Growing up Fundamentalist meant growing up reading a lot of the Bible. Sad? Read the Bible. Happy? Read the Bible. Confused about love or life or the Bible? Read the Bible.
As a teenager and young adult I read at least one Psalm or Proverb everyday. I liked these books. They fit how I understood the Bible. I didn't read a lot of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes didn't fit. After all, an instruction manual shouldn't say one thing was good and then say it was "Vapor of vapor." (Ecc. 1:2)
This meant that when I sat down to read Ecclesiastes this week I had read the book fewer than five times.
Honestly, I was afraid.
What if even now Ecclesiastes came up as a giant question mark to me? What would I do if I read a book of scripture and couldn't conjure even a weak purpose behind it?
Last week I was pondering what to make of a remembrance of decay. This week Ecclesiastes called me to rejoice in the remembrance of death. Yes, I said rejoice in the remembrance of death.
Death in Ecclesiastes is especially hard. It doesn't have the familiar hand holds I've long used for death. No resurrection. No life after death. No promise that the time of death is in God's plan for a greater good. According to the teacher, there is no action, no memory, not even praise of God after death.
Not disheartening enough yet? The teacher goes on to say that not even memory will remain of those who die. No memory of the wicked. No memory of the righteous. (e.g. Ecclesiastes 1:11)
That hurts.
But when I open up to what is being said something changes. When I read Ecclesiastes this week I wasn't depressed. No, I read the remembrance of death and was encouraged.
Hang on with me while I try to explain.
You see, I'm a perfectionist. No, really. I want to be able to know what it is you want from me and fulfill that wish--all before you even voice it and making it look effortless. I'll leave it to your imagination then how much more I've acted that way towards God.
So Ecclesiastes?
Perfectionism has some good to it, but it also causes pressure. Anything short of the ideal becomes utter failure. There is an awful pressure to choose, to say, to do the perfectly apt thing the first time. It is crippling.
For years I have not written long-form for fear of the first draft. Why fear? Because the first draft would not be the final draft. I could not bear to write something imperfect and so I chose to hide instead of live.
It's in that moment that the Teacher encourages me.
It is in this moment that hearing that both the wise and foolish alike die frees me from fear of failure. Either way I will die. But this voice says, "Yes, you will die so live well. Enjoy what comes from the hand of God and know that it will not always be what you deserve."
Once that would have sounded fatalist to me. Once that would have seemed like selling God short. But not this reading. Not this Lent.
According to the Teacher, Ecclesiastes is a search for wisdom and understanding. The book has different voices, poetry, and proverbs--confusing proverbs.
In all those voices, in those confusing proverbs the Teacher reminds us that we are creatures of God. Like the animals we will return to dust, like them we were made. Like them we should enjoy the gifts that God sends--rain and light, harvest and sleep, work and knowledge, beauty and love.
Taking wisdom from the simplicity of animals after whole books like Proverbs seems odd. Yet it is not so great a stretch when we remember Psalm 148. That every created thing from moon and stars to insects praises the Lord in being what it was made to be.
So often we are not like the animals. In our desire for perfection or in our fatalism we forget to live. Instead of enjoying the good work and the good food, we try to "feed on the wind." (Ecc. 2:11)
I cannot help but hear this as freedom. Freedom to love God and do good. Not out of fear of punishment or hope of reward, but for love of God. Freedom to enjoy the gifts of God and help those in need. Not in despair or striving against God's order, but because we were made to do so.
Why waste this "one wild and precious life" in crippling fear of messing up or reckless abandon into evil when you can live with an open heart?
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