Welcome to the House of Mourning

People are on the prowl for meaning. New experiences and entertainment too—but even then it comes down to trying to find meaning. If there’s one piece of empirical evidence that staunchly defies evolutionary explanations for its existence, it’s the search for meaning.

For one thing, it’s unique to humans. Chimpanzees may be smart enough to organize themselves, use tools, and learn sign language. But those hairy, tailless (if it doesn’t have a tail it’s not a monkey), big-lipped simians just aren’t smart enough and talented enough (and doggone it, well, people like me) as humans because of the small matter of the search for meaning.

I should probably issue a disclaimer for the sake of clarity: I don’t think Solomon is saying we should necessarily prefer the “house of mourning” over the “house of feasting”. At least not all the time. All things in moderation, after all. I’m not trying to make the case that we should be somber and never-smiling all the time. And for this church, that’s a good thing, because we tend to smile a lot.

3 Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.

We are, of course, completely free to disagree with Solomon. We can say to ourselves—or others—that he’s just wrong. That meaning can be found anywhere and that, since you can find meaning anywhere (six of one, half-dozen of the other), why not try and find it where there’s mirth and feasting. I’m not exactly sure what “mirth” is, but it sounds fun. And feasting is always good.

4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

But just disagreeing with Solomon doesn’t erase these verses from the Bible. They’re there no matter how we feel about them and they deserve to be dealt with. After all, Solomon isn’t simply offering us his opinion (though he does do that), he’s making unequivocal assertions that the path to meaning leads to the house of mourning.

If we disregard the Old Testament as obsolete for a modern Christian, then the task of refuting Solomon becomes easy: he’s out of date and out of touch. While that may sound like sarcasm, it really isn’t. A lot of Christians do see the Old Testament as superseded, obsolete, and no longer applicable. It’s often disregarded as a topic for modern sermons at the risk of coming across as too Bible-thumping, and I get the impression that a lot of people look at the Old Testament in general, and Solomon in particular, like DVD extras. Something that might be interesting to watch but not what you bought the thing for. Maybe they give you a little more insight and we laugh at the bloopers reel, but the DVD extras are, essential, extra. Superfluous. Not necessary to enjoying or understanding the movie.

The establishment of the New Covenant through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection has done for us what no high priest before him was ever able to do. In that respect, the Old Testament can be looked at in the same light as a stack of notes you took in a class you had last semester. Assuming, of course, you’re the kind of student who does, in fact, take notes. Maybe you keep them around for your own edification, but you know that’s all behind you now. But the point of that class wasn’t to waste your time with useless knowledge (unless it was a history class), but to provide you the information you need to build something else with. It goes back into the corners of your mind and, like sand poured over a brick sidewalk, fills in the gaps between the bricks to unify the whole. Ecclesiastes, then, is much like that stack of notes or that sand between the bricks.

II

I’m accused of being a literary snob. I think anyone who studies literature seriously runs the risk of being accused of turning up their nose up at something written “for the common man.” It’s not true, of course. I’m not a literary snob. We prefer the term “aficionado.”

As I’ve turned a serious eye towards what makes stories stand up over time, it becomes clear that only those stories that have intense meaning attached to them make the cut. Dime-store pulp stories about the lawless West aren’t studied in college literature classes (well, except as examples of how not to write a book), but Henry James is. It’s not because those dime-store novels weren’t important. Several generations of Americans grew up with the fantastical exploits of Wild Bill Hicock and Jesse James floating around in their subconscious. But their lack of substance, which was their strongest selling-point at the time, meant that there just wasn’t enough meat in them to last. Like a hot dog, what little meat there was in them was consumed and people moved on.

Henry James, on the other hand, has produced a number of slow-moving (okay, many would use the word “boring”) novels that have so much meat in them that it’s almost impossible to digest it all out of them. If the dime-store novels were frankfurters, Daisy Miller is beef jerky.

You probably didn’t realize it, but you’ve just completed American Lit 101. That’ll be $145 from each of you and I’ll email you a transcript.

It’s also very common to associate works of Art--and I’m lumping in writing with all other forms of artistic expression...Henry James would be proud--that the “aficionados” have pedigreed with the word “depressing.” That’s such a harsh word. My wife has made flippant remarks about some story we were critiquing in class that ran something like this: “I liked it, but it’s probably not depressing enough for you literary types.” That’s a fair criticism. On one side of the spectrum you have sentimental. On the other, depressing. In all things, moderation, after all. But it’s not a forgone conclusion that a work of Art that maintains a suite in the House of Mourning is necessarily “depressing.” Usually, when people call something “depressing” what they really mean is “hopeless.” Or “salvationless.”

When some people call things “depressing” they may not be using the word accurately, but be reacting to the weightiness of the work. Cake is easy to eat. It’s light, fluffy, and goes down easy. But what did our parents say to us? “Eat your vegetables.” I’ve yet to see a cake made from vegetables (that I'd want to eat...carrot cake doesn't count here). They’re more dense and more weighty—and better for us. There’s not a lot of mirth connected to vegetables.

Ecclesiastes, then, is not “depressing” because it’s not “hopeless.” Let me rephrase that: it’s not hopeless if this isn’t all you’ve got. He didn’t have the advantage of knowing Jesus, so we’ve actually got one up on Solomon. But how many people might actually be genuinely depressed by Ecclesiastes because Solomon tells them that everything they have to look forward to in this life is all vanity and a striving after the wind? Your looks-good-on-paper career and six-figure income and 15 underlings? Vanity. Your life of good deeds and saving Darfur and little, blind fishes? Vanity. Your life of strict religious adherence? Vanity.

9 What gain has the worker from his toil?  10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.  11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.  12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live;  13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man.

Ecclesiastes 3 (ESV)

If there’s one thing I appreciate about Solomon, it’s his subtle use of apparent contradictions. These verses are from chapter three. He’s just spent the greater part of two chapters telling us how all this stuff is vanity and a chasing after wind. Now all of a sudden it’s “God’s gift to man”? So which is it? If the toil is vanity, then why would God give it to us as a gift?

I read this as: “toiling on your own, in an effort to make the best life you can for yourself, but without God, is vanity and that no matter what you do, whether you pursue wisdom, knowledge, work, or what have you, it will all come to nothing.” Solomon says that he’s observed that no one has any advantage over anyone else, in the final analysis. We all breath the same air--even we and the animals are the same in that respect--and we all meet the end in the same way. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I suppose if he wanted to riff on the MasterCard commercial, he could have summarized thusly:

“Life without God: meaningless.
Life with God: priceless.”

III

10 Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is...

Ecclesiastes 6

You’ve heard the cliche: “Confucius say: there is nothing new under the sun.” Well, “Solomon say: there is nothing new under the sun.” We sort of know this already; whether we learn it from a documentary on the latest archeological find on a South American mountaintop or by reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. This seems like a common-sense observation to the layman. We recognize that people are people, and as far back as we wish to go in human history, we see people we can understand.

Science, on the other hand, tells us that people have been evolving. Not just in the physical sense, either. But that our society has been evolving too.

You’ve probably heard this before: “c’mon, man--this is the 21st century!”

According to popular interpretation, our society today is the result of a logical “evolution.” I guess it’s assumed that, since technology has been advancing, and that knowledge has been increasing (at least for those in the West, or in wealthy European states), then the attitudes we hold toward each other have naturally followed a path of refinement and improvement over the centuries parallel to that of the evolution of the fabric loom or the iron smelter. Well, maybe those aren’t actually a good example. Those things work today mostly the same way they have since antiquity, except that now they work faster and on a larger scale. Come to think of it, even the computer works just like an abacus, with the notable exception that we can now fit millions of little abacuses inside a microchip. And there’s millions of little electronic fingers flipping the little abacus rings back and forth. So, even when we look at technology, it seems that Solomon’s premise, that “everything that comes to be has already been named” is, in fact, correct.

We may have learned to do things faster and, in some cases, more economically than in the past, but I can’t find very many examples of a genuine evolution of either technology or society. There’s certainly change and refinement. But evolution requires creating something new. It requires that things change their basic form. Solomon says differently. He says that what a Man is is already known. Combine that with a forgetfulness of the past, and history is destined to repeat itself.

IV

10 Say not, "Why were the former days better than these?" For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

It’s okay to remember the former days so you don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. For example, countries don’t make treaties with one another that have automatic go-to-war contingencies in them, just in case another Austrian archduke gets assassinated by the Serbians. It’s safe to say that remembering the former days of 1914-1918 have helped us prevent going to war they way Europe did in 1914. Of course, we’ve still had an easy half-dozen wars since then, but none of them came about in the same way.

Solomon’s saying that nostalgia doesn’t come from wisdom. Keeping also with the theme of nothing new under the sun, we see in this another example of how Solomon is right: what Man is is already known. Even in his time, people longed for the “simpler”, earlier times. But even in Solomon’s time, being nostalgic about the past didn’t help anyone. I know this first-hand because I am quite nostalgic. I do ask why the former times were better than these.

But they weren’t any better. We just don’t know (or don’t remember) how bad they were.

In some ways, nostalgia is escapism. Unhappy with the present, we try and recreate only the good things we envision those former times had. But there’s only the future. Even the present is beyond our reach because as soon as the future becomes the present, it keeps right on going and becomes the past. Nostalgia is an anchor that’s left down while the boat is trying to move forward.

V

So, wrap up and summarize: should we maintain a suite in the House of Mourning? Wear black all the time? Avoid mirth and folly? It would seem to me that Solomon’s trying to say that all purely human endeavor is vanity and a chasing after the wind. He’s also saying that meaning is found in the difficult and the deeply emotional. I’m not willing to say that being happy is an exercise in futility. But personally, I’m suspicious of the feel-good fads of Christianity these days. The Joel Osteen brand of health-and-wealth gospel may sell books, but when a relative dies who doesn’t know the Lord, I’m not sure Mr. Osteen would have a lot to say to comfort us. Maybe I’m being too critical. That’s entirely possible.

In a roundabout way, Solomon seems to be defending those of us who are quickly bored with mirth and feasting and get frustrated with those Christians who reprimand us for being too dark and serious. “You just need to lighten up.” Well, maybe. But so did Solomon.

Follow me to the House of Mourning. We may cry, but it’ll be a good cry.