoy us. It’s who they are! God brings them to us to teach us how to love them, not to insist they love us. It’s amazing how easy that is to get that backwards.

Related to this, I’ve learned from Peterson how little I know about how human beings, how the human psyche works. It reminds me of what has become one of my favorite verses as I’ve grown older and realize the more I know, the more I know I don’t know. In I Corinthians 8:2, Paul tells us:

The one who thinks he knows something does not know yet know as he ought to know.

As I always make sure people understand when I quote it, this is not a call for skepticism or cynicism, that’s we can’t know, or have confidence in what we think we know. Rather because of what Paul says in verse 1, that we all have knowledge, it’s a call for epistemological humility, which most people tend to lack. We always think we know more than we actually know.

It took me decades to begin to understand how little I really know, and in light of the infinitude of knowledge (because it all comes from our infinite Creator God), that is vanishingly small. When I was a young know-it-all, I saw my knowledge as earth size, not infinite for sure, but pretty impressive. As time went on that shrank to the size of a basketball, then in due course a golf ball (to bring up bad memories), and finally a pebble. Now I realize it’s the size of an atom! Invisible to the naked eye; that’s how little I know.

Again, it’s very important to understand what I am not saying. I know a lot, more than the average bear, but what’s more important is what I don’t know. That allows me to hold on to the knowledge I do have lightly, if tenaciously. My convictions about what I think I know are as strong as they’ve ever been, but I realize I’m looking at one grain of sand from all the seashores and deserts of the world, and then that doesn’t really capture it. My conclusion? We know confidently in humility. Our knowledge is to be used in love to the glory of God, for our good, and the good of others.

On Dying Well and the Fear of Death

On Dying Well and the Fear of Death

Nov 19, 2022 | Epistemology - Trust, Uncategorized

Fear is endemic to the human condition in a fallen world, and everyone is afraid of death, as are all living things, animals, fish, birds, insects, all flee in fear of their demise. While their fear is instinctual, human beings can think about death. I’ve thought about it as long as I can remember, and in this I’m not unique. Look what the covid scam and the tyrannical response to it did to the entire world. The panic porn of the media, politicians, and government officials created a worldwide fear pandemic . . . of death.

I recently listened to an excellent discussion of this fear with J.P. Moreland, a philosophy professor, scholar, and apologist, who happens to be a friend and family member. Several years back, J.P. experienced severe panic attacks and depression, and went on to write a book about it called Finding Quiet: My Story of Overcoming Anxiety and the Practices that Brought Peace. It’s interesting listening to the podcast knowing all he went through to get to the other side. You’ll hear how it all comes down to trust, which in Greek (pistis) is translated often as faith and belief.

I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older and wiser, thank you God, that living in fear is not good, nor healthy, nor does it honor God. This doesn’t mean fear isn’t at times justified because fear is a natural God-given human response to threat. It also reflects the fact that death is unnatural and wrong, that it wasn’t an intended feature of God’s created reality until man messed it all up.

Everyone regardless of what they believe knows this, but it is only Christians and their Jewish forbearers who give us the reason why. If there is no God, if atheistic materialism is true, then death is in fact natural and there is absolutely nothing “wrong” with it at all, other than we just don’t prefer it. So, do I prefer death or life today? Well, sir, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take life, just a little longer anyway. No, death is ugly and wrong and evil, and I don’t want it, ever! Thankfully, we don’t have to die! I’ll tell you why in a moment.

A saying related to this topic is without a doubt true: death makes cowards of us all. On the other hand, Jesus can make us courageous in the face of death. I’ve been learning this as I’ve grown older riding the freight train to the grave, and have grown to despise fear, whether it’s related to death or anything else. The reason for this loathing is not so much because it’s unpleasant to be fearful, which it most certainly is, but because it dishonors God. Fear, and its attendant worry, anxiety, and doubt, is also sin.

A family member recently shared with me a vivid metaphor for this sin. She said it’s like a cape which is always on your back ready to overcome you, like the proverbial sword of Damocles. I then asked her a question which surprised her: Have you ever repented for this? Her look was perplexity, like she was thinking, that’s a strange question. She hadn’t repented, nor had I until not too many years ago. Now I repent of it every day because I’m so easily knee-jerk fashion given to this sin. If we’re commanded to not fear, worry, or be anxious, then to have fear, worry, or anxiety is sin. Stop it! As we know, very much easier said than done, but it is nonetheless sin.

The amazing truth I’ve learned, the very hard way as is my wont, is that I don’t have to fear (worry, be anxious, etc.). It’s a choice. I am confronted with this either/or every time life does what life does, trust the Lord, or “trust” the circumstances. In our day we might say the choice is binary, 1 or 0, a fork in the road. If you haven’t had a lot of practice at this, it can be really hard, but as you build the trust muscle, making the choice to trust the Lord God Almighty gets easier. The freedom trust brings is hard to describe until you experience it. In a recent church service, our pastor quoted these verses from Psalm 112 that resonated with me:

7 He will have no fear of bad news;
his hearts is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.
8 His hearts is secure, he will have no fear;
in the end he will look in triumph on his foes.

The context is the man who “fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments.” We can fear the Lord or fear our circumstances, which will it be? As we become aware of the dichotomy, that there is no middle ground, the choosing becomes easier somehow. Then we get to witness God work in us and in our circumstances. Thy will be done . . . .

Here is a little secret I’ll share. If we can’t give thanks for the circumstances (all of them), we don’t trust the Lord. I know, it ain’t easy!

As for death, I’ve found in that too it becomes easier to resist the fear, although never completely. For me, the successful resistance is rooted in Jesus’ words to Martha in John 11, which is really a challenge to us all. As her brother Lazarus lay in the tomb four days and having no idea Jesus was about to bring him back to life, he told her that her brother would rise again. She thought he meant at the last day as all Jews believed, but Jesus as he often did, said something completely unexpected:

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Remember pistis. Jesus isn’t saying do you intellectually assent to my position and ability to do this, but do you trust me. The Greek verb form John uses is important, the present indicative active, or actions that are currently being performed in the present; thus the challenge. This ain’t no one time thing, it’s an all the time thing. When the fear (doubt, worry, anxiety) hits (and the temptation to commit these sins in a fallen world in a fallen body among fallen people never ends) will we trust Jesus or not. That is the question.

How Do We Measure Up When the Trust Challenge Comes?

How Do We Measure Up When the Trust Challenge Comes?

Feb 25, 2022 | Epistemology - Trust

As I’ve grown older and God has mercifully continued to work his amazing process of sanctification in me, I’ve realized the number one sin of my existence has nothing to do with morality. It’s easy for Christians, me included, to fall into the trap of thinking conformity to external moral standards is proof of sanctification. In reality, that is only tangentially true. What Jesus transformed in our redemption and accomplished on the cross is what Paul called “the inner man” (2 Cor. 4:16, Eph. 3:16. Rom. 7:22,23).  This was a radical change from everything that came before because until Jesus, religion was about external conformity, not inner transformation. That is still the case, and a temptation for every Christian. I heard Tim Keller say once that every human being is by nature “religious,” meaning we naturally think favor with God is earned by moral performance. In fact, the gospel often terrifies us. Which is why the gospel is so counter intuitive to us, and the greatest news ever. (more…)

Epistemology and Organic Food

Epistemology and Organic Food

Aug 25, 2021 | Epistemology - Trust

Now that’s a real click bate title! I bet there’s never been one like it. What in the world does it mean? Well, I’m glad you asked. We all have heard of organic food, you know, stuff that’s natural and supposedly better for you than non-organic stuff. It supposedly doesn’t have pesticides or GMOs if it comes out of the ground, or isn’t given hormones or antibiotics if it’s fish, fowl, or mammal. For the latter, they’re supposed to be grass fed or cage free, and live their short lives not part of the big industrial machinery food industry. Most people know that. But what about epistemology? Far fewer have ever heard the word, let lone what it means. That’s a shame because it’s something they encounter every day of their lives whether they know it or not. That’s what it is, what we know, how we know, why we know, and the study thereof. Or think we do. But, what in the world does epistemology have to do with organic food? More than you might think. (more…)