Gibson Living Life Backward

How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4335-5630-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

What if it is death that teaches us how to truly live? Keeping the end in mind shapes how we live our lives in the here and now. Living life backward means taking the one thing in our future that is certain-death-and letting that inform our journey before we get there. Looking to the book of Ecclesiastes for wisdom, Living Life Backward was written to shake up our expectations and priorities for what it means to live 'the good life.' Considering the reality of death helps us pay attention to our limitations as human beings and receive life as a wondrous gift from God-freeing us to live wisely, generously, and faithfully for God's glory and the good of his world.

David Gibson (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is minister of Trinity Church in Aberdeen, Scotland. He is a coeditor of From Heaven He Came and Sought Her, and his publications include Living Life Backward; Radically Whole; and The Lord of Psalm 23. He is married to Angela, and they have four children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gibson, David

Leseproben

2

Bursting the Bubble

Our excesses are the best clues to our own poverty, and our best way of concealing it from ourselves.

Adam Philips, quoted in the Times

I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the chidren of man to be busy with. 14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

15 What is crooked cannot be made straight,

and what is lacking cannot be counted.

16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.

18 For in much wisdom is much vexation,

and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

2 I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. 2 I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” 3 I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. 4 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.

9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. 10 And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. 11 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

12 So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. 13 Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. 14 The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. 15 Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 16 For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! 17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20 So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, 21 because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22 What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 23 For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. 24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 26 For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. —Ecclesiastes 1:12–2:26

The Preacher and the Travelers

In this world, those who follow Jesus Christ never find a permanent home. We find peace with God through Christ, and there is rest for the weary and burdened. But the gospel does not lead us into a settled life of contented ease. This has always been true of God’s family. The writer to the Hebrews says about Abraham,

By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. (Heb. 11:9–10)

To be a believer is to be a stranger and a misfit. We have no permanent roots in this world and no sense of real belonging here. We are traveling through.

Or are we?

People who follow Jesus often lose sight of the world to come. We become resident Christians rather than nomadic Christians. We become fully integrated in this world rather than viewing ourselves as passing through, and we do this by living as if our greatest treasures are the here and now. We display our sense of permanence by our lifestyle choices: the homes we live in, the money we spend, the churches we build, the investments we pursue, and the priorities we live for. We hold the good things of this world too tightly and lavish our affections on them too freely. We strive and strain for the same kind of gain as everyone else around us.

Jesus knew this would always be the temptation for his disciples. He warns us:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt. 6:19–21)

And to stop us from doing the wrong kind of storing, and to help us begin to do the right kind of storing, God has given us the book of Ecclesiastes.

In his first eleven verses the Preacher taught how the world itself shows there is no lasting gain in all our human toiling. He sought to end the games we play about the permanent significance of our lives. It was an argument from the brute fact of nature. But now the Preacher is going to mount an argument from bitter experience. He continues his demolition job by bursting bubbles. The bubbles he seeks to destroy are the very things that his readers might want to point to as the best counterarguments against his case. It is one thing to say in general terms that “all things are full of weariness” (1:8), but quite another to maintain the argument in the face of specific test cases. What about having fun, contributing to society, and building wealth? What about being wise? Is there really nothing to be gained from a life well spent in those pursuits? Does the Preacher honestly expect us to believe that all of these things are futile attempts to shepherd the wind? In a word, yes.

The Preacher will argue that wisdom, pleasure, work, and possessions are very often the bubbles we live in to insulate ourselves from reality. And his needle, the sharp point he uses to burst the bubbles, is death. It is the great reality facing all human beings as they go about their business on earth. Death is the one ultimate certainty that we erase from our minds and busy ourselves to avoid facing.

In this section, however, a very surprising shaft of light begins to break into this seemingly depressing thesis. Far from being something that makes life in the present completely pointless, future death is a light God shines on the present to change it. Death can radically enable us to enjoy life. By relativizing all that we do in our days under the sun, death can change us from people who want to control life for gain into people who find deep joy in receiving life as a gift. This is the main message of Ecclesiastes in a nutshell: life in God’s world is gift, not gain.1

Here the Preacher begins to unpack that message by showing how he pursued gain in the world and what he realized at the end of his quest. When all was said and done, he was left staring at the cold, hard fact of life’s brutal emptiness. And yet his conclusion is ultimately positive and profound: “The gift of God does not make this meaninglessness go away;...