Tuesday, November 19, 2024

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READ: Ecclesiastes 10

A feast is prepared for laughter, 
and wine makes life happy,
and money is the answer for everything. 
Ecclesiastes 10:19

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When I was little I remember arguing with my siblings that a swan was a swand; it was spelled with a “d.” I have no idea why, but I was convinced that it rhymed with wand.  

When I was in elementary school, I told my friends that no one knew what caused Aurora Borealis and that was proof for God. Later, I was convinced that they were caused by moonlight shining off the snow. 

When I was in high school, I said that the earth must be young because if the universe were as old as materialistic science suggested, the Lunar Module would have disappeared in moon dust upon landing. 

When I was a twenty-year-old youth pastor, I said that apologetics were dead and that if the next generation would be convinced of the existence of God, they would need to see signs and wonders. 

When I was in my second position as a youth pastor, I came to believe that the size of a congregation was a sure sign of God’s favour. 

But swan has no “d” and it doesn’t rhyme with wand.

Also, the Northern Lights show up in summer, blowing my snow hypothesis to dust, and we know that they are caused by charged particles engaging gas around the poles. We won’t even get into why that was a ridiculous reason to believe in God.   

And the moon-dust argument has even been excused from the table of young-earth Creationists. They have a whole list of debunked young-earth arguments which should no longer be used.^[1]

Carrying on, the youth pastor who thought apologetics was dead went on to study philosophy and theistic arguments for two years and accumulated over 450 pages of evidence supporting my faith. I still have and appreciate spiritual experiences, but have come to believe miracles are far, far, far less than many Christians would have us believe. 

Finally, if nothing less, the idea that the size of a church is evidence of God’s favour is certainly undermined by a cascade of fallen mega-church leaders. (Many of whom were the ones who convinced me of the aforementioned evidence.) 

Now, we can appreciate that kids believe, say, and spell things wrong all the time. But what if your kid came home from middle school and reported that Mr. Fast spelled swan, swand, and insisted that he was right? 

Huh? 

Or what if Ms. Graham taught your 9^th grader that the Northern Lights are caused by refracted moonlight on arctic snow? 

We would call the school board! 

But what if your kid’s youth pastor said that the earth is only a few thousand years old even though virtually every scientific textbook suggests otherwise? You would turn around and say, “Well, that is kind of what the Bible suggests.” 

To which they reply, “Ok, but Pastor Thom also said that the Bible says ‘money is the answer for everything.’” 

Now we call the CHURCH board. 

Hold up. The Bible really does say that about money and you don’t like it, but the Bible also says that we will do even greater things than Jesus did! And we LOVE that. 

Should we make this even crazier? The same guy who said that “money is the answer to everything” got that money by telling God he didn’t want money (or fame), but just wisdom! Then he GOT wisdom, fame, and money, and acted the fool. He’s the one who said that the pursuit of money is vanity – but depending on your disposition, we aren’t sure if we like that better or worse than “money is the answer to everything.” 

I’m going to make two suggestions; one which is just a good idea for how to read your Bible and one that some people won’t like. Let’s do number two first. Just because something is in the inspired Word of God doesn’t make it true – or at least not in the way we assume. That should hardly be controversial because Solomon literally contradicts himself on whether making money is great or foolish. (Jesus did too, by the way.) 

Second, if #1 is true, then context could not be more important. First, we have to consider the context of when things were said. Twenty-year-olds see the world very differently than ninety-year-olds. Young adults tend to be idealists. Guess how old Solomon was when he became king? Yup, twenty. 

(Side note: Solomon screwed things up for every idealistic twenty-year-old who came after him… I wanted wisdom when I was twenty but I secretly hoped the Solomon deal was still on the table where God gives people wealth and fame along with the wisdom… I knew that if I secretly wanted that, God probably wouldn’t give me any of it. Thanks Solomon.)

Solomon didn’t stay twenty! He grew up and that wisdom became knowledge and the two should never be conflated as the same. His world got all mixed up! Was it wisdom that brought him hundreds of wives and consorts? Perhaps it started as wisdom – as a plan to maintain geo-political stability, but then it got out of control and as wise as Solomon was he didn’t anticipate having to placate his haram with false idols. 

And that’s how we arrive at “money is the answer for everything;” a statement so wildly different from the young adult king. But perhaps there is some context here that we are missing. Because as surely as we know that swan is d-less and there is a scientific explanation for the Northern Lights, we know that money is not the answer for everything. 

Many scholars believe that Ecclesiastes is written from a worldly or godless perspective. Call it a thought experiment, a bad funk, or the grumpy writing of a man with 700 wives, whatever you call it, it makes far more sense when you see it in this context. All is vanity? Only if there is no God. Become wise, or stay foolish, at the end of the day, nothing matters, there is no God. Rules, paupers, merchants, or warriors… they all live and then die. Death is the great equalizer. 

And you know what? You might as well spend whatever money you have on rich food and getting drunk because while you are alive on this godless, flat earth, that’s basically the best you can do. 

But here’s the thing, the big thing… some people ignore context to use God’s inspired Word to justify whatever belief they deem true. If you want to believe that God heals everyone, that he wants everyone to be rich (and get drunk), or that a definitive sign of God’s favour is the size of a congregation, you’ll likely be able to find a verse to support that, but you also might end up looking as foolish as an English teacher insisting swan is spelled swand. 

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^[1] https://creation.com/arguments-we-think-creationists-should-not-use