Empty Legacy (Meditations in Ecclesiastes, Part IV)
Text: Ecclesiastes 2:18-26 (Continued from Part III)
Perhaps, however, there’s a caveat to discovering the purpose of life in one’s work. Maybe, instead of being self-centered about it, we might consider all the labor we commit ourselves to in light of our posterity. So, Solomon directs his gaze to the generations that will come after him in verse 18. I’m afraid, however, that his conclusion here is similarly bleak.
We cannot look to those who follow after us for meaning and purpose in our work, Solomon says, because how might we guarantee that they will value, appreciate, or cherish it all like it deserves? We pour our blood, sweat, tears, time, energy, skill, talent and life into something only to hand it over to someone who has done none of those things to acquire any of it. We can’t realistically expect them to handle it all with the same deliberate care as we did. Think of it: what is a million dollars in the bank to someone who doesn’t know the first thing about what it took to earn it?
No, says Solomon, the passionate pursuits of one generation are the afterthoughts of the next. If the ultimate meaning of human life was to be found within our work, that meaning would translate to those who come after us just as it translated to us from those who came before. All the acquisition, all the construction, all the labor and toil and effort and work must be reestablished all over again by a new generation. The cycle continues, with no apparent end in sight.
We see this clearly in the business world. Time after time, the creators of successful businesses go above and beyond to establish something timeless and great, only to hand it over to someone else who either runs in the company into the ground or changes its essence into something the original creator would barely even recognize. Or consider the the ever-changing whims of cultural norms throughout history, where the same man can be lauded a hero by one generation and condemned as a monster in the next. A life that is preoccupied with legacy is vanity because death relieves everyone of any amount of control or influence over what their legacy might be.
In concluding Chapter 2, however, Solomon offers us this addendum to what may seem like an unbearably hopeless burden: both work itself and the profit which it produces are given to us to enjoy and it is good and right to do just that. After all, it could be worse: there is nothing that says God was necessarily obligated to design human life in such a way that labor would even be a source of joy. The fact that people can find any measure at all of joy or happiness in their vocations is a gracious gift of God, and it should be received as such.
The key – and this cannot be stated emphatically enough – is that we cannot make ultimate what is not meant to be. Work, labor, profit and acquisition have been shown by Solomon to be things which cannot in-and-of themselves produce everlasting happiness or reveal definitive meaning. To try and make them do so will result, our author tells us, in days full of sorrow, restless nights, and vexing work (vs. 23). To make non-ultimate things ultimate is to make your life pointless and incoherent.
These truths should reach into the very bottom of the heart of all people everywhere. But perhaps especially for men, who have a strong tendency to judge the success or failure of our entire existence on the success or failure of our work, Solomon’s words deserve the time and focus of our most serious attention.
The world will never tire of telling us that what we do is who we are – that we are defined, both now and forever, by what we put into the world and how prominent of a mark we manage to make. The Word of God urges us to consider an alternative: that we keep our work, no matter how successful or unsuccessful we happen to be, in its proper place. And that place is most definitely not in the absolute center of our lives.
Once again, for emphasis: if it didn’t work for Solomon, why would it work for us?