I remember when I was in college I was in a kind of intro to philosophy class. The professor took a creative approach where he had us read books of fiction that embodied different philosophies. So we read, for example, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, Albert Camus’s The Stranger, and C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet. Like I said, it was a kind of creative approach to philosophy via literature.
Maybe halfway through the semester, I walked up to a table where two of my friends were sitting. They were both Christians, and I asked them: “Why do we read all this literature? What’s the point?” The first friend responded, “I think that it’s important for us as Christians to be able to understand another person’s worldview. That way we can articulate the gospel better to different kinds of people.” My other friend then said, “You can read it because you enjoy it.”
That second response struck me. In the Christian world, art can often be viewed in a utilitarian way. Art is only useful insofar as it’s used to communicate the gospel. And while it certainly can do that, it doesn’t have to immediately serve that purpose. One can receive or create art simply for the sake of enjoyment. I would like to argue that doing so is actually something God explicitly invites. That invitation happens in the book of Ecclesiastes.
In the Christian tradition I grew up in, Ecclesiastes was largely ignored—likely because it was strange and hard to understand. But recent scholarship has helped us recover what many ancient Jewish and Christian interpreters always knew. The famous opening line, “‘Meaningless, meaningless,’ says the preacher, ‘all is meaningless,’” is (unfortunately) an unhelpful translation. The Hebrew word is hevel, which means mist or vapor. It’s a word picture that communicates how the purpose or meaning behind the things that happen is elusive—like a cloud that slips through your fingers.
The preacher gives examples. We would expect the race to always go to the swift, except it doesn’t. We would expect things to always go well for the righteous and ill for the wicked, except it doesn’t. We would expect the work of the diligent to last and the work of the lazy to perish, except it doesn’t. The preacher continues enumerating confusing examples like this. The refrain is a brutally honest assessment of life: we don’t know what will come to us, and we cannot understand it. It is hevel—a mist that cannot fully be grasped.
Given the bleakness of the preacher’s refrain, his application may come as a bit of a surprise. He says that because there is so much in life that we cannot grasp, we must receive what we have with joy. He gives examples: We must enjoy the wife of our youth. We must enjoy eating bread and food. And we must enjoy the work that God has given us to do. In Ecclesiastes, the upshot of the unknown is not despair but profound joy. We can treasure our spouse and children as a gift. We can drink a glass of wine as a gift. We can enjoy our work (even artistic work!) as a gift.
In other words, we don’t have to carry the burden of making sense of everything. The unknown orients us to the God who knows more than we do. When the unknowns or confusing patterns of life put us in a fog, we can say, “I don’t have to make sense of it. The only thing I know is what’s in front of me. And what’s in front of me is a gift. And I can receive it as such.” It’s as though we were on a journey and could not see over the horizon; but rather than tell us what is over the horizon, God invited us to enjoy the lake beside the way.
As an artist, I have found this posture deeply liberating. For instance, sometimes I get anxious about the legacy of my art. I can become a slave to making a name for myself. Or, like I mentioned at the beginning, I can think about the usefulness of my art. I can become a slave to the fear that my art might not have the impact on others that I want it to.
But then I mull over the book Ecclesiastes and think, “Wait, I don’t have to slavishly worry about legacy or impact. That is beyond my knowledge or control. But I can receive my artistic work as a gift because God has given it to me to freely enjoy.” Ecclesiastes invites joy as a way of orienting ourselves toward God in the midst of life’s confusing realities. Genuinely, that’s remarkable. I can feel the difference in my body while composing. It is not a striving after legacy or impact, which I can’t control anyway. Instead, I’m receiving a gift. What a joy it is to receive!
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