It’s Groundhog Day again. For some today elicits memories of waiting to hear the long-term forecast delivered by a rodent in central Pennsylvania. For others it brings back memories of the Sisyphus-ian hardship of Bill Murray, reliving the day over and over in the movie of the same name. The former asks what the sun has to say about the winter’s stamina. The latter suggests there’s nothing new under the sun.
The book of Ecclesiastes is no walk in the park. It is wisdom literature, which is not a genre any of us are overly familiar with. It is highly philosophical, which is a discipline few of us have mastered. What makes it most difficult, however, is likely that much, though not all of the book is an extended argument built on the practice of granting a false premise to see where it leads. What if, Solomon asks, there were nothing beyond the here and now? What if this world is all there is? Solomon gives an unflinching look into the gaping maw of meaninglessness that is the hostilely indifferent universe. He finds vanity, striving after the wind.
The bulk of what he exposes is the utterly bereft teleology of naturalism. There is, if there is only the here and now, no reason to do or to be anything. Purpose is banished to non-being. One cannot discern any certain truths, as all our understanding is limited by our finitude. One cannot discern real right and wrong as there is no standard above us by which to measure. And one cannot know what to do because every goal leads straight to the same meaningless grave.
Solomon, however, also exposes the banality and utter drabness of a closed universe. He reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl. 1:9). There is no variety, no complexity to be harmonized, no delightful surprises. The future is painted in the same monochrome as the past. And the future after that is the same.
The dreariness of the clockwork world, however, isn’t real. Like the stubborn, cynical dwarves in paradise who insisted they were locked in a crowded and dark stable in C.S. Lewis’s Narnian conclusion, The Last Battle, those who insist we live under the sun are as blind as if there were no sun. We live in a world that is under the Son, where stars sing and dance, where tiny, unique ice sculptures fall from the sky, where quantum particles giggle playing hide and seek. We live in a world with a beginning, a wretched cataclysm, a vague promise, fits and starts and a hero who doesn’t merely cheat death but crushes it. We live in a world with an end, where saints from across the globe are perfected, and sing eternal praise to their husband, their king, their Redeemer.
We live, because of Jesus, in a world in which all things are being made new (Rev. 21:5). This is the day the Lord is remaking. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Thanks RC.