Year 2, Day 337: Ecclesiastes 7

A Most Unusual Perspective

I wonder how many of us would naturally agree with the opening of Ecclesiastes 7?  Does anyone out there want to step up and say that the day of your death is going to be better than the day of your birth?  Anyone want to agree that you’re better off being mournful than joyful?  Does anyone else think that the wise are in the house of mourning and the fools are in the house of joy?

From a Christian perspective, we might be able to buy into a few of these.  Yes, the day I die is the day I am released from this world and am in the next leg of my journey to standing before my Maker.  So from that perspective the day that I die may be better than the day that I am born.  Perhaps the pessimist club might argue that if you are mourning that things can only look up while if you are joyful things can only get worse.  I suppose these arguments can be made.  But they aren’t particularly natural arguments.

I actually think that Solomon is going for something completely different than we typically read in this passage.  I believe what Solomon is trying to do is to assert a pragmatic lifestyle.  Solomon isn’t saying it is more fun to be associated with mourning and death.  He isn’t even saying that he’d rather be in a place of mourning than a place of mourning than a place of joy.  But he is saying that it is good to be accustomed to and acquainted with such things.  It is good to remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  That sounds downright Good Friday-esque!

We are indeed better served by having knowledge of the dark parts of life than we are served by hiding from that knowledge.  We can go through life with a much more practical approach if we know what it feels like to lose, to experience loss, and to know disappointment.  That doesn’t mean anyone of us really want to dwell there our whole life.  But it does mean that if we know those things are coming in life then the more familiar we are with them the more likely we can cope when the dark parts of life come along.

Overly Righteous

I struggle with Ecclesiastes 7:16 quite a bit.  Solomon tells us to not be overly righteous and to not be too wise.  For me, I think how I respond to this advice depends on what Solomon means by righteous.  If we think Solomon is speaking of eternal righteousness in God, then personally I don’t Solomon could be any more wrong.  Jesus Christ was as spiritually righteous as they come – and I don’t think He should have changed a thing!

However, if Solomon is talking about a worldly righteousness – that is, a righteousness that is based on our actions and what we do – then I think that Solomon is spot on.  What does Jesus say about righteousness in Matthew 6:1-4?  It is good to be righteous – but we need to be righteous for the right reasons.  If we are righteous for our own appearances here on earth then we will receive our reward here and we won’t receive it in heaven.  In that case, Solomon’s words make sense.  It is not worth being overly righteous in the eyes of the world.  {That being said … I’m still holding to my initial struggle in that I don’t believe one ever can be too righteous on a spiritual level.}

The Irony of Solomon’s Snare

Before ending on two brilliant – although somewhat obvious – points, I want to point out the irony of Ecclesiastes 7:26.  Solomon, who had hundreds of wives and concubines and who fell away to the worship of false gods later in his life, lectures the reader here in how the godly man escapes the snare of a woman but the ungodly man is caught up in her snare.  It just goes to show that sometimes we know truth but in our humanity we are absolutely incapable of abiding by it.

For All Have Sinned

Along a similar line, I want to return to Ecclesiastes 7:20.  Surely there is not a righteous person on the earth who never sins.  Can I get an “Amen?”  Paul paraphrases this verse in Romans 3:23 when he says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  Every single one of us sins.  We are all guilty.  The question is not whether or not we will have sin in our life but how we respond to God regarding our sin.

Careful What You Listen To

I’m going to end on Ecclesiastes 7:21.  “Do not take to heart all the things people say about you…”  I was listening to an interview of a former football coach a few days ago.  The advice the coach gave to a new coach was simple.  “Don’t read the bad stuff that they write about you in the paper.  Don’t read the good stuff that they write about you in the paper, either.”  Now, certainly the coach isn’t saying that we shouldn’t praise one another.  But the coach was saying that we have to be careful to not believe all the hype {whether good or bad hype}.  People can always find fault with us.  People can probably always paint us better than we are, too.  The trick is finding and believing the truth and letting people say what they will.

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