Exploring Ecclesiastes
This semester on campuses throughout Quito, our student leaders have decided to study the book of Ecclesiastes. Now, this is not usually on a person’s “Top 10 Favorite Books of the Bible” list. Upon a quick glance, it is not the most uplifting book… like at all. In fact, it is pretty dark and it asks or makes us ask a lot of really hard questions, many of which we can’t even answer.
With this in mind, the Quito staff team sat down to start thinking through how to frame the study. We know we can only plan an 8-week study for campus application, so we weren’t going to be able to get through the entire book in its depths in only 8 weeks. With this, we began to pull out some texts that would be great conversation starters, grabbed the essence of the book, and attempt to maintain the integrity of the book in its context – no small task. But, no matter how we divided the text, I was left with the fear of any verse being taken out of context, even if we constantly remind students week after week of the “bigger picture” that Ecclesiastes shows throughout the whole book (but perhaps not in one verse that is easily misconstrued). I kept coming back to the idea that it would be helpful to have a visual framework of the entire book – something that helps remind us where we are in the book, but doesn’t try to interpret the book so much that I can’t find anything myself. I was stumped.
The next week, as all us staff continued pouring over commentaries, one image stuck out to all of us. We really enjoyed how one commentator phrased his “adventure” or “exploration” of the book of Ecclesiastes. We began to realize that would be a good way to frame our study so that we can invite others to study with us. An invitation to explore a book of the Bible is open and free of commitment. It allows students to make their own choices in terms of what the text means to them. It is not a mandate to study and believe, but rather simply an invitation to explore and ask questions. We loved it.
Once we had our metaphor for the semester (much like last semester’s imagery of the invitation), an idea sprung to mind about how to create a framework for Ecclesiastes that would meet most or all of the goals mentioned above. I realized that every explorer, well, every good explorer anyways, should adventure with a map. It’s never a good idea to head out into an unknown forest with no tools to help guide the way. So, with this, I set out to design a basic map which over the last few weeks we fine-tuned and gave more detail to. Obviously the original version is in Spanish for students on campuses throughout Quito, but we have also translated it so that you can consider joining us on this Exploration of Ecclesiastes.
With the map, we see Cohelet, who is the main voice in Ecclesiastes (who we are calling the Explorer), travel down various paths to see what meaning he can find at the end. And the Explorer isn’t looking for any type of meaning, but rather true significance. For instance, if a person invests all of his energies in searching for pleasure and obtaining all the material possessions he desires, will his life have true meaning? These are the questions the Explorer is asking and we are able to journey with him down these different paths looking for what has meaning in life.
At the end of almost every path, you can find a little puff of smoke. The reason for this is that it represents what the Explorer calls ‘hevel’. Now, hevel is the Hebrew word and there is no great translation to modern English, which is why its translation is so widely varied between different translations of the Bible. Some say “meaningless”, others “futility”, and others “smoke”. The main idea is not so much that there is no meaning in it, but rather that it is an enigma, a mystery. In other words, it is like smoke – something that when you look at it appears solid, but when you try to grab it, it slips through your fingers.
One really important part of the map is that even though the Explorer ventures down all these different paths, he constantly returns to the main path, from which he bases his exploration. We have called this path “The Fear of the Lord.” As Ecclesiastes is a wisdom text, it makes sense that he returns to this path over and over again as he advances in his exploration.
We also added some different elements to the map as we deepened our personal study of the book. I’ll briefly explain each here:
Sign posts: Observations made by the Explorer. At times, he doesn’t appear to be on a new path to find meaning, but is able to make an observation about what he sees in life. We also have two sign posts to signal the introduction and conclusion of the text. The first sign post invites us with a hearty, “Welcome to the Land of Vain Illusion”. I keep joking with students here that it is honestly more fun than Disney here. The final sign post invites us to continue exploring life but one thing we can use in our lives that the Explorer didn’t have was knowledge of Jesus. He may have had ideas through prophecies given, but we have the explicit texts of miracles and the sacrifice Jesus made. We have the eternal perspective that the Explorer didn’t at that time.
The Mountain of Time: With Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes, we see that the Explorer is definitely on the wisdom path, but it seems to be a little different, as if he can see more than normal. This is why we chose a mountain. A mountain is something we can climb to get a broader perspective. We can see further and sometimes that makes life make more sense and can give us a better direction. But we also chose a mountain because even if we are not on the mountain, it acts as a constant reminder and can continue to guide us. In the distance I see it as a reference point to know where I have been. It can also be a symbol of permanence reminding us that even though “a generation goes and a generation comes… the earth remains forever” (Ecc. 1:4, HCSB). And even in its permanence, it shows change with the changing of the seasons.
The Forest of No Meaning: For a few verses in Chapter 8, it appears that the Explorer gets a bit lost. He ventures into some of his thoughts, represented by a forest in our map, but in the forest, he loses perspective. He can no longer see the mountain that was once guiding him and everything seems to lose meaning. There is no clear perspective here.
Skull’s Crossing: Albeit one of the most grim symbols on the map, the Explorer never said this journey would be an easy or enjoyable one. Skull’s crossing is the point of the book (which is made various times in various ways) that at some point, everyone dies. Skull’s Crossing is not so much a representation of the death of a person on the journey, but rather the realization and acceptance of the fact that all will die. Some commentaries state that “Death is the great equalizer”. It matters not if we are rich or poor, famous or unknown, wise or a fool – the same fate meets us all. Skull’s Crossing allows us to recognize this fact, reflect on it as we walk through this dark truth, and decide how we will live the rest of our lives now knowing this.
The last couple of elements in the map I want to point out are in reference to the background as well as the scale. In the background of the map, starting in the upper left-hand corner you can see faint lines of light, representing the sun. This was actually an unintended connection to the Ecclesiastes text, but after finishing, we continued reflecting on the text and were surprised how many times the phrase “under the sun” was repeated. Upon hearing this, I started laughing and realized that the sun rays in the map are a direct tie to the Explorer’s reference of this phrase.
And containing all of the content in the map is the scale that runs on the left and bottom sides of the map. Now, this is no ordinary scale. It is not measured in either miles or kilometers but rather the scale that maintains this map is the Human Scale, or the Human Perspective. This is an important thing to realize is that even though the Explorer is doing his best to understand the ways of this world, at a certain point he recognizes that he can’t. He knows that he is not God and thus can’t understand or explain all we see in this life and the same goes for us. As we go forward exploring with the Explorer, we must recognized that our experience of life thus far is what marks how we interpret what we see. But the same conclusion must be realized and accepted – we are not God. Some things simply won’t make sense on this side of Heaven.
But even though we live with the Human Scale, we can use points of reference like the Mountain of Time to gain a broader perspective, and we also have the hope offered through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and his resurrection which allows us to see a glimpse of what is to come and gives us a chance to live with a different scale. We are challenged to live our lives with the Eternal Scale, the Eternal Perspective. This doesn’t mean that everything will make sense, as we are still not God, but we can answer a few of the questions that the Explorer has given us to wrestle with.
Exploring Ecclesiastes
Week 1: Ecclesiastes 1:1-18 | Getting to Know the Explorer
Week 2: Ecclesiastes 2:12-26 | Wisdom and Work
Week 3: Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 | In Search of Perspective
Week 4: Ecclesiastes 5:8-20 | The Illusion of Wanting to Have More
Week 5: Ecclesiastes 7:11-29 | Extremes
Week 6: Ecclesiastes 8:9-17 | Life is an Enigma
Week 7: Ecclesiastes 9:1-10 | Death is the Great Equalizer
Week 8: Ecclesiastes 12:1-14 | An Invitation to Explore the Eternal Perspective
Would you like to explore the book of Ecclesiastes with us this semester? Let me know! I’d love to hear what you learn, what you are applying, and if you found the study and the map resource helpful!
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