Chuck Larsen

Several times the bible teaches us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. True reverence for God is found only in those who realize their own impotence. As life teaches us the limits of human wisdom and understanding we learn to marvel at God’s omnipotence and omniscience. In 1 Corinthians 8:2, Paul wrote, “And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.” True wisdom involves the coming to know that we don’t know very much. Before 1950 it was said that the world’s knowledge more than doubled every 50 years. Today the amount of the world’s knowledge is doubled every other year. Along with man’s limitations comes the reality of man’s sinfulness. Ecclesiastes chapter 7 ended with the indictment of the entire human race as sinners. Every man and every woman have sinned and fallen short of God’s standard.

When people acknowledge this truth and let God into their lives it marks the first step towards true wisdom. At the beginning of chapter eight, Solomon makes a transition. He moves on from pointing out our failures to pointing out the joys of a wisdom that brings God into the unsolvable equation of life. Ecclesiastes 8:1 says, “Who is like the wise? And who knows the interpretation of a thing? A man’s wisdom makes his face shine, and the hardness of his face is changed.”

Acknowledging our sinfulness accompanied by our need for God makes up the category of people “who are like the wise.” This wisdom changes us from the inside out. It makes our face shine! I don’t think this is like the shining of Moses’ face when he came down from the mountain in Exodus 34, yet spending time with God definitely will change our countenance. Psalm 34:5 says, “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be disappointed.” I think this is the kind of “shining” that Solomon is referring to. When we let go of our own righteousness and trust God we can find true contentment. We don’t have to understand everything to be at peace in the world. We don’t have to experience every pleasure, acquire many possessions, advance to the highest position, or become exceptionally popular. Paul said he had learned to be content in every life situation through his connection with Christ who strengthened him. We too have a connection with the God of the universe through Christ. John teaches us that Jesus came so we could experience life to its fullest. When Jesus becomes my wisdom, my way, my truth and my life, I am changed from the inside out.

In Ecclesiastes 7:20, Solomon said, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” As he continued his quest for truth, he discovered the same was true for women. It’s in verse 28 of chapter 7 that he says that in his quest for a righteous person there is not one righteous woman in a thousand. He is commenting on both genders to make his point regarding the pervasiveness of sin. He makes this clear in Ecclesiastes 7:29. It’s almost like he is saying that after all his searching the primary truth that he discovered is that man cannot find God or meaning in life by searching. The only thing he is sure about is that he’s not sure about anything. But he is sure about one thing. He says, “See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” Even the best of both men and women is nothing more than a sinner saved by grace. This is a broad stroke against humanity as a whole as well as every man and woman in particular. Charles Bridges called this a “humbling testimony to the universal and total corruption of the whole race of man.” Sin, in every generation, is the great equalizer. Paul sums it all up for in Romans 3:23; “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Ecclesiastes 7:29 is a very important verse for Christian doctrine. It tells us two things. First, “God made man upright.” In Genesis we see that God created us in His own image. After He had created things in each day of creation He declared that they were good. After he created mankind we read in Genesis 1:31, that “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” This is the doctrine of “original righteousness.” The second truth is that following in the footstep of the first man and the first women, we all find ways to make bad what God made good. This is called “original sin.” Solomon said in an earlier passage that man cannot straighten out what God has twisted. Although this is true, we certainly can twist what God made straight: ourselves! To come from “the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” said C. S. Lewis, “is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on the earth.”

William MacDonald wraps up these two truths by bringing Jesus into the picture. He writes, “Even in his fallen condition, man still has an intuitive hunger to find perfection. He goes through life looking for the perfect partner, the perfect job, the perfect everything. But he cannot find perfection in others or in himself. The trouble is that his search is confined to the sphere under the sun. Only one perfect life has ever been lived on this earth, that is the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. But now He is above the sun, exalted at the right hand of God. And God satisfies man’s hunger for perfection with Christ—no one else, no other thing.” We are all partakers of original sin. Only Christ can restore us to “original righteousness.”

My great aunt married a man who spent his entire life trying to send and receive audio messages to aliens in outer space. His observatory is covered with weeds and overgrown with thickets. Based upon an experience in the 50s, he’s been convinced that there is life on other planets outside our galaxy. I don’t know why this surprises me. There are many people in this country who believe the same thing. But I didn’t know that we were financing their research. According to Phil Ryken, “…the University of Wyoming offers a class to teach its students how to communicate with aliens. ‘Interstellar Message Composition,’ the course is called, and it is sponsored by a grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). According to Wyoming’s Web site, it is ‘the first class to enlist creative writers in a potential cosmic conversation.’ ‘We’ve thought a lot about how we might communicate with other worlds,’ the professor says, ‘but we haven’t thought much about what we’d actually say.’”

Ryken goes on to report, “One of the first assignments the instructor gives his students is to summarize the human condition in ten words or less—a short, simple statement they could send as an S.O.S. to the universe. One English major completed the assignment in just nine words: ‘We are an adolescent species searching for our identity.’ If this is what passes for higher education in America these days, then it is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. But we should also respond with pity for what it tells us about the condition of fallen humanity. People are searching for meaning, calling in the darkness and hoping there is someone out there who can tell us who we are.”

I am reminded of Job’s question “can man find God by searching for Him?” the expected answer is an obvious “absolutely not!” The truth is we all want to discover the meaning of life. We all want to know our place in the universe and to figure out who we are and what we are doing here. It’s the same angst we find in Ecclesiastes 7:23-24. Solomon says “All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, ‘I will be wise’ but it was far from me. That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out?” Again the expected answer is “no one.” Knowing the limits of human wisdom and understanding is part of wisdom. If we are ever to discover the answer to these questions, God will have to reveal them to us. The Bible gives us these answers. As the author, God tells me that I am a human being and not an impersonal mechanism. My aspirations to know the truth about myself and the world and universe I live in spring from the fact that I am made in the image of God the creator. Sin has alienated me from God and the universe, but He so loved us that He sent Jesus to restore the broken relationship and to reveal to us the meaning of life, who we are, why we’re here and our ultimate destiny beyond the grave.

Grace is an essential component to any healthy relationship. The best way to handle an offense is simply to ignore it. This is a mark of wisdom and maturity. Solomon told us this in Proverbs 19:11. He said, “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” The idea of ‘glory’ makes me think of heroic, victorious living. This kind of bravery is essential for every relationship but none more so than marriage. A grandmother, celebrating her golden wedding anniversary, once told the secret of her long and happy marriage. “On my wedding day I decided to make a list of ten of my husband’s faults for which, for the sake of our marriage, I would overlook,” she said. A guest asked the woman what some of the faults she had chosen to overlook were. The grandmother replied, “To tell you the truth, my dear, I never did get around to listing them. But whenever my husband did something that made me hopping mad, I would say to myself, ‘Lucky for him that’s one of the ten.’”

In Ecclesiastes 7:21-22 Solomon takes this principle a step further by explaining the rationale behind it. He says, “Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.” This subject has been the topic of Jesus’ teaching as well. He warned us about judging others lest we be judged. He emphasized the foolishness of trying to remove specks from our neighbor’s eye while accommodating logs in our own eyes. He even warned us about how our own forgiveness is connected to how we forgive others. In the epistles we are twice exhorted to forgive others as Christ has forgiven us.

I’m sure we can all remember times when we’ve said unkind things about others. This makes us living proof of verse 20 which reminded us that there is not a righteous person on earth who always does good and never sins. Ryken observes, “We all fail to meet God’s standard of perfect speech. So we should be slow to judge other people for not living up to that standard either. If we are wise, we will let our own sinful words remind us not to take what other people say too much to heart, but make allowances for them instead, offering them the same grace that we ourselves need so often.”

After Solomon advises us not to be overly righteous he reminds us of our fallen nature. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” This biblical reality is repeated very often in scripture in both Testaments. One commentator says It “is an affirmation of the falleness of all humanity (cf. 1 Kgs. 8:46; 2 Chr. 6:36; Job 15:14–16; 25:4; Ps. 130:3–4; 143:2; Prov. 20:9; Rom. 3:9–18, 23; 1 John 1:8–2:1). This shows the foolishness of perfectionism and/or human effort (cf. vv. 16–18).”

Keeping the context of the passage, the verse immediately preceding this verse expounds on the value of true wisdom. Verse 19 says, “Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city.” He then proceeds to give us the most profound piece of wisdom that he has. When the scriptures teach us that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” it necessitates our taking our rightful place amongst the whole population of the human race; we are all sinners. It is in the reality of our weakness that true strength can be found. This may have been the basis for Paul’s comment that it was in his weakness that he became strong. I would argue further that it’s the reality of our sinfulness that becomes the very foundation for living a life of integrity. When we fail to come to grips with our own sinfulness, we inevitably “must redefine sin or diminish the standard of holiness.” It takes the focus off of God and puts it on myself. It can lead to devastating result. Church history is full of examples. Let me give you one of the more extreme examples to make my point. I had to write a paper in college on the Oneida community.

It was founded by John Humphrey Noyes and was based on a notion of perfectionism. The Oneida Community was the best known of about fifty utopian communes that operated in New York State in the second half of the nineteenth century. Oneida members (about three hundred of them) started a tableware company that still thrives today. It was hailed in its day as a model of Christian brotherhood and holiness. It was discovered in 1879 that the Oneida Community also practiced communal marriage. Every woman was considered married to every man, and all were at liberty to have sex with anyone else in the community they chose. Worse, children were expected to be sexually active as soon as they were old enough. Noyes himself usually initiated the young girls as soon as they reached puberty. Noyes, like all too many perfectionists, simply adapted moral standards to suit his own preferences. I know this is an extreme example, but as one writer said, “Ultimately all perfectionists are forced to devise down-scaled definitions of sin, holiness, and perfection that can accommodate the imperfections of human carnality.” A life of integrity begins with the wisdom that we are all sinners. Admitting it is a huge step towards a healthy, happy and wholesome life. On husband said, “Now, my wife’s parents have not spoken to me in four years, ever since I made a sarcastic remark about their perfectionist tendencies at a Thanksgiving dinner—ironically, they had forgotten to bring the apple pie.”

Solomon taught us that life just isn’t fair! The righteous will often suffer at the hands of the wicked and the wicked will often prosper at the expense of the righteous. The fastest runner doesn’t always win the race or bicycle rider for that matter. The wicked may cheat you out of your success. The wisest person doesn’t often receive the greatest reward. True wisdom and worldly ways often collide! With this in mind, Solomon gives us some sound advice in Ecclesiastes 7:16-18. He says, “So don’t try to be too righteous or too wise—why kill yourself? But don’t be too wicked or too foolish, either—why die before you have to? Avoid both extremes. If you have reverence for God, you will be successful anyway.”

In a national survey by a very reputable Christian statistician, in answer to the question, “What is the single, most important element for success?” 41 percent said faith, 25 percent said family but only 11 percent said a balanced life. I think Solomon is emphasizing the role of faith, reverence for God, in building a satisfactory life. In chapter six he told us that a life devoid of faith is a life that’s not worth living. Truly, a life lived totally “under the sun,” is a life in which you can’t get no satisfaction. Yet, when God is added to the equation we can live a satisfying life. Further, Solomon is teaching us that from the perspective of faith we can balance our lives in such a way as to live a healthy, happy, and wholesome life “under the sun” with all those around us; in the home, church, on the job, in our community, and in the world at large.

Trying to be too good will ruin your life. Being too evil will ruin your life. These two contrasting rules must be balanced. Smith says, “By accepting only one of these rules, harmful consequences will ensue. If one becomes overly righteous, i.e., he trusts in his own righteousness, his trust in divine providence may be undermined, especially in bad times. If he is overly wicked, he will bring upon himself the penalty of sin. He must cling to both principles.” Lives of faith will keep us balanced as we live with the tension between the two extremes. Reverence for God will keep a person from all excesses. The godly life is a balanced life