The Grief of Wisdom (Meditations in Ecclesiastes, Part II)
Text: Ecclesiastes 1:12-18
Centuries after Solomon penned Ecclesiastes, Paul would write to the church in Corinth that, “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (I Corinthians 1:25)
Echoes of Solomon’s father David might be heard in Paul’s statement. In Psalm 77:19, David reflected, “Your [God’s] way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.” Isaiah the prophet would also be paraphrased by Paul in Romans 11:34: “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?”
When Job was confronted by God after having declared that his treatment at the hands of God had been unjust, he eventually confessed, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” (Job 42:3)
When it comes to the things of God, whether it be in regards to how He leads His people (Psalm 77), His plan of redemption (Romans 11), in how He decides to treat His individual servants (Job 42), or in any other facet we might consider, it is beyond the capacity and ability of human understanding or reason to ferret it out.
There are just some things we cannot know.
Solomon’s initial approach in striving to understand the desperate state of mankind was to seek out an answer through human wisdom. We know that Solomon was given wisdom beyond what any other person ever possessed (I Kings 3:10-12) and it was still not enough to fully grasp the depth of human brokenness and futility he saw around him everywhere he looked.
What is crooked cannot be made straight,
And what is lacking cannot be numbered.
The human problem is beyond human comprehension. Nothing we ever achieve, no standard of living we ever attain, no amount of technological or scientific advancement; nothing seems to come close to righting the wrongness of life. No amount of insight or learning or analysis has helped us undo the damage every subsequent generation seems destined to cause.
Proof positive of this truth can be seen in the fact that despite all of the 20th century’s mind-blowing achievements, there were still more individual people murdered in both war and peacetime than during all of the previous centuries since the life of Christ combined. The flawed, degenerate, shriveled nature of humankind never seems to be able to stop pursuing its own destruction, no matter what kind of secrets we unlock, mysteries we unravel, or existence-enhancing toys we invent.
For in much wisdom is much grief,
And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
There is certainly benefit to learning, studying, and dedicating yourself to understanding the world and the way that it works. But you must do so while realizing that the more you uncover the more likely you are to be dismayed, confused, and grieved. Understanding more about the world around us only leads to understanding more about humanity’s inability to fix its own problems. While we might expect to find keys which will unlock treasure chests of human advancement, we discover that whichever ones we manage to open only lead to more suffering, pain, and unanswered questions. While we may improve our current circumstances and fix external problems, we never seem to be able to rid the human soul of its depravity or the human heart of its wickedness.
No matter how much better our lives may seem to get, we never seem to become a better humanity. Greater learning and wisdom only enable us to see that our problems are even deeper and more profound than we ever would have imagined. History is littered with great minds driven to despair over the inability of humanity to save itself. Solomon’s declaration reminds us that human intelligence, understanding and wisdom are not at all capable of what our highest intentions seem to hope for.
Paul wrote in Romans 8:20 that God subjected His creation to futility, and the inescapability of that futility is all mankind can hope to understand through even the most Herculean efforts of its own reasoning. The way God runs His universe and the steps He takes along the way are beyond the reach of our greatest minds. Wisdom does not always lead to success – the talented are denied opportunities, skilled people fail miserably, good people suffer, wicked people thrive, and we can sort none of it out. Human achievement is incapable of overriding God’s inscrutable sovereignty.
Despite so many placing their hopes of a better tomorrow upon the minds of our greatest thinkers, the dire human problem refuses to be fixed. Thousands of years before the Enlightenment philosophers even posited their conclusion, Solomon had already warned them that they were wrong: No matter how hard we try, humankind cannot solve its own problems.
They should have listened. So should we.
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For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
- Isaiah 55:8-9
The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. – Deuteronomy 29:29
For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
- I Corinthians 1:19-20