The book of Ecclesiastes

“The possibility of this sickness(despair) is man’s advantage over the beast, and this advantage distinguishes him far more essentially than the erect posture, for it implies the infinite erectness or loftiness of being spirit.” (Seren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death)

Kierkegaard says that despair is a drawback and an advantage at the same time because people cannot be healed of this sickness unless they have suffered it, although being in the sickness or ‘despair’ is painful and may last beyond death.

That’s why he says that being able to despair is man’s advantage over the beast, and I think this is a comforting way of embracing a lot of our negative feelings, ranging from sadness with a direct cause to unaccountable anxieties.

Longing for something eternal and for being remembered after death has always been a part of human condition ever since the ancient times, as far as we can tell from the recorded art and history. Odysseus in the Odyssey, for example, when he’s about to be beaten against the rock to death by the waves, wishes that he had died in the war like Achilles did so that he could have been given a proper burial with honour, even though it means having died at a much younger age. He is worrying that all his struggles to return home would just end up having been in vain—all for nothing—and his achievements in the war not remembered.

The book of Ecclesiastes is also about the vanity of life. It explores how we are helpless against the uncertainties in life and how all things can be meaningless as they are guaranteed to end or die. Even wisdom may in the end not be better than folly when there’s no one to judge between them. Sometimes evil seems to prevail, but we can’t do anything about it; and good deeds may be rendered meaningless when they are forgotten after our death.

Yet the point of this Old Testament wisdom literature is that there is someone to judge all our good and evils, thus making our lives not meaningless:

For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

Ecclesiastes 12:14

This is the last verse of the book, and it makes things much, much better. But there’s one more thing in the Bible that comforts believers in God even more.

In the Message of Ecclesiastes by Derek Kidner, which I read to understand the subject better, Kidner ends his short book with “one of Paul’s great perorations.”

The peroration is from 1 Corinthians 15:54, 58, that final answer to the cry of ‘Vanity!’

When the perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’ . . . Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.

Kidner, Derek. The Message of Ecclesiastes (The Bible Speaks Today Series) (p. 103)

What Paul is quoting is a verse from Isaiah (who lived during the 8th century BCE).

He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.

Isaiah 25:8

So according to the Bible God not only gave meaning to our lives but also, by sending Christ Jesus, made “this mortal body put on immortality,” and we don’t have to be restless anymore.

This would come as a great deal only if one has been restless and experienced despair; yet this is inevitable, being human. Our longing for things transcending death seems to be indicative of something eternal is us, and since this is in conflict with our mortality, despair would persist. Even within life itself we are fragile and vulnerable in so many ways—we are hurt by harms inflicted by oppressors, and “time and chance can overturn our finest plans,” as Kidner puts it.

The point I wanted to make is this: for those who wonder how all such pains and injustices of the world would be explained if there really is God, the Bible does address this issue from different viewpoints and, as a whole, provide a solution (in a way that so many people find and have found very convincing!) and hope.