Life can be incredibly fun and meaningful, but it also can be incredibly difficult and frustrating. Sometimes we feel great, and sometimes we feel deeply discouraged. Sometimes we believe we make a difference, and sometimes we wonder whether we matter at all. In many ways, these conflicting feelings reveal the human condition.
We find the interplay of these emotions throughout the book of Ecclesiastes. On one hand, the Teacher, the author of Ecclesiastes, lamented everything is futile; on the other hand, he instructed us to enjoy life. How can we enjoy life if everything is futile? I propose life may seem futile but, for the person who fears God and keeps His commandments, may also be full of joy and possibility.
Futility
Within the opening and concluding refrains of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher lamented everything is futile or vain (1:2; 12:8). Some translations even use the word meaningless, although I do not agree with that translation. Undoubtedly, the concept of futility is a dominant theme in the book, appearing nearly forty times. The Teacher sounded as though he is saying nature, history, work, wisdom, pleasure, justice, words, and more are ultimately futile (e.g., 1:8, 14; 2:1, 17). However, elsewhere, the Teacher affirmed the importance of these things. How then should we interpret his teaching?
Some aspects of life are vain in one sense but not in another. Part of the challenge in comprehending the Teacher’s meaning is due to our contemporary understanding of words like futility and vanity. In today’s English, these words communicate the idea something is meaningless or pointless. However, if God is sovereignly renewing all things — even bad things, even seemingly wasted things, according to His purposes (e.g., Ephesians 1:10; Revelation 21:5) — then how can anything be pointless? In fact, the word translated vanity (h??el) literally means “vapor” or “breath.” To illustrate, the psalmist David used the same word when he said our lives are like a vapor (Psalm 39:5; James 4:14).
In other words, these things are not without meaning or purpose, but our lives “under the sun” are short-lived (Ecclesiastes 1:3). Our accomplishments of labor, wisdom, pleasure, and justice are short-lived (3:11, 14; 12:5) and then ultimately forgotten (9:5). For this reason, the wise person does not turn these temporary pursuits into idols since they do not satisfy the deepest desires for meaning and significance.
However, the Teacher was not saying we should reject these pursuits altogether. Rather, we should put them in their proper place, so we might know true contentedness, true happiness, true joy.
Contentment
In many ways, the Teacher’s point was not unlike the message of Psalm 1. The psalmist presented two paths: the way of the righteous person who flourishes like a tree planted firmly by the waters (verses 1–3) and the way of the wicked person who blows away like chaff in the wind (verses 4–6). Likewise, the Teacher presented two paths: the way of joy and the way of despair. The righteous person places the pursuits of work, knowledge, pleasure, and justice under the lordship of God and thereby finds joy in those pursuits. But the wicked person makes them into idols, leading to despair.
The Teacher repeatedly returned to the theme of happiness or joy throughout Ecclesiastes (2:10; 3:12, 22; 4:16; 5:19; 8:15; 10:19; 11:8–9). This word (??mêa?) translates alternatively as be happy or rejoice. Even so, sometimes people contrast the ideas of happiness and joy as if the former is fleeting but the latter is lasting. However, happiness, like other words, has a wide range of meaning from a light connotation to a more substantive one. We recognize this truth with other words: we love pizza and we love our spouses, yet we recognize a world of difference between them.
Similarly, happiness of one sort may be fleeting, especially when based in an improper object (idolatry). But happiness of another sort may be lasting when it is based in God’s purposes. F. Leroy Forlines recognized this point when he subtitled his ethics book Ethics for Happier Living. In other words, biblical happiness is what we sometimes call joy. Thus, although the Teacher described futility, his purpose was not ultimately to leave readers in despair but to show them the path to true happiness.
The Teacher explicitly stated God has given men and women the ability to find joy in the following:
Work, labor, or toil (Ecclesiastes 2:24;
3:13, 22; 5:18; 9:7);
Food and drink (2:24–25; 3:13; 5:18; 8:15; 9:7);
Wisdom and knowledge (2:26);
Wealth and possessions (5:19; cf. 2:26); and
Family (9:9).
The Teacher could describe “nothing better” than such things (2:24; 3:22; 8:15). He described them as “good and comely” (5:18), the “gift of God” (3:13), and said He “now accepteth” them (9:7). Even the joy itself resulting from such objects is a gift from God “from the hand of God” (2:24).
Significantly, true happiness is not available to all people. Specifically, the Teacher explained it is not available to the wicked for whom such pursuits are like “vexation of spirit” (1:14; 2:11, 17; 4:4, 6, 16; 6:9). True joy is not derived from accumulating the most stuff, learning the most information, having the most fun, or doing the most good. From personal experience, it seems, the Teacher knew these paths do not lead to lasting joy. For that reason, he advanced numerous dialectics, introducing sections by phrases like “I communed with mine heart” or “I said in mine heart” (1:16; 2:1).
Instead, for any person to experience lasting contentment, he or she must be righteous, the result of fearing God and keeping His commandments. After the refrain “vanity, vanity” at the end of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher included a coda in which he states:
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (verses 13–14).
Ultimately, everything has meaning of some kind because everything is subject to God’s commandments and His judgments (3:17; 11:9). A person may find happiness in his pursuits only if he places them under the lordship of the sovereign God. To fear God means to revere, venerate, and worship Him. As the proverb says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (1:7). The Teacher’s point was not to reject the pursuits of work, wisdom, play, and justice because they are meaningless but to submit them to God’s purposes. God has formed our bones in the womb (Ecclesiastes 11:5) and has foreknown and foreordained our days (6:10); therefore, we can trust Him.
Although the pursuits of life are futile in themselves, they are not ultimately futile in God’s hands because they last eternally: “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him” (3:14). The things we do under God’s lordship last forever. Certainly, the good things are meaningful, lasting into eternity. Yet even what seems to fail is meaningful; failure is a harsh but effective teacher that may shape us for the better. What seems like a failure in the moment may signify success in eternity.
Whether or not we can discern God’s purposes, we have this promise from the Teacher: whatever God does will endure forever. Therefore, if God gifts it to us, we can enjoy it and know it has significance, even when it seems to be temporary. In our feelings of futility, even grief, we find hope that nothing is futile in God’s hands.
The Teacher’s theology of contentment is reiterated throughout the New Testament (Philippians 4:11; 1 Timothy 6:6, 8; Hebrews 13:5). Although God has given us each different roles in life, He wants us to find joy in what He has given us: labor, food, knowledge, wealth, and family. Still, in all this discussion of true happiness, the Teacher was not saying we cannot be sad. He fully acknowledged a time to weep and laugh, a time to mourn and dance (3:4). But beneath the circumstances of life lies an abiding confidence in God’s provision. Or, as the Apostle Paul stated, we do not grieve as people without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). True joy, happiness, and contentment in the Lord equips the person to weather the worst of life’s storms.
Ecclesiastes is a book about the human condition, answering our feelings of meaninglessness and angst. But Ecclesiastes is not ultimately a book of despair — at least for the believer — but rather a book of happiness and hope. It teaches us to think rightly about the ordinary things of life. The world has deep problems, and sometimes we are tempted to despair. But thanks be to our good and sovereign God who does not let our work in His will go to waste and allows us to know happiness. By fearing God and keeping His commandments, our pursuits of work, knowledge, pleasure, and justice may have meaning into eternity even when we cannot see it. This is the path to human happiness.
About the Writer: Matthew Steven Bracey is assistant vice provost for academic administration and professor of theology and culture at Welch College. Learn more: Welch.edu. Adapted from an essay on HelwysSocietyForum.com.
