Life can be incredibly fun and meaningful, and it can be incredibly hard and frustrating. Sometimes we feel great, and sometimes we feel deeply discouraged. Sometimes we believe we make a difference, and sometimes we wonder whether we matter at all. In many ways, such conflicting feelings describe the human condition.
In this article, I reflect on the interplay of these ideas in the book of Ecclesiastes. On one hand, the Teacher, the author of Ecclesiastes, laments that everything is futile; on the other hand, he tells us to enjoy life. But how can we enjoy life if everything is futile? I propose that life may seem futile but that, for the person who fears God and keeps His commandments, it may be full of joy and possibility.
Futility
In the opening and concluding refrains of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher laments that everything is futile or vain (1:2; 12:8). Some translations even use the word meaningless (e.g., NIV, NLT), although I argue against that idea. Undoubtedly, this concept is a dominant theme in the book, appearing nearly forty times. If we interpret the Teacher straightforwardly, it sounds like he is saying that nature, history, work, wisdom, pleasure, justice, words, and more are ultimately futile (e.g., 1:8, 14; 2:1, 17). However, elsewhere, the Teacher affirms the importance of these things (examined below). How then should we interpret him?
Such objects are futile in one sense but not in another. Part of the challenge in comprehending the Teacher’s meaning is in our contemporary understanding of words like futility and vanity. In contemporary English, it carries the idea that something is meaningless or pointless. However, if God is sovereignly renewing all things—even bad things, even seemingly wasted things, according to His purposes (e.g., Ephesians 1:10; Revelation 21:5)—then how can anything be pointless?
In fact, the word translated futility (hāḇel) literally means “vapor” or “breath.” To illustrate, the psalmist David uses the same word when he says our lives are like a vapor (Psalm 39:5; cf. James 4:14). Hence, the Teacher’s literal message is not that these things are without meaning or purpose. It is that our lives “under the sun” are short-lived, that our accomplishments “under the sun,” in labor and wisdom and pleasure and justice, are short-lived and then forgotten in this life (e.g., Ecclesiastes 1:3; 9:5). For this reason, the wise person does not turn such objects into idols because they do not satisfy his deepest desires for meaning and significance.
However, the Teacher is not saying we should reject such pursuits altogether. Rather, his point is that we should put them in their proper place so that we might know true contentedness, true happiness, true joy.
Contentment
In many ways, the Teacher’s point is not unlike the message of Psalm 1. The psalmist presents two paths: the way of the righteous person who flourishes like a tree planted firmly by the waters (vv. 1–3) and the way of the wicked person who blows away like chaff in the wind (vv. 4–6). Likewise, the Teacher presents two paths: the way of joy and the way of despair. The righteous person places the pursuits of work, knowledge, pleasure, and justice under the lordship of God and thereby find joy in those pursuits. But the wicked person makes them into idols, which leads to despair.
The Teacher speaks to the theme of happiness or joy throughout Ecclesiastes (2:10; 3:12, 22; 4:16; 5:19; 8:15; 10:19; 11:8–9). This word (śāmêaḥ) translates alternatively as be happy or rejoice. Even so, sometimes people contrast the ideas of happiness and joy as if the former is fleeting but the latter is lasting. However, happiness, like other words, has a wide range of meaning so that it may have a light connotation or a substantive one. We recognize this truth with other words: we love pizza, and we love our spouses, yet we recognize a world of difference between them.
Similarly, happiness of one sort may be fleeting, such as when we base it in an improper object (idolatry). But happiness of another sort may be lasting, such as when it is based in God’s purposes. F. Leroy Forlines recognized this point when he subtitled his ethics book Ethics for Happier Living. In other words, biblical happiness is what we sometimes call joy. Thus, although the Teacher discusses futility, his purpose is not ultimately to leave the reader in despair; it is to show them the path to true happiness.
The Teacher states explicitly that God has given men and women the ability to find joy in the following:
(1) work or labor or toil (2:24; 3:13, 22; 5:18; 9:7);
(2) food and drink (2:24–25; 3:13; 5:18; 8:15; 9:7);
(3) wisdom and knowledge (2:26);
(4) wealth and possessions (5:19; cf. 2:26); and
(5) family (9:9).
The Teacher states that there is “nothing better” than such things (2:24; 3:22; 8:15). He says further that such things are a “beneficial and appropriate course of action” (5:18), that they are the “gift of God” (3:13), and that He has “already approved” them (9:7, NET). Even the joy itself resulting from such objects is a gift from God: “this ability to find enjoyment comes from God” (2:24).
Significantly, true happiness is not available to all people. Specifically, the Teacher explains it is not available to the wicked for whom such pursuits are like “chasing the wind” (1:14; 2:11, 17; 4:4, 6, 16; 6:9). True joy does not come from gaining the most stuff, learning the most information, having the most fun, or doing the most good. From personal experience, it seems, the Teacher knows that these paths do not lead to lasting joy. For that reason, he puts forward numerous dialectics, introducing sections by phrases like “In the words of the Teacher” or “I thought to myself” (e.g., 1:1, 16).
Instead, for the person to know lasting contentment, he must be righteous, which, explains the Teacher, results from fearing God and keeping His commandments. After the refrain “futility, futility” at the end of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher includes a coda in which he states:
Having heard everything, I have reached this conclusion:
Fear God and keep his commandments, because this is the whole duty of man.
For God will evaluate every deed,
including every secret thing, whether good or evil (vv. 13–14).
Ultimately, everything has meaning of some kind because everything is subject to God’s commandments and His judgments (cf. 3:17; 11:9). The person may find happiness in his pursuits only if he places them under the lordship of the sovereign God. To fear God means to revere Him, venerate Him, worship Him. As Proverbs says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (1:7). The Teacher’s point is not that we would reject the pursuits of work, wisdom, play, and justice because they are meaningless but that we would submit them to God’s purposes. He has formed our bones in the womb (Ecclesiastes 11:5), and He has foreknown and foreordained our days (6:10); therefore, we can trust Him.
Although the pursuits of life are futile in themselves, they are not ultimately futile with God because they will last into eternity: “I also know that whatever God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken away from it. God has made it this way, so that men will fear him” (3:14; cf. 3:11; 12:5). The things we do “under the sun” under God’s lordship somehow last forever. Certainly, the good things are meaningful, lasting into eternity. Yet even what seems to fail is meaningful in God’s hands; failure is a harsh but effective teacher that may shape us for the better so that a failure in the moment may signify a success in eternity. Whether or not we can discern God’s purposes, we have this promise from the Teacher: whatever God does will endure forever. Therefore, if God gifts it to us, then we can enjoy it and know it has significance, even when it seems temporary. Amid our feelings of futility, amid our feelings of grief even, we have hope that nothing is finally futile with God.
The Teacher’s theology of contentment is reiterated throughout the New Testament (Philippians 4:11; 1 Timothy 6:6, 8; Hebrews 13:5). Although God has given us each different lots in life, He wants us to find joy in what He has given us: in the labor, the food, the knowledge, the wealth, and the family He has gifted to us. Still, in all this discussion of true happiness, the Teacher is not saying we cannot be sad. He fully recognizes there is a time to weep and laugh, a time to mourn and dance (Ecclesiastes 3:4). But beneath the circumstances of life is an abiding confidence in God’s provisions. Or as the apostle Paul states, we do not grieve as people without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). True joy, true happiness, true contentment in the Lord equips the person to weather any of life’s storms.
Conclusion
Ecclesiastes is a book about the human condition; it is a book that sets about to answer our feelings of meaninglessness and angst. But it is not ultimately a book of despair—at least for the believer—but rather of happiness and hope; it is a book that teaches us to think rightly about the ordinary things of life. The world has deep problems, and sometimes we are tempted to despair. But thanks be to our good and sovereign God Who does not let our work in His will go to waste and Who wants us to know happiness. By fearing God and keeping His commandments, our pursuits of work and knowledge and pleasure and justice will have meaning into eternity even when we cannot see it. In this respect, Ecclesiastes is deeply encouraging and life-giving.
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