The Solomon Project: Ecclesiastes 3:14-15

This blog is a portion of what I call the Solomon Project. It is an ongoing work that applies the wisdom literature of the Bible to the lives of addicts and compulsively directed people. Presently I am making my way through the book of Ecclesiastes. The work attempts to apply the truths found here to a broad array of people from all cultural and religious perspectives. While I may come at the ordering of my life from an evangelical perspective, I want to help others simply understand what one author in Scripture has said about living life. I strive to make my comments applicable to all walks of life.

Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski accepted the invitation by Native Americans to design and build a memorial to Crazy Horse. Ziolkowski had worked on the Mount Rushmore sculpture that sits some 17 miles north of the Crazy Horse Sculpture. He accepted this invitation in 1947 and began the project in 1948. The project is still ongoing some 62 years later. When finished it will be the largest sculpture in the world.

You may ask what has that got to do with Ecclesiastes? Verse 3:14 reads: I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him. (Ecc 3:14 NIV) Solomon brings this section to a conclusion with a thought he has introduced before in 1:15 Things that are done are final. The granite peak that is being carved into a monument to Crazy Horse the famous sioux indian chief can never be undone. The dynamite blasts that carve away rock cannot be replaced. It is final. Then he lays down a statement that is hard for some to accept. He does this "so that men will revere him." Why will this be hard for some to accept? Because we want to blame God for what happens in life, especially our lives. Compulsive and addictive people have a hard time with responsibility for actions, especially their own. It is hard sometimes to see how God's direction and our actions all fit together, (note to the reader the author tells us not to question it but accept it. 6:10). The important point is that it does. Furthermore it teaches us to revere Him. The dictionary defines revere as: "to regard with respect tinged with awe." I like that. When we recognize the power of God it should bring us to reverence for Him. The things that he does have a finality to them. Not only finality but beauty and appropriateness (verse 11). Persons who struggle with addictions and compulsions lose the sense of appropriateness of life. Life has to revolve around the action-whatever that may be-that gives them the fix that they need. Addiction and compulsivity are not a part of God's plan. These states of being are neither beautiful nor appropriate.

Verse 15 reads: Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account. (Ecc 3:15 NIV) Again a truth that may make the hearts of addictive and compulsive persons restless. There is in the finality of what God does a certain predictability. Actions will always have predictable consequences. Addicts delude themselves into thinking that they escape those outcomes. They do not. A person by the name of Mister Delitzsch says it this way: "The government of God . . . does not change; His creative as well as His moral ordering of the world produces with the same laws the same phenomena . . . His government remains always, and brings . . . up again that which hath been." Acting out in ways that is destructive to relationships and to others lives will evoke the emotions of hurt and anger in them. Humans are made that way. Civil laws govern in such a way that when we violate others person or property we can be held accountable. We cannot escape these outcomes when we are found out. Part of any Twelve Step recovery program will involve Making amends. Making amends is about fitting into God's plan and making different choices which will many times bring surprisingly different results. I speak many times of managing consequences by that I do not mean that I deny consequences, or that I try to minimize them but I accept what consequences come my we as I take full responsibility for what I have done and live skillful within those attempting always to act the way God wants me to. In closing I think the serenity prayer is in order: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can;and wisdom to know the difference. This is usually where the prayer stops. However the full prayer continues on:
Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He (Christ) did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will;That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next.Amen.
--Reinhold Niebuhr

Our session is up for this week, so until next time: Keep coming back it works if you work it and you're worth it!