Reflections with Andy - Ecclesiastes 7: 15-29 - What if We are Wrong
One of my professors taught me to believe strongly in what I believe, but also to understand I could be wrong. The Teacher gives us a similar perspective today
In this Thursday reflection on Ecclesiastes 7:15–29, the Teacher’s closing observation — God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes — frames the whole passage as a meditation on wisdom and its limits. The Teacher says it’s good to take hold of wisdom without letting go of the acknowledgment that you might be wrong, and the reflection develops that into a pastoral word about the relationship between conviction and humility. Drawing on Dr. Harold Bryson’s memorable line — show me a man who thinks he’s wrong — and the calculus principle that the right work built on a wrong assumption still produces the wrong answer, the reflection argues that humility isn’t weakness but a commitment to staying teachable. We should believe what we believe with conviction. But we should hold that conviction with enough openness to keep growing, keep learning, and keep giving the Spirit room to correct us. The Teacher keeps bumping into his own imperfection throughout Ecclesiastes, and that’s actually a healthy place to live — because if you don’t think you need to grow, you won’t.
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Good morning! Great to be with you on this Thursday. We’re going to finish out chapter 7 today, and I think — I think — we’re going to make it through Ecclesiastes by the end of May or early June if we keep pressing. Some of the last chapters are shorter, so we may combine a few toward the end. But we’re going to get there. Today, Ecclesiastes 7, verses 15 through 29:
“In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing. Do not be too righteous, and do not act too wise; why should you destroy yourself? Do not be too wicked, and do not be a fool; why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of the one, without letting go of the other; for the one who fears God shall succeed with both.
Wisdom gives strength to the wise more than ten rulers that are in a city. Surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning. Do not give heed to everything that people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you; your heart knows that many times you have yourself cursed others.
All this I have tested by wisdom; I said, ‘I will be wise,’ but it was far from me. That which is, is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out? I turned my mind to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the sum of things, and to know that wickedness is folly and that foolishness is madness. I found more bitter than death the woman who is a trap, whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are fetters; one who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. See, this is what I found, says the Teacher, adding one thing to another to find the sum, which my mind has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. See, this alone I found, that God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes.”
God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes. That line is a pretty good summary not just of this passage but of the whole book of Ecclesiastes in some ways. We come into this world made in the image of God, with a kind of built-in moral simplicity, and then we spend the rest of our lives complicating it.
There’s a lot in this passage, but I want to focus on something I keep coming back to — this idea of holding wisdom and humility together. The Teacher says it’s good to take hold of the one without letting go of the other. Pursue wisdom. Seek to understand. Test your thinking. But don’t let go of the understanding that you could be wrong.
One of my professors at Mississippi College — Dr. Harold Bryson, a preaching professor I’ve mentioned many times — said something that has stayed with me for decades: show me a man who thinks he’s wrong. Meaning, we all think we’re right. Every single one of us. And that’s not necessarily bad — you should believe what you believe with conviction. But do you hold that conviction with the humility to acknowledge you might have misread something, misunderstood a text, listened to the wrong mentor somewhere along the way?
I believe what I believe. I’ve tested my doctrine, I’ve prayed it through, I’ve run it past people I respect, I’m fairly confident it’s biblically grounded. I stand on it. But I also know it’s possible I got something wrong. Possible I’ve had faulty assumptions I’ve never questioned.
That actually came up in a conversation with one of my kids this weekend about school — which led somehow to my deep and abiding hatred of calculus. I’m 50 years old and once a week I still have the dream where it’s the last day of calculus and I haven’t been to a single class all semester and the final is today. I still have this dream. I hate calculus with every fiber of my being. But one thing calculus did teach me: if you have the wrong underlying assumption to a problem, you can work every step correctly and still get the wrong answer. All the math is right, but the foundational assumption is wrong, so the whole thing is off.
That’s true in life too. If our underlying assumptions are wrong — about God, about people, about how things work — we can be working very hard and still arriving at the wrong place. Which is why humility matters. Not as weakness, but as a commitment to keeping learning.
The Teacher says surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning. He keeps bumping into his own imperfection, his own weakness, the gap between what he hoped wisdom would give him and what it actually delivered. And I think that’s a healthy thing to keep bumping into. Because if you don’t think you need to grow, you won’t. If you don’t acknowledge the possibility of being wrong, the Spirit has nothing to work with.
The only two things I know for sure are that I love Jesus and I am loved by Jesus. Everything else — I hold with conviction, but I hold it with open hands. As I’ve said many times: the only thing I’m married to is Holly Stoddard. Outside of that, everything else is up for grabs.
So today — stand on what you believe. Have conviction. But hold it with humility. Test your thinking. Ask what you might be missing. Because God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes — and a little humility goes a long way toward keeping us honest.
Tomorrow we’ll pick up with chapter 8. Have a great day!