“I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” 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.”
Ecclesiastes 2:1-3 ESV
Oscar Wilde knew something about the realities of pleasure. His profligacy, not to mention a rather ill-fated affair with Lord Alfred Douglas (known as Bosie), and a resulting legal battle for defamation with Bosie’s father, the Marquis of Queensbury, led ultimately to Wilde going to prison for two years. It was a reckless battle – that lawsuit against the Marquis. Wilde’s friends and counselors advised him to ignore his lover’s insult (he’d left a note for him one night, addressing him as a sodomite). The fact was, the charge was true and, illogically, Wilde, despite his towering intellect and talent, took the advice of Bosie – clearly a compromised source of counsel since his relationship with his father was so very bad.
In the resulting trial Wilde was eviscerated by distinguished barrister Edward Carson. The suit was dropped but the evidence of Wilde’s lifestyle led to charges (sodomy was against the law in 19th century England) that put the renowned writer in prison for two years. At hard labor. That was bad enough but the man who believed we should pursue art for the sake of art was for the 24 months denied any access whatsoever to the written word. He lived like a beast of burden. In his Portrait of Dorian Grey he said, “behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
Wilde’s story comes to mind as we read the Preacher’s words. We hear the echoes of Ecclesiastes in that sin always has consequences precisely because this is God’s world and God is righteous. Now, we pause to note that this is not an endorsement for criminal penalties against sin. That’s another subject for another day. It’s to say that Wilde’s life in which he once famously quipped, “I can resist everything except temptation” was not one of profound happiness. The pursuit of pleasure via the flesh will never satisfy the soul of man.
The Preacher’s words, if believed and acted upon by the Wilde’s of the world, would save us from the twin lies of hedonism and Epicureanism. Ecclesiastes 2 is Scripture’s answer to the question of axiological hedonism, that is, the belief that pleasure itself is the highest good. All variants of hedonism, a wide spectrum to be sure, share the fatal flaw of seeing life only “under the sun.” A worldview without God is one of suicide, slow or fast (Proverbs 8:36). This is America’s struggle today just as it has been everyone’s struggle throughout history.
The question is: what is the highest good?
The biblical answer is, of course, glorifying and knowing God. To love God, to fear Him (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14; Proverbs 1:7), and consider Him first in all our epistemic and ethical evaluations, is the whole duty of man. To seek Him first (Matthew 6:33) and present our entire lives as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1) is the only path to true happiness (Psalm 37:4) by virtue of the basic logic that this is our Father’s world. To seek happiness outside of a real relationship with God is as futile and unnatural as trying to teach your dog to type. God’s world cannot and will not be reshaped or modified by man, for man.
The philosophy of hedonism is diverse but all variants have the same premise, which is the pursuit of man’s highest good outside of God. Materialism is virtually America’s religion…and, like a horrible virus, it has infected many within the church. Consider the Lord’s interaction with the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-22. Material wealth, although very nice, can easily become an idol.
The drunk, the drug user, the sex addict…they all follow the ancient lie that they can be happy without God and that God’s fences are their problem. The hedonist is convinced, wrongly, that sin isn’t his/her existential problem. Pleasures of the flesh become a form of self-medication. But, of course, these are destructive when indulged outside of God’s plan. Socrates had wondered why it was that men chose illogically in pursuit of happiness. Well, like a man with a bad map won’t get where he’s trying to go, so is man unable to find happiness with the bad map of humanism.
R.C. Sproul famously said that everyone is a theologian. What he meant was that everyone, by default, has a theory of ultimacy (metaphysics), knowledge (epistemology), and ethics (right and wrong). All thinking is done with these presuppositions “running in the background” which is why so many “debates” are futile. One’s worldview or theological premises come prior to all other reasoning. To argue about a political candidate, for example, requires one to have a theory of government…and this is only possible downstream of one’s theology. Therefore, to start a debate about President Biden or Trump, or whomever, requires, if any meaningful dialogue is to be had, a clear statement of premises first.
The Devil, if we may be so bold, wants nothing more than to muddy the waters of reasoning so much as to prohibit us from thinking in such categorical manner. A precursory glance at the world proves that he’s been wildly successful.
To ask someone how their theory of happiness correlates logically and flows from their theory of ethics, which itself rests upon a foundation of knowledge that also coincides without contradiction to their metaphysic is like asking a goldfish what its favorite movie is.
This isn’t to say that no man can know any truth. On the contrary, even despite the Fall, by the grace of God men and women retain their faculty of reason. The problem is that the car crash of sin has severely damaged the integrity of the human vehicle. Only in Christ, through the gift of faith, can there be a renewal of one’s mind. To set our minds on the flesh is to continue to see the world in “bits and pieces” rather than as derivative of God’s plan and, therefore, integrated. In Christ we enter the Mechanic’s workshop. He lifts the hood and works on our engine. He starts to fix the damage. The Christian life isn’t one of an oil change and tire rotation. It’s a complete overhaul.
Our old vehicle was totaled. Sin is a total loss.
The new man/woman is a rebirth of mind and priorities.
Scripture starts with the basics. The triune God is ultimate. This is the Bible’s metaphysic. If God isn’t ultimate then there are no sub-ultimates. If there is no supreme Truth, there can be no little truths downstream (no brute facts, as Van Til called them). If what is Ultimate isn’t also Personal, then the ultimate in the universe isn’t meaning and love, but impersonal forces! In other words, if Jesus Christ isn’t truly the way, the truth, and the life, that means that personhood and morality are ultimately meaningless…just another puff of smoke like everything else the Preacher is talking about.
The thing to note is that Koheleth isn’t saying that the eternal things are vain and meaningless, but the temporal things. God isn’t vain and certainly His perfect and life-giving word/law isn’t either. The logic of Ecclesiastes 1 leads inexorably to the Preacher’s point in chapter 2. The vain things and all the smoke in life – the cars, the jobs, the trophies, the houses – are all passing away. Christ and His word aren’t passing away.
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Matthew 24:35 ESV
Ecclesiastes isn’t a book of pessimism, but biblical realism over against the basic lie of sin that man can be like God. The point before us today is the same truth writ large upon the Bible’s message of ultimacy and final judgment.
“Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 ESV
A life spent trying to find happiness in the flesh, in indulgence, at the party, in the bottle, is all smoke. It won’t survive.
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” Matthew 7:24-27 ESV
So, as we see and must see, and should find great delight in knowing, the Bible has no contradictions. The Bible is a system of truth because God is truth. The pursuit of happiness is often seen as the highest good of the possession of political liberty and yet this felicity is never defined, so we’re back to the problem of definitions again. The default setting of our fleshly minds is humanism, that is to say using ourselves and immediate comfort as the final standard of good and evil. But happiness is a result of living in accord with God. Happiness is virtually impossible outside of God because He is the source of all good and perfect gifts (James 1:16-17). We can literally do nothing outside of the will and grace of God (John 15:5).
“Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.” 1 John 2:15-17 NLT
As the Preacher will go on to say exactly this later in the chapter.
“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, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 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 2:24-26 ESV
There’s no contradiction here. The Preacher isn’t saying that all is meaningless – so go ahead and eat, drink and be merry. He’s saying that all things are God’s things! The doctrine of creation is the foundation of all sound reasoning and even the pursuit of happiness. Since this is our Father’s world, how then ought we to live in it?
This leads inexorably to the doctrine of knowledge. The Bible’s epistemology is revelational. In other words, man is made in God’s image and consequently is endowed with the faculty of reason (Isaiah 1:18)
He created the world and everything in it. This is the Bible’s skeletal philosophy. It’s the categorical structure of developing the Christian mind and Christian hand. As it has been said, we seek to live with the head, heart and hand as integrated beings. The pursuit of happiness outside of God fragments us mind, body, and soul. It reduces us to animals. It exposes us to so much despair. But in Christ we have both forgiveness of our debt to God but also true wisdom and joy.
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