Wednesday Wisdom

"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."

After identifying himself as the author, Solomon gets right to the point in 1:2 and shares the conclusion of all his efforts and pursuits. Not really a recipe for a best seller is it? Especially considering the titles of certain books that you find on shelves nowadays. So what is the role of such brutal honesty in our world of best sellers and self help gurus?
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The world we find ourselves in today is an existential mess. We are constantly bombarded by messages that focus on our individual worth and desires. "Just do it", "Impossible is nothing", "Be yourself", "Have it your way", and others. We are also told by pop psychologists that selfesteem is the primary thing we lack in dealing with our personal and relational struggles. The problem is that, with all of our focus on the individual, we have failed miserably to provide people with any life purpose or meaning that trancends their life experiemce or helps them to answer the big questions of life: Who am I? Where am I going? How should I live? Does any of this matter?
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Right from the beginning, Solomon takes a sledgehammer to all of these ideas. Does life here on Earth have any meaning? The answer from Solomon is a resounding "NO!" If the message stopped here than we would have to question whether this should even be in the Bible. Solomon, however, qualifies this proclamation of meaninglessness by connecting it to an important concept.

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"What does man gain for all of his labor at
which he toils under the sun?"

The concept of "under the sun" is vitally important to understanding the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes. The phrase itself is used 29 times throughout the book and illustrates that anyone searching for meaning within the realm of creation will remain unfulfilled despite his many pursuits. Real meaning can only be derived from outside of the temporal. The infinite must give meaning to the finite and therefore, in our quest for meaning, we must look to God alone.

Man vs. Wild
In verses 4-11 of chapter one Solomon takes up a lament for the finite nature of human life when compared with the seemingly infinite natural world.
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"Generations come and generations go,

but the earth remains forever."
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Scientifically and theologically we know that the world is not eternal. Solomon's point is that people are born and people die, yet the earth they inhabit continues as if nothing has happened. When the lifespan of a person is compared with the "life span" of the earth, the eath wins. In a competition of man vs. nature, nature always wins.

Solomon's overview of various natural phenomena is meant to show that even in nature, nothing is ever really satisfied. He moves from there to illustrate this point about the longings of people. Just as nature is never satisfied and fulfilled, neither are people, especially when it comes to seeing and hearing (1:8). Because of this, people will continually search for something new even though their really is nothing that is new under the sun (1:9).

Exibit A











I give you...dum dum dum dumb...THE RETURN OF 80's FASHION. Run for your lives. The picture on the left is taken from a 2009 women's fashion catalog and the one on the right is from an 80's workout video. Notice some similarities? Those of you who are a bit older have seen this happen numerous times.
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And this is really what Solomon is talking about. There's nothing new under the sun, we just recycle old ideas and even old fashion. The people of Solomon's day were just like people are today, constantly seeking something new. As a result of never finding it, they recycled old things.
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Solomon's conclusion in this section is that just as nature moves on relentlessly, so does life. For people, this life under the sun will bring us no real joy and in the end we will make no long term impact (1:11). If you look at history, who do we remember the most? Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Darwin, Nietzsche. Most of them are not remembered because of their positive contributions to humanity. So what does this all mean? What was God's purpose in having Solomon point out that we live, we die, and we are forgotten?
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The Hebrew word that is translated as meaningless or vanity can also be rendered as "breath" or "vapor". The point that Solomon is making is that life lasts only for a short time. The world that we live in cannot offer us any meaning or purpose during this short time and so, as we will see, Solomon advises us to look outside of our world to God as the source of joy (2:25, 5:18, 8:15). Solomon rightly points out that most of us will probably never be remembered in this life, however, God is the one who does remember and judges and rewards accordingly (3:17, 12:13-14).

Let us take a look at ourselves and our lives. Do we buy into the various "meanings" the world offers us, or do we look outside of our experience to the Creator God as the one who can truly give our lives purpose?
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How, and by whom do we want to be remembered? Do we seek the approval of a meaningless world or of the God who made it?

Caramel Apples!

When you get the craving... you gotta act on it! I'm a little late making these this year, but I had two senior girls come over and join me in making caramel from scratch, drooling over the finished product and eventually eating and slobbering on the apples.
It was great!

This one was made by Thad :) He was very excited about making them and ate all of his caramel leaving the apple.....
he's one smart cookie!

"I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties...So give your servant a discerning heart to

govern your people and to distinguish

between right and wrong."

It is with these words that Solomon, as a young man, began his reign as the last king of the unified Israel. God was pleased with Solomon's request and told him that as well as wisdom (1Kings 3:12) he would be granted both riches and honor (3:13). The rest of chapter 3 gives us insight into the wisdom of the man, chapter 4 gives us a glimpse of his unimaginable wealth, and chapter 6 describes for us Solomon's construction of the temple of the Lord.

It would seem logical that a man of such wisdom would have lived a life characterized by good personal choices. Unfortunately, we see that his life eventually became a great tragedy. He was a man of great wealth (7:1-12 describes the construction of his palace and 10:14-15 his yearly allowance of gold) and that afforded him the opportunity to pursue virtually any material thing he could ever have wanted. This, along with his inability to control his physical lusts, eventually bring destruction to his kingdom and separation in his relationship with God.

"The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice."

Chapter 11 gives us insight into his greatest failings as a man and servant of God. The chapter begins by telling us that he loved many foreign women (expressly forbidden by the Mosaic Covenant (Deut. 7:3-4) and reveals that the turning of is heart away from the Lord would be the result. The extent of his perversion of God's original design for marriage is seen in 11:3 where we find that he had over 700 wives and 300 concubines. As he grew older, these women turned him to the worship and service of other gods. The Lord's anger burned against Solomon and yet He withheld his direct judgement until after Solomon's death. Even with the withholding of His active wrath, God punished Solomon with His passive wrath by removing enjoyment from Solomon's many sensual experiences.

Given the content and tone of the book, it seems clear that Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes from the perspective of a broken down, unfulfilled, old man who is lamenting his wasted life. The book itself is a memoir of repentance as well as a warning to those who would travel the same meaningless paths that Solomon himself so vigorously tread. We should be thankful that the old king came to his senses and left a book that is incredibly straight forward and honest in its presentation.

The quest of philosophy throughout the last two millenia has been a search for truth, meaning, and purpose in life. It's amazing that the words of a man who lived in the 10th century B.C. could speak so clearly and directly to those themes today.

Are there certain choices that we have made and, like Solomon, need to repent of?

Do we learn from the poor choices we make and then share that wisdom with others?

Chapel & Ecclesiastes

Sometime towards the end of this past summer I decided that my times of speaking in chapel this year would revolve around teaching through a specific book of scripture. As I looked through scripture and sought the Lord's wisdom on the issue I eventually decided to teach through Ecclesiastes. So far we have gotten to chapter four over the course of 5 weeks spread throughout the past few months.

I also thought it would be cool for me to share summaries of the various themes and ideas from the book that we have been studying in our chapel times. So I guess this is really just a preview post for what we will call Wednesday Wisdom.

Fun side note: My buddy Jeff and I had a unique opportunity to contribute to a blog that is hosted out of NYC. Jeff and one of his friends were having dinner one night and began discussing Scientology. When his buddy found out about his fascination with the "religion" he asked if Jeff would be interested in crafting a blog post dealing with the subject. Jeff and I spent an afternoon working on it and the blog actually published it.

Here's a link:

http://mockingbirdnyc.blogspot.com/2009/10/scientology-appeal-is-not-so-strange.html

Fw: Christians and the Internet

Oh the wonderful world of the internet. In a matter of seconds you can find anything you want to read about or see. Obviously, this can be either amazingly beneficial or detremental to a person. Over the past few years I have become increasingly fascinated with technology and how it affects us as people, especially those of us who are Christians.

While distrusting the world and its "lies", most Christians tend to believe what they hear or read if it comes from another person who claims the name of Christ. This is not a bad thing but can get us into trouble, especially when it comes to the internet. Call me a cynic that has been overly influenced by my postmodern surroundings, but I never really trust anything on the internet. This is especially true if it comes from (A) a blog, (B) a website that is unaffiliated with a reputable organization, or (C) an email forward. Now I realize the irony of my previous statement and I'm sure you do as well. Feel free to not listen to or believe anything on this blog. It's mostly just pictures of my kids and you'll have a bit of a problem trying to prove that they don't exist. I'm just saying that we need to take things on the internet, including this blog, with a grain of salt.

Anyway, back to the Christian life and responsible use of the internet and email. Don't be gullible! Various websites and email forwards will frequently use misinformation to get believers to support or protest something in large numbers. Do some homework when you get an eamil from someone claiming that X group or organization is trying to petition the White House to mandate that all manger scenes contain Santa Claus instead of Jesus. Double check when someone posts a "story" without any citations or verifiability.

My heart for this is not to make fun of anyone who sends email forwards or believes most of what they hear or see. As someone who has been duped by stuff like this I simply want Christians to be lovers of truth. Jesus said that we would know the truth and that it would make us free. Unfortunatley there are many people in this world, even Christians, who would rather contrive something to help further an agenda than to live in the light of Christ's truth. Be careful who and what you believe on the internet. Don't fall victim to the Christian version of Nigerian scams.

Here are a few websites you can use to help verify emails you get or stories you read on blogs.
http://www.snopes.com/
http://www.truthorfiction.com/

If you've read an email forward claiming that these sites have an evil liberal agenda you can check out http://www.factcheck.org/

Kürbisfest (Pumpkin Festival)

Pumpkins. You know them. You love them. Could there be anything better than walking around a small town that is surrounded by pumpkin patches and takes Halloween a bit too seriously? I submit to you that there could not. So, last Saturday we headed out of Vienna with our friends Jeremy and Kristi and went to a pumpkin festival.

Here was the poster for the event. Scary huh? The one thing I noticed was that apparently they don't take much care in carving their pumpkins, maybe because they carve so many. The sloppy nature of their work runs contrary to everything I learned from my father about pumpkin carving. Therefore, I viewed all of their jack-o-lanterns with disdainful condescension, knowing that dad and I could've done much, much better.

Ah paganism, you just thought it died out with the Druids. Well, it's apparently still alive and well in upper Austria. I happened upon this oddity while eating my cinnamon and sugar encrusted almonds. Ironic, because we all know that nothing goes better with paganism than sweet, fresh roasted almonds. I stared at this thing for awhile in utter disbelief...I was also waiting to see if the raven would say "nevermore".

Anyways, a good time was had by all. We ate some good food and even had cappuccino with pumpkin in it that was surprisingly good. Hurrah for pumpkins and the festivals that celebrate their important countributions to humanity.

Pumpkin Pabulum

EEWWWW! Dad how could you make me do this??

Well all the pics are reversed in order... just to throw you off...or maybe it's because I forgot to enter them other way.
But this was our pumpkin carving evening. We got roasted pumpkin seeds and pumpkin puree from it!
Not to mention a nice little light in our living room in the evenings :)

Preaching

I'm not sure why God keeps giving me opportunities to share and preach the same ideas. I guess it's all ok because He's the one that gives the opportunities and inspires the scriptures that I've been teaching.

So I had the chance to preach yesterday at our church, The International Chapel of Vienna (http://www.viennachapel.org/). Our Pastor James, who despite being a Chelsea fan is a great guy, asked a few of us in the church to be on a preaching team that meets regularly throughout the year. We disuss the section of scripture he will be teaching from each week (currently 1 Peter).

We go through books of the Bible verse by verse, but cover ground a bit quicker than some other churches. One positive of this type of study is that you get a very managable picture of the themes throughout a book of scripture without getting bogged down in intricate, exegetical details. One of the negatives, however, is that some themes that need to be expanded on may not get the full time they need. As a result, James decided that he will preach the book verse by verse and, when certain topics or subjects arise that need to be further expanded, he wanted a few of us from the preaching team to tackle those issues. I thought this was really cool because it gives the Pastor a break every month or two and makes sure he is also under the teaching of the Word.

So yesterday I got to expand on the idea of being an elect exile (a major idea discussed in 1 Peter). I'll post a rought outline and some thoughts on the text later on.

How Big Am I?

When a little boy is curious about how big he really is, it is natural to measure himself with his Daddy's pants! I mean, he is supposed to look to his Daddy as the standard. We want them to grow up and be like their Dads, so we might as well use them as the measuring stick!

We now know that he is not as big and will need some time to grow into those pants. It was a very educating experiment for him....

*** I should note that Ian fit into one side of Daddy's pant legs... but no picture was taken :(