Page 126 - The Poetic Books - Student Text

One should not be surprised at oppression. It happens frequently and is usually caused by the love of
money. Oppressors increase their goods but only do so at their own destruction. They do not benefit
except to have something to look at. The simple
laborer is better off being able to sleep at night
(5:8-12). How often is wealth horded to the
harm of its owners! At times wealth is lost
through misfortune, but we all die eventually
and can take nothing with us. Then what good is
all that toil (5:13-17). No, there is nothing better
than to eat, to drink, and to find satisfaction in
life. In fact, it is a great gift to be able to enjoy
life whether a person is rich or poor (5:18-20).
You see, sometimes God gives a person lots of
wealth, but they do not give the ability to enjoy
Figure 62: Chinese New Year feast it. Give a person lots of family and lots of wealth
but keep him from enjoying the wealth, and it is
all meaningless. Even if someone lives a thousand years or two thousand years, what good is it?
Everyone dies eventually (6:3-6).

Here is the root of the problem. A person’s appetite is never satisfied. We look at all there is in the world
and want more. It is a chasing after the wind because of our own emptiness (6:7-9). God has designed
life this way, having created us with eternity in our hearts (3:11). The Teacher also wrote that there was
nothing new under the sun (1:9). There is nothing new because “what humanity is has been known”
(6:10). Strikingly he uses the first Hebrew word for man, “adam,” in Genesis 1:26 throughout the
paragraph (6:7 “everyone”, 6:10 “humanity”, 6:11 “anyone”, 6:12 “person” and “them”, almost 50x in
Ecclesiastes). This is what mankind is like at every time and in every place.

The Teacher began this section with what seems to be a common proverb. “What is crooked cannot be
straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted (1:15).” He was anticipating the results of his
exploration. Life is crooked because humans, “adams,” are crooked. Apart from God and his eternity, we
can never be satisfied. “Sin itself can be summarized as ‘I WANT’ or ‘I WANT MORE.’ It is a reckless
consumer.”
208

“Our core problem, says St. Augustine, is that the human heart, ignoring God, turns in on
itself, tries to lift itself, wants to please itself, and ends up debasing itself. The person
who reaches toward God and wants to please God gets, so to speak, stretched by this
move, and ennobled by the transcendence of its object. But the person who curves in on
himself, who wants God’s gifts without God, who wants to satisfy the desires of a
divided heart, ends up sagging and contracting into a little wad.”
209

208 Edward T. Welch, Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave, 202.
209 Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, 62.
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