Is Ecclesiastes Really a Book of Hopelessness?

Up on the hill, the house sits quietly. It’s a classic Karori morning - the cold air hangs low, curling around trees and smoothing dew along the slightly overgrown grass. Shrouded in mist, the house cannot even see her neighbour 5 metres away. A sea of fog gently shifts and sighs, a blanket over the valley. My family stirs within the house as alarm clocks beep and preparations for the day begin. Pulling open my curtains, I see the mist but do not give it much more attention than the simple act of noticing it. It comes and goes, that I have observed over the years. It will dissipate, and my day will continue. 

Much like the mist covering Karori, the lives of billions of humans come and go, and time marches on. The days which number our lives on little old Earth - our home under the sun - pale into nothingness when compared to the great vastness of the universe. 

The relief of acceptance 

Ecclesiastes is not a simple book, yet I find it immensely comforting in its raw acceptance of life in all its brokenness. Ecclesiastes draws in the hurting, the disillusioned, and the broken, like falling onto a therapist’s couch after a bad week. Like any therapist worth your time, it validates suffering, but does not leave you lying there in the dirt. This is why, as Ellen Davis observes, people struggling with trauma such as depression, cancer and war are able to receive Ecclesiastes when nothing else in Scripture speaks to them. The realism of Qoheleth’s repetitive cry that “everything is hevel” is a deep relief. The difficulty of everyday life is not pushed to the side but held up to the light.  The rugged beauty of Ecclesiastes is that it holds the pessimism of hevel in tension with the positive celebration of the gift of life. The joy that is portrayed here is one that encompasses the whole disposition of a person. Most often in Scripture, the Lord and the Lord’s salvation is cited as the reason for joy. It is this joy that I want to turn your attention towards now. 

The practice of joy

Having experienced the struggle of living in this broken world, Qoheleth’s journey of seeking meaning has provided him with pessimistic and perplexing observations. 

His chasing after pleasure makes me think of a game of Monopoly, where the rule book is your only friend. To get ahead is the main focus - I don’t care how many train stations you have, if I land on King’s Cross I have no qualms about buying it. There’s a sadistic glee in reading out how much rent your opponent owes you, and nothing quite like replacing a house with a hotel. It’s these kinds of tensions that caused my brother to flip the board on us on a rainy school holiday afternoon, bringing our game to an abrupt end. Monopoly may help us understand Qoheleth’s fruitless pursuit of success and wealth as he attempted to find meaning, particularly because the game is devoid of small moments of joy. There is no stopping in for a cup of tea with a friend, nor a chance to sit in the park, have a drink, and feel the sun on your skin. Qoheleth provides us with a somewhat surprising reflection, given his earlier frustration at the world. He directs his students towards the act of enjoyment, affirming life and joy not in spite of the complexity and pain of life, but in the midst of it. Yet he is not advocating for the glittering mirages of success, money and fame- mirages that proved inconsequential for his search for meaning. Rather, he advocates for the simple pleasure of food, drink and festivity, time spent with loved ones, and working hard. There is no chance to practise the kind of simple joy Qoheleth is advocating if you are so focused on winning Monopoly that you miss the everyday joys. Perhaps my brother had a point when he flipped the board, and all our hard earned properties scattered across the lounge floor. 

Counter to the pessimism of Qoheleth’s declaration that “everything is hevel,” this passage is what is called one of the “carpe diem sayings.” It draws us to a place of liberation within the messiness. It exemplifies a practice of joy. Israel would have understood joy as a verb- not just an abstract feeling, but something that is enacted. They understood what it meant to “do” joy. The holiness laws of Leviticus develop an embodied and practical spirituality. I want to suggest that the exhortations of Ecclesiastes develop an embodied and practical joy.

 “Go, eat your bread with enjoyment,” he instructs. “Drink your wine with a merry heart!” he implores. He even provides us with reasoning for these joyful actions: “for God has long ago approved what you do.” Did someone manage to sneak this into the canon? Is this just an excuse to do whatever you want because nothing matters? 

While I absolutely see this passage as liberating, I’m not convinced that the reference to God’s approval is simply a get out of jail free card. After all, Qoheleth has sought after hedonistic and materialistic endeavours and still come up wanting- his chasing after pleasures and self indulgence of Ecclesiastes 2 do not ease his longing for meaning within “all that is done under the sun.” 

The enjoyment that Qoheleth proposes lies within his final imperative of Ecc 12:1 “Remember your creator” and in the narrator’s closing instructions to “Fear God and keep God’s commandments.” The embodied joy Qoheleth is talking about is within the bounds of divine will, as humanity enjoys the gifts that God has graciously and lovingly provided. Underlying all this is the motif of vapour. Death is imminent and no days are guaranteed. As found in Ecclesiastes 3:20: “All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.” Yet the finitude of life is not something to fear or resent. We can acknowledge it, and choose to faithfully and worshipfully practise joy in the midst of all the uncertainty.

Joy as an act of gratitude

When we are feeling crushed by the pressures of being functioning human beings, seeking joy can be the last thing on our to-do list. However Qoheleth decides that our entire to-do list, and the things too small to make it onto our to-do list, ought to be coloured by joy. Eating and drinking aren’t optional luxuries- they are basic human needs. They represent our creatureliness and limits, a stark picture of reliance on the Creator. And as we feed ourselves and quench our thirst, joy turns these simple actions into acts of gratitude. Who is it that sustains the earth, who enables wheat to be ready for harvest? Who designed the water ecosystems and directs the flow of the rivers? Gratitude for what we experience every day directs our attention again and again back to the God who created us. 

 Joy does not have to shout at the top of her lungs. Joy can be the smell of bread and the refreshment of water. It is this simplicity of joy that ensures it is accessible to us even in the dark valleys.

There is a sense of urgency in this passage. The use of imperatives - Go! Eat! Drink! Be! highlight not waiting for joy to come to you but being intentional in incorporating gratitude into your life, right away. Imperatives, or commands, invoke action, reminding us of the way the Israelites would have understood joy as a verb. Striving after things does not play a part. We can start noticing joy today. 

Gratitude will look different for everyone, but a simple way of articulating gratitude can be through statements. Thank God for providing food that nourishes you. Has your practice of saying grace before eating faded into obligation? Are you truly grateful? Perhaps what Qoheleth suggests is that you can supercharge your gratitude, with the act of joy. I’m sure you’re aware of the power of neuroplasticity, and the way scientists have found we are able to literally rewire our brain through repetition. Attitude truly does make a difference. Maybe in times that you aren’t feeling so grateful- perhaps it’s baked beans for the fifth night in a row (and not because you just love baked beans)- maybe in times that you aren’t feeling so grateful, your prayer of gratitude will enable you to show your desire to feel grateful and experience joy. An aspirational prayer, so to speak.

One thing that I’m passionate about challenging is the idea of toxic positivity. It actually isn’t helpful to be bombarded with platitudes in the midst of experiencing very raw and real pain. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” usually isn’t a comforting reaction. Someone telling me that I’m the person I am today because of my grief may be true- but I will never say that I’m glad I went through what I did. I don’t care how empathetic or resilient I am- I would rather be a worse person who still had an alive dad. I can and do find joy, but it always has to be held in tension with my pain, not slathered over it like a numbing cream. I’m not grateful for my pain. 

I’m grateful for the things that make life worth living amidst all the pain. I’m grateful for the victory of Christ that gives us the ability to “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” (1 Peter 1:8). Qoheleth understands this balance. He does not try to replace pain with joy. He holds pain in one hand, and joy in the other, not trying to cancel one out with the other, but allowing them to co-exist. 

Joy as an act of hope

The practice of joy is not only an acknowledgment of God the Creator - our provider - but also God the redeemer, our future hope. 

I wonder about the relationship between control, and hope. I noticed during covid the distress that was caused from an absence of control, both in myself and in the world around me. Obsessively I waited for the Covid numbers each day, for months on end, a practice that was absolutely driven by anxiety. Shaking the world up and disrupting every rhythm we knew, I realised how fruitless human efforts to control our surroundings are. We were forced to see that nothing was certain as we lived day to day. And yet - as we come out the other side, battered and bruised - I see that we return to old ways, desperate to regain our “control” and lull ourselves into a false sense of security. It is false because although in comparison to 2000 years ago we know a lot more about the world and its ins and outs, Qoheleth’s blunt assessment of humanity’s mortality is no less accurate. Practising joy forces us to see the value of the here and now. Qoheleth didn’t know redemptive hope by the name of Jesus- and yet he sensed that the world was worth engaging with, and called his listeners to join him in the practice of joy amidst the struggle of life. He was able to declare that light is sweet. Today, we have a much more tangible understanding of hope in the image of Jesus Christ. We know the good news, that God is seeking to reconcile the world to Godself. We can rejoice in the goodness of what is, right here and right now. Joy is an act of hope because it gives us a glimpse of the Kingdom of God in the mundane and the unglamorous. Joy is an act of hope because it reminds us of the “now” of the eschaton. I know that personally, I am far better at leaning into the “not yet” of the eschaton. I can’t wait for Jesus to come back! But I wonder if, by minimising the “now” of the Kingdom of God, and the activity of the Holy Spirit, I undermine the work of Jesus Christ in the present- as he sits at the right hand of the Father. Practising joy right here, right now is an act of hope because it allows us to meet with Jesus in the midst of our hurting and brokenness. Seeking joy compels us to posture ourselves towards the living Hope, and if that isn’t good news, I don’t know what is.

~

Rebecca Hooper is currently editor at Metanoia