For the past few weeks I have have been tossing back and forth a thought shared by someone simply in the course of a passing conversation, that one of the core problems in the church today is that we rarely if ever teach about the fallen nature of man. Something about this rings true with me, that the church today has become as tolerant of sin as the world has. Like the repeated formula of the myriad talk shows aired daily, nothing is ever solely the problem of the individual because they’re just a victim. It’s the age-old refrain that no one is ultimately responsible because, “The devil made me do it.”
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I’m not the least bit surprised that someone who does not follow through with a vow they’ve made to God is characterized as a fool. If we spend time in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes studying the context of each example of what God’s Word calls a fool we find it’s not so much the picture of a court jester as it is someone who comes into the presence and knowledge of God but does not follow through with their actions. The biblical definition of a fool is someone who has spiritual experiences but does not allow themselves to be permanently transformed by them. They’re not ignorant of God’s ways — they’ve examined and rejected them.
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An extreme interpretation of this verse might be offered that everything is predestined in advance by God and there’s nothing we can do about it. The more accurate interpretation taken with the whole of Scripture is more likely that everything has to be undertaken in accordance with the will of God, that the will of man is not capable of adding to or detracting from God’s glory. So the proper thing for man to do in the course of his pursuit to come into proper alignment with God’s Word and ways is to “fear Him”.
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There are those predisposed to reliance upon their intellect so it’s natural that they would first and foremost undertake an intellectual search. And just as natural would those predisposed to relying on their feelings undertaking a hedonistic search. But there always seem to be those who define themselves by what they do, so it should be no surprise that they would search for meaning through their personal works.
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Fresh from his futile intellectual search for the meaning of life, Solomon engages in what I would term the “hedonistic” search. Hedonism is actually a well-known extension of the disciplines of philosophy which maintains there is an ultimate importance to pleasure and therefore should be earnestly pursued. In other words it’s a formal school of thought which attempts to find answers in the pursuit of pleasure, not just simply abandoning everything for the sole pursuit of becoming a party animal.
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In order to properly understand and apply the teaching provided in Ecclesiastes it is important to continually re-visit the key phrase which places Solomon’s work in its foremost and proper context: “under the sun”. The scope is limited to life on earth, the boundaries of his applied wisdom to what goes on between birth and death. But it’s also important to understand how Solomon views and evaluates the scope of man’s time on earth, because it is exclusively through the prism of God’s wisdom. In other words, it’s a search conducted according to God’s Word and ways.
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For the past couple of hundred years, the overwhelming majority of efforts provided in the arena of missionary work has originated from Europe and North America. The hosts of what we’d term “western civilized society” have also been the foremost provider of missionaries and related activities to the rest of the world. One of the side effects of these efforts was to not just bring them the Gospel of Christ, but western culture. There are many stories related to the lessons painfully learned that just because a people need to hear and embrace the Good News of Jesus Christ, it does not directly follow that they need to embrace the ways of western cultures from which the messengers originate. One of the marks of “maturing” missionary outreaches these past few decades has been the separation of the Gospel from culture.
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