EVEN “GOD” CAN’T FIX THIS MESS!
SERIES: ECCLESIASTES: A WORD TO THE WISE
LESSON 3: EVEN “GOD” CAN’T FIX THIS MESS!
Text for This Study: Ecclesiastes 3:1 – 4:16
1. Be careful when reading Ecclesiastes, for Qohelet – in his cynical musings from 1:12 – 12:7 – refers to God frequently. But his is not the God of Israel who became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. That is especially true in this opening section where he describes a fatalistic view of life being set and predetermined by a fickle deity whose “timing” can’t be known. (See the quote from Peter Kreeft at the bottom of this page.) What is the danger of this sort of understanding of God?
2. What sort of language do people still use in describing the ways of God that parallels the sad and cynical view of The Teacher? (E.g., “Everything happens for a reason!” or “What will be will be!”) Ever catch yourself using that sort of language? Hear someone assign some terrible event to “God’s will”?
3. How many times does the phrase “under the sun” occur in this section of text? Why is this phrase so important to the understanding of Ecclesiastes?
4. How was Israel’s Yahweh – the great “I Am” who appeared to Moses – different from Qohelet’s small, weak, and limited deity? Could 3:18-21 be affirmed of the biblical God? Jesus of Nazareth?
5. What is the positive message from this dark and depressing text? Summarize the final few minutes of this video in your own words. Explain how the appearance of Jesus in human history answers the pessimism of The Teacher.
Philosopher Peter Kreeft describes the “God” – or perhaps we should write “god” with a small letter – of The Teacher (Qohelet) this way: “He has not been privy to any special divine revelation or supernatural intervention. His God is simply ‘nature and nature’s God,’ the God of our modern establishmentarian religion.”