There’s this old joke. Two elderly women are in a Catskills Mountain
Life is a sexually transmitted disease and there is a 100 percent mortality rate. --R.D. Laing
If you want my final opinion on the mystery of life and all that, I can give it to you in a nutshell. The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
--Peter De Vries
In my opinion Ecclesiastes is one of the most powerful books found within the biblical text. This is especially true when one is engaged (as all Christians should be) in the task of evangelism. One might be tempted to dismiss this claim. Upon an initial reading of the book, it appears to be one of the least likely candidates of the biblical books to be an evangelical apparatus. Furthermore, the overall idea presented in Ecclesiastes appears to be out of joint when it is placed side by side with the other tomes in the canon--“Vanity of Vanities.” The futility and meaninglessness, the utter pain-filled absurdity of life is often the strongest and most common argument which nonbelievers confront Christians with when attempting to refute the life of faith. Why would we give them a book with biblical authority as further ammunition? Why not use one of the Gospels, which purports to give an answer to their anxious question, rather than present them with material that simply seems to echo their objections to the truth which we are attempting to convince them of? I have two good reasons for thinking that presenting the book of Ecclesiastes to seekers and skeptics is a very practical evangelical stratagem.
The first, and I believe most important, reason is precisely that the main question found within the book of Ecclesiastes does mirror that asked by angst-ridden, modern man. As John Stott, Francis Schaffer, and many other apologists have made clear, the best way to reason with your fellow man is to meet him on “his level.” This is the reason that I approach skeptics, atheists, and agnostics with the book of Ecclesiastes rather than with one of the four Gospels. This allows them to reassert the most painful question of the human heart, the question asked by both the author of Ecclesiastes and Job:
Everything is boring, utterly boring – no one can find any meaning in it.
---- The Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 1, verse 7 (The Message Translation)
Why didn’t I die at birth, my first breath out of the womb my last? Why were there arms to rock me, and breasts for me to drink from? I could be resting in peace right now, asleep forever, feeling no pain, in the company of kings and statesmen in their royal ruins, or with princes resplendent in their gold and silver tombs. Why wasn’t I stillborn and buried with all the babes who never saw the light, where the wicked no longer trouble anyone and bone-weary people get a long deserved rest? Prisoners sleep undisturbed, never again to wake up to the bark of the guards. The small and the great are equals in that place, the slaves are free from their masters. ----The Book of Job, Chapter 3, verses 11-19 (The Message Translation)
In other words, the skeptic asks, “Is there an ultimate purpose, a raison d'être (reason for being), at the center of human existence?” The language of the Book of Ecclesiates corresponds in a very real way to that used by the twentieth century’s sainted philosopher, Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, especially in his novel La Nausee.
As the modern theologian and philosopher, Peter Kreeft, states, “Whenever I teach the Bible as a whole, I always begin with Ecclesiastes. In another age we could begin with God’s beginning, Genesis. But in this age, the Age of Man, we must begin where our patient is; we must begin with Ecclesiastes.” (Kreeft, 20) The cynical existentialist will find comfort in no other biblical book like he does in Ecclesiastes; for it is a mirror, and within the context of its pane (pain) modern man finally recognizes his face. This leads me to my second point: the need to awaken modern man from his slumber, or to get modern man to re-ask the question regarding life’s purpose.
One reason I do not believe it is wise to approach a skeptic with the Gospel texts initially is the simple fact that the Gospels provide the individual with The Answer to the question with regard to life’s ultimate purpose. This last statement seems to violate apologetic reasoning. Do we not want to provide the skeptic with the answers to their questions and lead them to the Gospel, to the Truth. I must admit that this is the ultimate end for the Christian apologist; however, we cannot lead someone to an answer, not the least to The Answer, if they do not properly understand the question to which The Answer (Christ) is responding. This is the second reason that I begin with Ecclesiastes when I am introducing the Gospel message to a skeptic or nonbeliever. Ecclesiastes reasserts, with painful clarity, the original philosophical quandary: What is human existence for? After all, if we cannot find purpose in money, pleasure, power, or intellectual prowess, as Ecclesiastes claims we cannot, where is meaning to be found? As Peter Kreeft mentions in his book, Three Philosophies of Life, “…Ecclesiastes is the contrast, the alternative, to the rest of the Bible, the question to which the rest of the Bible is the answer. There is nothing more meaningless than an answer without its question. That is why we need Ecclesiastes.” (Kreeft, 19)
To see this point in a more humorous way one must consult the writings of Douglas Adams, specifically the 27th and 28th chapters of his novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In this portion of this most amusing work of fiction a couple of extraterrestrial scientists are in dialogue with a supercomputer, in fact The Supercomputer. The E.T. scientists main concern is to discover the ultimate meaning of life. “What’s it all about Alfie?” Or in this case, “What’s it all about Deep Thought (as this is the computer’s name in the novel)?” The alien researchers are shocked when Deep Thought reveals that the answer to the ultimate query is the number 42. After a couple of heated words are exchanged by the scientists, the computer interjects and offers a solution to their new problem:
“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”
“But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything,” howled Loonquawl [one of the E.T. Scientists].
“Yes,” said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, “but what actually is it?” (Adams , 121)
One should be able to recognize the dilemma in which modern science and philosophy (especially Deconstruction/Postmodernism) find themselves within the context of the previous dialogue. Modern man repeatedly and fallaciously assumes that he knows and understands life’s ultimate question and does not need to bother with the elementary task of asking it again. Perhaps he only pretends to be “seeking” an answer like a small child playing pirate, searching for a treasure that he “knows” does not exist. Ecclesiastes reacquaints us with the question; it rubs our noses in it. The author of Ecclesiastes points, in much the same way as an elderly schoolmaster would, toward the data presented to us by the universe and demands that we recognize the problem. According to Kreeft, “Ecclesiastes is the one book in the Bible that modern man needs to read, for it is Lesson One, and the rest of the Bible is Lesson Two, and modernity does not heed Lesson Two because it does not heed Lesson One” (20). It is for this reason that I believe that Ecclesiastes is one of the best and most overlooked evangelical tool in the Christian’s arsenal.
Sources Cited
Adams, Douglas. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide. London
Kreeft, Peter. Three Philosophies of Life. San Francisco
All of the Biblical passages cited in this article are taken from The Message translation; Eugene Peterson, Colorado Springs
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