Ecclesiastes #5 “The Pursuit Of Wisdom” (Ecc. 1:12-18, 2:12-16)

Ecclesiastes 1:12-18 “I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 15 What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted. 16 I thought to myself, "Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge." 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. 18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.”

Ecclesiastes 2:12-16 “Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly. What more can the king's successor do than what has already been done? 13 I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. 14 The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. 15 Then I thought in my heart, "The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?" I said in my heart, "This too is meaningless."16 For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die!”

I. The Quest For Knowledge And Understanding Is A “Built-In Burden” But it is a burden that is really a blessing! Compare 1:13 with 3:10-11 (“I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”) and you’ll see that this “burden” is really a gift because it pulls us toward eternity – we are inescapably bound to try to find meaning and purpose. It is one thing that separates us from all other creatures – and it is why mankind makes art, we believe in our hearts that life has meaning and connects to something bigger than just us.

II. But It Can Become An Idolatrous Way Of Trying To Take Control Of Life And Avoiding Its Frustration Idolatry is always an attempt to control our world that ends up controlling us. The Age of Reason made an idol of reason (and we still are affected by this, the sins of the fathers), and so too The Information Age has made an idol of knowledge.

1. We live in a world that believes education is the solution to all ills, whether it be teen pregnancy, HIV, or crime. But knowledge by itself cannot correct morals and it can’t correct injustice because the heart is corrupt and education can’t change the heart! (Isaiah 44:20 “a deluded heart misleads him” and Romans 1:21-22) “what is twisted cannot be straightened.” (Ecc. 1:15) 2. And too often the church believes the same thing – that information/education is the cure all. We see this subtlety communicated in worship services that are mostly about communicating information by emphasizing the sermon but giving little emphasis on the sacraments and the other aspects of worship. 3. We love to be in the know (like “CNN Junkies”), but do we really need to know and does it really help us deal with life’s frustration, or does it just increase our anguish? (Ecc. 1:18) - Maybe this explains why Jesus - who had perfect knowledge, was a man of sorrows! 4. Seeking knowledge as a way to control life is a very popular strategy, but how much knowledge is enough? There is always information you don’t know, and maybe the crucial piece of information, no matter how much you studied, will elude you just when you need it. Knowledge doesn’t make a very good savior after all – it lets us down eventually. 5. And actually more knowledge has often increased suffering! Remember, the people in Germany who supported the Holocaust were maybe the most well-educated culture in the world. German Universities had dominated the world’s thinking in almost every field for 100 years! And we are fools to think that the Information Age, where we have more and better access to information, but even less of a clue of how to handle it, will make things better rather than worse. We live in a world where we can clone, but have no idea about whether we should! Knowledge without wisdom is not really such a good thing. “There is nothing so vulgar left in our experience for which we cannot transport some professor from somewhere to justify it.” (George Will)

III. Exploring One Of The Most Powerful Ideas Of Our Culture: The Quest For Certainty

1. Christianity brings a new starting point: Christianity changed the whole starting point for truth from timeless principles to an ongoing story. For the Greeks at the time of Christ, truth was to be found in philosophy, but when Christianity proclaimed that the Logos (the Word) had become flesh (John 1) people had to rethink everything, they had to begin with a whole new starting point. The idea that the Logos had become flesh was something that they could not fit into their preconceived ideas. St. Augustine captures the Christian basis for understanding with his famous phrase, “I believe in order to understand.” Christianity says truth is not found in abstract eternal ideas but in a story whose apex is the incarnation, crucifiction, and resurrection of the God-man Jesus, and it is a story that is still ongoing and the implications of this are huge! “If the place where we look for ultimate truth is in a story and if (as is the case) we are still in the middle of the story, then it follows that we walk by faith and not by sight. If ultimate truth is sought in an idea, a formula, or a set of timeless laws or principles, then we do not have to recognize the possibility that something totally unexpected may happen... But if we find ultimate truth in a story that has not yet been finished, we do not have that kind of certainty. The certainty we have rests on the faithfulness of the One whose story it is. We walk by faith.” (Leslie Newbigin) 2. But then the Enlightenment changed the basis for truth back to timeless principles that could be known with certainty. The quest for certainty reemerges at the time of the Enlightenment in the 17th century. Rene Descartes declared that the way to achieve certainty was to clear the ground of all that is not certain, and so faith and revelation must go. He says that he can know for certain that he “is”, because he can doubt. Thus for Descartes, doubt is the path to true certain knowledge – we must doubt everything until we arrive at that which can’t be doubted (which in his case was the “fact” of his existence since he must exist if he is able to doubt.) Doubt is the method to get to what can’t be doubted and only that which can’t be doubted can be trusted as true. 3. The quest for certainty that the Enlightenment pursued through unaided human reason eventually resulted in Nihilism – the belief in nothing. Descartes tried to use doubt as the beginning of knowledge, because he thought that it was indisputable that we doubt, but Nietzsche comes along and doubts even doubt. Nietzsche is right to criticize Descartes in this way – because Descartes did not realize that even the shape of his doubting was based on his presuppositions. In other words, the place from which you stand to doubt other things, is itself a faith commitment that can be doubted by others. Or as Tim Keller puts it, “You have to stand somewhere to doubt, you can’t doubt everything all at once.” For Nietzsche, and his postmodernist disciples, the “eternal truths” of the Enlightenment are merely the construction of a particular group of people at a particular time in history. For example: the so-called inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not seen as universal by lots of people, like Hindus! 4. In actuality Augustine was right, faith is always at the heart of all knowing. In other words, what we think is always connected to our faith commitments and the process of finding truth is bigger than just plain reasoning. All knowing is a risky act of faith. “The universe is not provided with a spectator’s gallery in which we can survey the total scene without being personally involved. True knowledge of reality is available only to the one who is personally committed to the truth already grasped.” (Leslie Newbigin) “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else." (CS Lewis) For more on this read “Longing To Know” by Esther Meek and Keller’s book “The Reason For God”

IV. So What Has This Got To Do With Us? Whether you realize it or not, this quest for certainty still drives many of us – we don’t like to trust unless we can be guaranteed that we won’t be misled – but life doesn’t work that way.

1. Think about the kind of disappointment many have with Christianity: We often come to Christ looking for answers, because the quest for absolute certainty drives us, but when we find that faith in Christ provokes even more questions – if the idol of certainty is what is really driving us, then our questions will drive us away from Christ. This is because God will not sit still and let you poke and prod and examine Him the way you might a frog you are dissecting. God is the One who examines us, He is the One who asks the real questions that we must deal with like, “Who do you say that I am?” or “Adam, where are you?” Christianity is not something you can examine from a safe distance until you get it all figured out, and then enter into it. You can’t really understand it until you come in, and even then you’ll find that you still have questions and lots to learn. 2. There is a type of certainty you have as a Christian (see 2Tim 1:12 for example) but it is very different from the ideal of certainty sought be Descartes. In Christianity, our hope is not in our competence as the knowing ones, it is in knowing the All- Competent One. In other words, we are saved by the object of our faith not the strength of our faith. And, even when we come to know the truth, we don’t know all there is to know – we will continue to grow and reform our understanding of truth as we grow. Thus, one of the mottos of the reformation was “reformed but always reforming.” 3. I believe there are many ways the quest for certainty manifests itself among different Christian groups. We all want to have knowledge without doubts – even though God has never promised this. 1) In light of the disagreements among Christians, some hope to find certainty in trusting some church authority (seen in many in the Catholic or Orthodox traditions and also in those in authoritarian cults.) 2) Some seek to find it in a experience that seems so powerful as to be beyond doubt (I think this can be true of some in the charismatic movement.) 3) Some seek it by learning all the theology they can and in always being “right” (and we see this in some in the Reformed tradition – including yours truly.) 4. Too often we try to control others by our knowledge and we try to control God – but the God of the Bible (as opposed to the god of the philosophers) continually surprises us and can’t be put into a box. Does that upset you or does that thrill your soul? 5. The gospel is the great surprise – we were dead in our sins, but God who is rich in mercy made us alive! (Eph 2) Are you sure you really want a faith that has no mystery? Could you really worship a God you could fully understand?

V. Living In Line With Augustine’s Dictum: “I Believe In Order To Know” 1. We must approach understanding with humility – our reason is a tool to receive God’s revelation, not to sit in judgment upon Him. (see CS Lewis’s essay “God In The Dock” for more on this.) Wisdom is not just knowledge it is knowledge in its proper context – where we see and enjoy that God is God and we are not! 2. Wisdom means that we recognize that God has not promised to answer all our questions or tell us everything we might want to know. (Deut 29:29) "When I cannot understand anything in the Bible, it seems as though God had set a chair there for me, at which to kneel and worship; that the mysteries are intended to be an altar of devotion." C.H. Spurgeon 3. This has a huge impact on how we deal with suffering and the problem of evil. As Keller says in his new book, if God is big enough to be mad at, we must consider that He is big enough to have reasons that we may not be able to grasp. Dealing with suffering well requires a certain amount of intellectual humility. 3. Wisdom means recognizing that life is not predictable because it is an ongoing story. We know the end of the story, we enter into glory, but we don’t know what that means tomorrow will bring – will it be cancer or will it be falling in love? God has not promised a controllable, predictable life. But He has promised to give us Himself, and He has given us Christ in whom all the treasures of wisdom are hid. (Col 2:3) “I know not where He leads me, but well do I know my Guide.” (Martin Luther) 4. Ecclesiastes teaches us that knowledge, while great, cannot serve as a substitute for God – it cannot remove all the frustration of life after the Fall, but wisdom from God can teach us how to live, even when we don’t have all of our questions answered. We are to fear God and keep His commandments even when we don’t understand. Our hope is not in figuring it all out, and we must beware of trying to use Christianity as a means to this end. 5. But neither is our hope in the pseudo-freedom of irresponsible folly and madness (thinking that we should just throw our hands in the air and live how we want since no one can know everything.) The pursuit of folly will not alter our responsibility to live in the purpose our Creator intended – to fear Him and keep His commands.