EVERYTHING IS MEANINGLESS

What kind of world are we living in? No matter how it may be described, God does have a word for us. It comes in Ecclesiastes, one of the canonical wisdom books. Ecclesiastes is a series of lectures in the Old Testament that speak about life, reality, and values for wise and successful living. Ecclesiastes has sometimes been misunderstood or neglected.  Some have considered it to be the strangest book in the Bible. The author has been accused of scepticism, fatalism, and pessimism. That's not an accurate appraisal. I recommend the following perspective. Approach the book with an open mind. Discard unflattering assumptions. It is possible to understand what the author was communicating to an Old Testament community of faith and to discern robust recommendations and warnings about life and for living in this age.

The descriptor "son of David" identifies the author as a male and although the author's personal name has not been divulged, the options are narrowed. "The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem …" (1:1). From among David's sons, it was Solomon who had a reputation for communicating wisdom and truth. He is called qoheleth meaning teacher as he takes on the role of a sage, a wise man, a scholar, a wise and older tutor of wisdom.  Like other sages of his day, Solomon spoke to the young people of his day. His primary audience was young adults embarking on life and making decisions about their priorities, their values, and their purposes in life.

The author begins the book by describing everything in life as vanity or meaningless. “Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher. 
Utterly meaningless!
 Everything is meaningless” (1:2). How long would you stay with a counsellor who spoke like that? He must have something more to say. 
He does.

I AM - THAT'S A NAME?

To understand what the human is, we must understand who God is and the bible provides that identification. We are required to listen to the bible's declarations about God and God's grace enables us to make the quantum leap to acceptance. God is the only self-existent and eternal being, existing in a way like no other being in the universe. He exists without origin or beginning. God confessed this concerning himself when Moses expressed his concern to God who had called him to lead the Israelites. Moses didn't know how to answer the Israelites if they were to ask him the name of the God whom he represented. God told Moses "I AM who I AM" and God instructed Moses to tell Israelites, "I AM has sent me to you." (Exodus 3:14). This name connotes existence without origin or beginning. God simply is, over and out. It signifies self-existence and eternality. God is the ultimate being, the one prime reality and source of all other reality. God is infinite. God is He, a pronoun which in this case speaks less to gender and more to the meaning that He has personality characterized by self-consciousness as well as self-determination. The essence of God distinguishes three persons who are neither three gods or three parts or modes of God but rather are coequal and coeternal. This trinity of persons that comprises the ultimate being confirms his communal personal nature.

WHAT DO THE EFFECTS TELL US ABOUT THE CAUSE?

What would a God be like who was responsible for the created universe in which we creatures live. If God cannot be seen, it would be reasonable to think that we could understand God by examination of his creation. Creation would inform us that this God’s authority and power is not merely formidable but supreme. Further, this supremacy would be infinite which would infer that God stands alone without peer. Creation operates within cycles of time and parameters of space, so God would have to exist outside both space and time, that is, God would need to be super-natural. In other words, God would not be limited by space which God created, so God would be inexplicably present everywhere. Therefore, God would be immaterial, and God would be time-less. That would also insure that God would be change-less. The creation of personality insists that God is personal because the impersonal cannot produce personality. Creation speaks of purpose rather than randomness so God would have to be the deliberate cause. That would explain why moral law was integral to God’s creation because God loves what he has made.

ACCOMPLISHING TRANSFORMATION

The purpose of the Christian life is like the purpose of creation: that one should be like God and enjoy all the powers which He has placed within His much loved creature child. Romans 8:29 “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He (Jesus) might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

Godliness, or Godlikeness has always been the standard toward which God wanted the human to live. That is, God fashioned the human in his own image, after his own likeness. To overcome the impairment of that image due to personal wrongdoing, this Image-bearing has been made possible through reclamation, redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ. The recovery or restoration takes place like a transformation, much of which takes place here and now as we are living life. It is a lifelong process. Changes will be made throughout our lives. That’s not even the entire story. What is truly neat about this transformation is that Christ himself lives within us by virtue of His Holy Spirit inside us.

Three big theological terms tell our story, Regeneration, Sanctification, and Glorification

FIRST MAN AND FIRST WOMAN

That act of rebellion by the first man and first woman defaced the image of God in the human in various ways. Human intelligence was impaired so people constantly erred in their reasoning. Morally and socially humankind no longer reflected God's image, being unable any longer to distinguish between good and evil but rather began to exploit others. Human mental, emotional and relational health has been damaged ever since. And you can’t fix those areas first and then hope to have a relationship with God.

God’s good news is that because God made humanity to reflect him and that image was marred by sinfulness he determined to restore the image bearing capacity and to do that he sent his Son into the world where the Son, Jesus, lived such a perfect sinless life that he revealed the exact image of the invisible God, actually God in human flesh, and the plan all along was that this sinless one would give himself as an atoning sacrifice to atone for the sins of the world. This is the great recovery of the image bearers.

When the resemblance was distorted, God went to an extraordinary length to rescue us. And from the moment that you place your faith in Christ’s atoning death for sin, you are redeemed through Christ and you begin to bear the image of His Son. Jesus modeled that life. Your life now corresponds with God’s creation purpose that you should be like God and enjoy powers that God puts in you. It is what it means to be truly human.

PARADISE WAS LOST

The Bible tells the tale that something terrible happened within humanity. The Reflection Of God Became Impaired By Sin. That happened in the paradise lost story, when Adam and Eve got the whole ball rolling. Like a snowball on a hill, it got larger and large affecting us all. Mankind today is only remotely like the ideal humanity portrayed by the psalmist in Psalm 8. The original Adam and Eve was ideal humanity. The human possessed the God-given capacity of self-determination, which meant that he and she had freedom to choose to obey God or to disobey. To disobey would be a violation of the relationship with God. When the original humans from whom we came, chose to disobey God, that act of rebellion defaced the image of God in the human and has affected the entire race. Long after creation, Solomon observed the tragedy that man did not remain as he was created. "This only I have found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes" (Ecclesiastes 7:29).