Ecclesiastes week 6: The Lure of Wealth

Dorsey Translation of Ecclesiastes:

7. Greed and the oppression of the poor
8 Don’t be surprised when you see rich people in a particular district defrauding the poor or depriving the powerless of justice and due process. For influential men protect one another; and they, in turn, are protected by even more powerful men. 9 And above them all is the king of the land, and the officials who serve him. 10 But people who love money will never have enough of it. Those who love wealth will never be satisfied with what they have. Wealth cannot give a person lasting satisfaction. 11The more a person has, the more he needs. Rich people expend much energy watching and guarding their wealth. 12 In contrast, the sleep of a common laborer is sweet, whether he has little or much to eat. But the riches of a wealthy person do not allow him to sleep.
8. Miserliness
13 Another tragic thing in this world is when someone hoards his wealth rather than enjoying it, 14 and then loses it all through some misfortune, so that he doesn’t even have anything to leave to his children. 15 Just as that man came forth naked from his mother’s womb, so he departs with absolutely nothing. He leaves as he came, with nothing to show for all his lifetime of labor. 16 It is a tragedy. He departs this life with exactly what he had when he came into it–nothing. And what does he have to show for all his labor? All his wealth is gone, like a vapor. 17 And this is especially tragic since he did not even enjoy his life; he ate his food in gloom, with much unhappiness, misery, and displeasure. 18 I saw clearly from this that a person should enjoy his life and his work during the few days God gives him, for this is God’s gift to him. 19 When God gives a person wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy these things, and to accept what God has given him, and to find joy in his work–this is truly a gift from God. 20 Such a person will not be overly concerned about how long he lives, since God has filled his days with joy.
9. Dissatisfaction with life; failure to enjoy what one has been given
6:1 I have observed another tragedy in this world, and it very common: 2 Sometimes God lets a person have wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires, but then God does not grant him the ability to enjoy these things, so that another person ends up enjoying them instead. Such a person seems to have much, but he actually has nothing. It is a great tragedy. 3 Even if such a man has a hundred children and lives many years, no matter how long he lives, if he is never satisfied and never enjoys the good things he has, then even though he is among the living, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he is. 4 Even though the stillborn child arrives for only a moment and disappears into darkness where it is forgotten, 5 never once seeing the sun or knowing anything at all, I say that this child experiences more tranquility than that man does– 6 even if the man lives two thousand years without joy. Both of them end up in the same place–the grave. 7 All the man’s efforts have been to accumulate things to enjoy, yet he is never satisfied with what he has.
10. Conclusion: Enjoy what God has given you
8 This is why the wise person is far better off than the fool; for the wise person has learned to enjoy what he has. 9 It is better for a person to enjoy what he has than to crave what he doesn’t have–which is elusive and ethereal, like a breeze that cannot be held. 10 God has already determined what a person should have, and what a person should be. One cannot dispute with God over these things, for his authority is greater than that of human beings. 11 People desire many things that ultimately are of no value to them. 12 How can a human being even know what would be best for him in this life, during the few fleeting days that he lives like a passing shadow? How could he know what would be best for him in his future?

Ecclesiastes 5:8-6:12 (Dorsey Translation at the bottom)

The author of Ecclesiastes, QOHELETH as he calls himself, Solomon, we presume, has touched on the subject of wealth several times here in this middle section of the book filled with practical wisdom. Here he takes a deep dive into the subject.

“Money can’t buy happiness,” we often say. But that sure doesn’t stop people from trying. Some people amend that by saying, “Money can’t buy happiness, but you can rent it for a while.” And the more I think about that statement, the more I agree with it. Money holds the appeal of being able to make you happy, but it doesn’t last. Lasting satisfaction cannot be found in money or possessions or any material thing. It is a “vain pursuit” to try to find lasting satisfaction in material things, a “chasing after the wind,” as QOHELETH calls it.

In this section, QOHELETH discusses several of the problems related to wealth.

He starts out with the subject of greed and its cousins, corruption and oppression. The rich and powerful oppress the poor and powerless. The officials at every level of government bureaucracy want to get their piece of the pie. Now, whereas the prophets roundly condemned this, QOHELETH seems to view it more just as a fact of life. Some have suggested that in verse 9 he is saying that the answer is to have a good and honest king over top of the whole system. But in any case, it points out a first problem with wealth: Those who desire it will often violate ethical standards in order to get more of it. Who of us has not been tempted to cheat or be dishonest in some way in order to get more or keep more of what we have?

“People who love money will never have enough of it.” Money is neither good nor bad. The same money that is used to finance the building of an orphanage or a medical clinic in a developing nation is used to finance a human trafficking system and to grease the palms of police and government officials to be silent about it. But the love of money can cause a great deal of problems. Paul in 1 Timothy warns that a love of money has caused many to wander from the truth, to be pierced with many griefs, and can even plunge you into ruin and destruction.

The first danger of a love of money is that it can never satisfy. The more we have, the more we need. And the more we have, the more anxieties we have about it. The rich man can’t sleep at night, worrying about all that he has to lose. But the average person works hard and sleeps at night, QOHELETH says.

A second danger of wealth is the temptation of hoarding it, holding onto what we have rather than using it. Hoarders are unable to enjoy what they have. And this is all

the more tragic because what we have can be lost. Theft, war, drought, and bad investments were all dangers to wealth in the ancient Near East world. It’s all the more tragic to lose what we have when we never enjoyed it in the first place. And in any case, whatever we have, we can’t take it with us when we die.

I think QOHELETH is pointing to another danger of wealth in this section, which is the danger of workaholism. In verse 17, he talks about a person not enjoying life and eating their food in gloom. Gloom could also be read as darkness. This is a picture of someone working from sunup to sundown trying to get ahead. They have to eat in the dark because they used all the daylight trying to try to get ahead. I thought of the story of Charles Dickens’ Scrooge here. Scrooge, eating a cold and meager meal in a cold and dark house, after working sunup to sundown, just so he can keep a little more.

We should find enjoyment in life. This is God’s gift to us. It is not the number of our days, the quantity of our life that makes it rich. It is the quality of our days, how much joy we find in the midst of life. Life is short, and often difficult, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t find joy in it.

God doesn’t want his people to be miserable. He doesn’t want us to be always working, always holding on to what we have. It’s wise to save and plan for the future, but only up to a point. Only as long as it doesn’t prevent us from enjoying life today. We should enjoy life. We should celebrate. We should throw a party. We should use material things to our enjoyment. This is a gift from God.

This leads into the next tragedy of wealth: The person who has much but not the ability to enjoy it. Some people just don’t enjoy things. They have things, but they don’t enjoy them. QOHELETH says, basically, “It’s better not to live at all than it is to live without the ability to find joy.”

There are other risks of wealth, of course. Wealth tends to attract freeloaders, those who would be happy to relieve us of our hard-earned wealth.

Wealth can lead to over-indulgence. The diseases of the Western world are, in large part, diseases of affluence. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease are all diseases of affluence. And many kinds of cancer are linked to over-eating and a sedentary lifestyle.

And there is the lure of the “get rich quick scheme” that can lead the foolish into financial ruin. It’s just possible that maybe that Nigerian prince really doesn’t want to give you his money….

Each day we have, and all that we have in it, is a gift from God. We should find joy in them. We should find joy in the material things we have but not try to find lasting

satisfaction in them. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, advises us to “use things but don’t become attached to them.” They will not last. And they are not a source of lasting satisfaction. Only God can do that.

In 1 Timothy, Paul says, “Godliness with contentment is true gain.” And I think we could substitute “wealth” there. The real richness is when we know God and are content with what we have in life. Contentment is easy to say, but so hard to live. I know, because I find it hard to have contentment as much as anyone else!

QOHELETH says it this way, “The wise person has learned to enjoy what he has. It is foolish to be always craving what we don’t have.” Leave it in the hands of God. “Don’t lust after things that have no ultimate value to us.”

I want to close with a couple quotes on this subject. One is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was arrested, imprisoned in a concentration camp, and eventually executed for his opposition to Adolf Hitler. From prison he wrote: “We ought to love God in our lives and in the blessings he sends us…. But frankly, to long for the transcendent when you are in your wife’s arms is certainly not what God expects from us. We ought to find God and love him in the blessings he sends. If he pleases to send us some overwhelmingly earthly bliss, we ought not to try to be more religious than God himself.” In other words, it is not wrong to enjoy the things God gives us in this life. God is not a cosmic killjoy.

C. S. Lewis, writing after the death of his wife, struggled to understand why this had happened, and where God was in the midst of it. Finally, he came to the conclusion: “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You yourself are the answer.”

Enjoy things. Use them. Own them, but don’t cling to them. In the end, they will not bring lasting satisfaction. God, and God alone, can give lasting satisfaction. God alone is the answer.