Reflections with Andy - Ecclesiastes 1: 12-18 – The Folly of Wisdom?

All throughout the Old Testament, wisdom is to be desired. Yet today, the teacher says it is folly. Why?

In this Thursday reflection on Ecclesiastes 1:12–18 — appropriately falling on the National Day of Prayer — the Teacher’s surprising conclusion that wisdom itself is vanity is unpacked honestly and personally. On the surface it seems to contradict Proverbs and the Psalms, which celebrate wisdom as a gift worth seeking. But Solomon’s point isn’t that wisdom is bad — it’s that wisdom alone, pursued as a source of meaning, leaves you empty and vexed. The reflection gets personal: those of us who lean analytical and distrust emotion can fall into the trap of thinking the mind is somehow exempt from the Fall. It isn’t. Both heart and mind are equally in need of Jesus. And in a world drowning in information — where something happens anywhere on earth and we know about it in seconds — there’s a real and contemporary application: more knowledge does not equal more peace. What is crooked cannot be made straight by analysis alone. Sometimes the best way out of the quagmire is simply to do what you know is true — love your neighbor, serve somebody, pray — rather than waiting for enough information to finally make sense of everything.

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Good morning! Hope you’re having a great Thursday. Today is the National Day of Prayer, and I’d encourage you no matter where you find yourself to take some time to pray. If your church or community has a prayer service today, take advantage of it. If you’re in the Madison area, we’d love for you to join Saint Matthew’s and other local churches at City Hall at noon for our community prayer service. Our world needs the prayers, and — as my seminary professor Dr. Bryant always liked to say when someone told him they were praying for him — you need the practice. So pray today. Pray for our nation, our leaders, our community, our world.

Today we’re finishing out chapter 1 of Ecclesiastes, reading verses 12 through 18. Yesterday we set the stage — Ecclesiastes is the story of the Teacher trying to find meaning in everything and coming up empty. Over and over throughout this book we’re going to see a pattern: I tried this, and it was vanity. I tried that, and it was vanity. Today, the Teacher tries wisdom:

“I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. I said to myself, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.”

Now, if you know your Bible, this should raise a flag — because this seems to contradict a lot of what we see in Proverbs and in places like Psalm 119, where wisdom is presented as something to aspire to, a gift from God, something worth seeking with everything you have. And here Solomon — because most scholars believe this is Solomon, and it certainly fits what we know of his life — is saying: I did the wisdom thing. I pursued knowledge. I surpassed everyone. And it left me miserable.

C.S. Lewis has a line — I’m probably paraphrasing — something like education without faith only makes a wiser devil.And I’ll be honest with you: this is something I’ve wrestled with personally. I love books. There are no innocent quotes I can make here — if you asked me how many books are enough, my honest answer would be one more. I actually bought a book this week because I’ve been listening to the audiobook and it’s so good I need to be able to highlight it. Holly may or may not know about that. Anyway.

I tend to fall on the analytical side. I tend to trust intellect and be a little suspicious of emotion — because emotion can be manipulated, emotion can be fallible, emotion can be manufactured. So I’d rather just think things through clearly, right?

But here’s what I’ve had to confront: your mind is just as fallen as your heart. The intellect is no less in need of the Holy Spirit than the emotions. They’re both imperfect. They’re both equally in need of Jesus. And sometimes — if we’re not careful — those of us who distrust emotion end up trusting our minds too much, as though the mind is somehow exempt from the Fall. It’s not. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow. Solomon found this out the hard way.

And I think there’s a very contemporary application here. Our minds were not built to handle the volume of information being thrown at us right now — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from every direction. Back in, say, the ‘80s, you got the evening news and maybe a newspaper that was a couple days behind. Now something happens anywhere in the world and you know about it in two seconds. And we’re drowning in it. More knowledge, more information, more analysis, more opinion — and more vexation, more sorrow, more anxiety.

What is crooked cannot be made straight. What is lacking cannot be counted. There are things we cannot fix, things we cannot know, problems we cannot solve no matter how much information we have. And sometimes the best way out of the quagmire of the mind is to just do what we know is true. I can’t solve every problem in the world. But I can love my neighbor. I can work on forgiving my enemy. I can open the hymnal with my kids and sing. I can pray — which is exactly what today is for. I can seek to make a difference in the small corner of the world I actually inhabit.

As the great theologian Bob Dylan once said — go serve somebody. And I think if we do that, we’ll find our way forward more reliably than if we just keep consuming more information and hoping that eventually the right analysis will make everything make sense.

So today, on this National Day of Prayer — pray. And then go love somebody. We’ll pick up with chapter 2 tomorrow. Have a great day!