Seven blind men were on a quest to discover the truth of the elephant.
One day, the first blind man bumped into something. “I’ve found the elephant!” he yelled with excitement.
The group cheered and asked, “What is it like??”
The first blind man felt around and replied, “Hmm. It’s long and thick like a big snake!”
The second blind man reached out his hand and felt the elephant that was infront of him. “No” he said, “It’s sharp and pointy, like a spear!”
The third blind man bent down and grabbed the elephant. “You’re both wrong! An elephant is wide and round, like a pillar!”
The fourth blind man described what he was touching and said, “Well you’re close, but an elephant is actually wide and flat, like a huge fan.”
The fifth blind man said, “You guys are fools! An elephant is clearly large, rough and flat, like a brick wall.”
The sixth blind man said, “Heresy! I know for a fact that an elephant is long and thin, like a piece of rope. You should all be burned at the stake!”
The six blind men continued their heated arguing, each one convinced that what they were touching told them the truth of the elephant.
The seventh blind man simply shook his head. “Silly men!” he said with a sigh. “Don’t you realise that you are but holding one part of the elephant and that in truth, all of you are right!”
The six blind men stopped their arguing and asked, “What do you mean?”
The seventh blind man continued, “Well, you…” addressing the first blind man, “…are simply touching the elephant’s long trunk which feels like a big snake.”
He then addressed the other men, “You are touching its tusks which feel like a spear. You are touching its leg which feels like a pillar. You are touching its ear which feels like a huge fan. You are touching its side which feels like a brick wall. And you, my fiery friend, are holding its tail which feels like a piece of rope. You can not see or feel the whole elephant. You can only experience the part you feel. You must not judge or condemn others for knowing the elephant to be different from you. You are all right! Each one of you should share your knowledge of the elephant with each other and together you will come to true enlightenment. Only when all of your truths are combined will you fully discover the truth of the elephant.”
“You are clearly a man of deep thoughtfulness…”
“Why thank you!” the seventh blind man replied. He then paused, confused. The voice he had just heard did not sound like any of the other blind men. “Sorry, who said that?” he asked.
“I did.” the voice replied. “I understand you didn’t notice that I’ve been standing here the whole time. I can see you are all blind.”
“Yes, we are. So.. you have the gift of sight then?” the seventh blind man asked curiously.
“I do” the voice replied. “Would you like me to share what I see?”
“Oh, yes!” the seventh blind man said with a smile. “You see, we are on a quest to discover the truth of the elephant, and we have finally found one! Please, tell me what you see!”
“Are you sure you want to know? By what you said to the others before, you seem to already possess great wisdom about the elephant.”
“But that’s exactly the point of what I was saying!” the seventh blind man said encouragingly. “All of our perspectives are valid and important. Please share the truth of what you see and then your truth can be added to our truths.”
“Fair enough.” the voice replied. “Although I’m not sure you’re going to like it. What I see is quite different to what you may think is before you. The first blind man bumped into one of the other men and grabbed on to his companion’s arm. His blind friend seemed used to this and so wasn’t aware that when he spoke of the elephant feeling long and thick, like a snake, he was actually talking of his arm.”
“His arm??” the seventh blind man exclaimed, “So the elephant isn’t there at all?”
“Oh the elephant is there. He was not far off in fact. But, being blind, he didn’t know where to reach and he just grabbed for whatever he could find. An arm is as good as an elephant to someone who can’t see any different. The next three blind men made a similar mistake. One man is touching the pointy end of a tree branch and it feels to him like a spear. Another man is reaching up and touching the tree’s broad, flat leaves which feel like a fan. And the third man is kneeling in front of the tree and hugging its wide pillar-like trunk. You were right that the elephant’s leg is very similar in shape. You were also right that these three men should stop their fighting and realise they are simply holding different parts of the same object. You just couldn’t see that their squabble is over the truth of the tree. Sadly, none of them are actually holding the elephant.”
The seventh blind man was stunned and confused. “And what of the others?” he asked.
“Well…” the voice continued, “There is another man who is, believe it or not, literally touching a brick wall. It feels exactly like a brick wall, but he so desperately wants it to be an elephant his imagination compliments his desires. He can not accept the truth that is right in front of him. I do so wish he could see. He might be disappointed at first, but walls are rather lovely to look at up close and eventually he could continue on his quest to find the elephant that is actually standing so close to him. As it is I fear, he may well be standing in front of a brick wall for years, thinking his quest is over.”
“How sad,” reflected the seventh blind man. “But what of the man holding the tail that felt like a rope? He was so confident! So quick to condemn the others! What is he really holding? A tail? A rope? A vine from a tree?”
“Nothing.” said the voice. “This blind man is holding absolutely nothing in his hands. He simply heard the other men claiming knowledge and felt like a fool when he reached out and couldn’t feel a thing. See, he wasn’t standing near the tree or the wall or the elephant. He was facing in completely the wrong direction. But his pride and his fear could not leave him empty handed, and so he claimed to hold the truth of the elephant, knowing no one else could prove otherwise.”
“Other than you, of course.”
“Other than me.” said the voice, sadly. “I see all too clearly his pride and his lies and his fear, and yet he will live his life and never see me.”
The seventh blind man and the voice went silent for a long while. Eventually, the man swallowed hard and asked, “Sir, please… Can you tell me who you are?”
“Haven’t you guessed already?” the voice replied with a smile. “I am the elephant.”
“The elephant??” the seventh blind man said, now more confused than ever. “But elephants can’t talk!”
“How do you know? You are on a quest to discover the truth of the elephant. How do you even know that an elephant has a trunk like a snake or ears like a fan or a tail like a rope? You cannot see. You are blind to the truth of the elephant and you are also blind to the truth of yourself. You claim wisdom and insight that all truths are right and everyone is just holding different parts of the elephant, but you do not know. You are as blind as everyone else. But maybe… you don’t have to be.”
“What do you mean?” the seventh blind man said, a little worried.
“Well, I am a talking elephant. I quite possibly possess other magical qualities that you are unaware of.”
“You mean…” the blind man stammered. “Can you heal my eyes?”
“Do you want me to?” the elephant asked curiously. “Do you realise what that would mean? If I gave you your sight, you would see things as they really are. You would see where I am and what I look like. You would know the truth and the truth would set you free. But there is a downside.”
“How could there be a downside to knowing the truth?” the blind man asked.
“Well, when you see the truth, you also see the lies. You would see your companions and be able to point them away from their false “elephants”, but they will still be blind. They will not believe you.”
“Of course they won’t, but they’ll believe you!”
“They will call you arrogant and narrow-minded for claiming to know the truth.They will rather you continued to teach what you taught before. That each of their truths are true. That message is one of peace and tolerance. The real truth divides and causes conflict. Why don’t you simply stay blind and continue n the path you were on when I found you?”
“But how could I? Oh, please let me see you! My quest was for the truth of the elephant… no matter what that turned out to be.”
And with that, something like scales fell from the man’s eyes and the brilliance of light pierced his vision. As his sight slowly came into focus, there before him was the scene of his six blind friends, exactly as the elephant had described them. And next to the tree, there was the elephant. Grand and magical and bright green. With a huge trunk and two glorious wings and smiling eyes that twinkled in the sunlight.
I have always had a great interest in memory and how the brain works. This is partly due to my discovery at a young age that people sometimes did feats of memorisation as a sort of magic trick, but it is also due to my horrible memory. Anyone who knows me, knows that I can’t remember names, am always forgetting details and am very embarrassed by this flaw that effects me nearly every day. If you don’t know me, you might think that I have an amazing memory from the fact that I can remember whole books of the Bible (I toured a performance of “Philippians” in 2011) and I can do impressive tricks like the one in the video below.
In the video, I recall 25 random words and am able to tell you exactly which word is at which number on the list in any order I am required to.
I then go on to explain the method I use and how you can use it yourself. Enjoy.
The philosophy behind it is called the Baker/Baker principle, which I learnt from a fascinating TED talk that I watched recently. I will also include that below. (If there is nothing below, click HERE to see the TED talk)
The basic idea is that if you asked one person to remember a man named “Baker” and you asked another person to remember a man who is a baker, the person trying to remember the name will forget more easily than the other person. The reason is because the name “Baker” means nothing, whereas the profession “baker” is quite meaningful to us.
The secret to seemingly amazing feats of memorisation is to be able to turn forgettable facts into meaningful memories – to turn “Baker” into a baker.
This is my wedding ring. I designed it myself and it holds a lot of symbolic meaning for me. I thought I’d share it with you. I also thought of sharing with you some of these best silicone wedding rings I found.
Firstly, a wedding ring for me is a powerful symbol. If you’re not into rings, or you just think they’re another scam of a materialist culture (like diamond engagement rings), that’s totally fine. The meaning I give wedding rings is totally my own. I don’t base it on any Bible verse or spiritual insight, but I do believe that ritual, traditions and symbols (even when humanly invented) are very powerful things. Also, I think socially, there is a sense that wedding rings do communicate that someone has made the commitment of marriage. I know women who, when they meet a guy, will immediate take note of whether they are wearing a wedding ring or not, and the idea of the sleaze-bag guy who takes off his wedding ring when he goes on a work trip, is looked on with contempt by general society, even in this climate of the scepticism or redefinition of what marriage is about.
My thoughts about the powerful symbolic nature of the wedding ring became most potent in my life during my three and a half year long separation at the end of my first marriage.
For those three and a half years I had to decide whether I would wear my wedding ring or not. My wife had taken her ring off pretty much at the beginning of the separation and I do think it contributed to her belief that the separation was for her, when we became emotionally divorced. But for me, I was fighting for reconciliation and in my mind (and I believed, in God’s mind) we were still married, and so, I wore the ring. There was in fact, only a brief period over those three and a half years (about a month, I think) where I decided to take the ring off. This, in itself was a very powerful thing to do and I think I did it at the time because my obsession with restoring my marriage was causing me unhealthy depression and so I decided to symbolically “take a break”. I did not completely take off the ring though. I put it on a chain around my neck until I felt I could put it on my finger where it belonged.
This simple band of gold was for me a symbol of my vows. It represented the fact that I was committed to the promises I had made and that in my mind at least, that I was still married.
That is why, when the divorce became finalised, I knew what I had to do to accept the reality that my mariage had ended. I had to take off my ring.
As I had been fighting so hard for my marriage for so long, I thought that I better do something even more potent than simply take it off, and so, on the day before my divorce was finalised I invented a little ritual. Having worked in the funeral industry for a while, I have come to see the importance of the funeral experience in the process of grief and acceptance and so I decided to have one of my own little funeral-type ritual. The counsellor I was seeing at the time recommended that I draw a line on the ground somewhere and go for a long walk thinking through my entire relationship and then come back to that line and simply… walk over it. This would physically symbolise the moment that my marriage ended and that I was walking beyond it. I liked this idea and so incorporated it into my little ritual.
I went to the spot where I had proposed to my first wife – It’s in a park in the city of Melbourne – and at the exact spot where I had bent my knee to ask her to marry me, I once again bent down and dug a small hole in the dirt. There I sat and cried and prayed as I held in my hand the photo I had kept in my wallet throughout the separation. And when I was ready, I took off my wedding ring and placed it along with the photo, into that small hole and covered them up. Then I stood up and went for a very long walk and did exactly what my counsellor had advised. I eventually came back to that spot where my wedding ring was buried… and I stepped over it. I walked forward as a single man and kept on walking. That moment was extremely powerful and helpful.
If you are facing divorce and you need to accept its reality in your life (I’m not commenting here on situations where a legal divorce would not constitute a “real” divorce in God’s eyes – that’s maybe for another blog!), then I would suggest doing some sort of ritual like this. I also had friends around that evening and I played a variety of songs that had been significant to my marriage and prayed and received their comfort. You should do what would be significant and helpful to you. The main thing I would suggest is not to wait for the legal certificate of divorce to come in the mail to be your “marker” or “moment of acceptance”. The document may take a bit to get to you and it is a cold symbol. Also, you need to file that document away and keep it safe so that you can marry again in the future, so don’t treat it with too much symbolic or emotional significance as you may end up destroying it.
Anyway, back to the subject of wedding rings.
By God’s kindness and mercy, a couple of years after my divorce I was looking for a new wedding ring. I had met Cat Wort, a wonderful, fun, godly and genuine woman, and a week before we had been dating for a year, I had asked her to marry me.
Now, after all that I have shared in the first part of this blog, I’m sure you can understand how thinking about purchasing a new wedding ring was quite an emotional thing for me. After all that I had been through, what did a wedding ring mean to me? Did it hold that traditional concept of a perfect unbroken circle of eternal commitment?
Well, I thought through a lot of this, and realised that no matter what I chose, I knew two things – One, I wanted the ring to be gold, and two, it had to be different from my first ring.
The “it had to be gold” thing was completely meaningless I could admit, but I couldn’t shake it. I looked and looked at heaps of other options, but I couldn’t get past the idea that deep in my psyche, there is implanted a cliche that a wedding ring is gold. The titanium wedding ring for men and the solid sterling silver men’s rings just didn’t feel right. It’s not a great argument, but, with Cat’s encouragement, I admitted to myself that it being classic yellow gold was actually important to me.
It also had to be different from my first ring. This was a bit trickier to accomodate. My first wedding ring was the classic simple band of gold – like the ring in “Lord of the Rings”. These you can find in any jewellery store.
Unfortunately, that first ring had so powerfully become a symbol to me, I knew I couldn’t buy another one that looked like it. I knew my new marriage wasn’t simply a replacement for the old. Cat wasn’t a substitute or a re-run. I never even refer to her as my “second-wife” and I never want her to feel like anything less than my “wife”.
So, I knew the ring that symbolised my marriage to her had to be special. I wanted it to symbolise what I had learnt about marriage and be a reminder to me and anyone else of those truths. I hope one day I can show my wedding ring to my kids or grandkids and explaining its meaning to them.
After searching high and low, and getting a little bit stressed about it, I found a little jewellery maker on Sydney Rd in Coburg (right near where I lived) and saw in the window a ring that looked like it was made up of lots of panels. It was very cool, and creative and so I tried it on. I really liked it and and was even more pleased after I found out that I could use that concept of the panels and design my own original ring and it wouldn’t cost any more.
After a few sketches and different designs, I eventually came up with the one I am wearing today. It says a few things to me…
The Broken Ring
The first thing you might notice about my ring is that it’s not just a solid band of gold. It’s made up of all these panels in a brick-like pattern. Now, I didn’t intend for it to imply that my first marriage was solid and now my new marriage is somehow broken, but it does reflect something of my experience. There is a fragility in marriage that I think all married people should acknowledge.
In hindsight, I see that in my first marriage I had, what I call a “Titanic” view of marriage. I thought, because we were both Christians and we were making a life-long commitment, that, like the Titanic, not even God could sink this ship! One of the reasons why so many people died on the Titanic was because they had such an expectation that the ship was unsinkable, they they did not take the proper precautions to make sure people would survive if they ever struck a big enough iceberg. They didn’t have nearly enough lifeboats and they had a poor emergency strategy. I think I thought of my marriage like that. I thought, as a Christian, I will never consider divorce an option – which I think was a godly position to take – but this foolishly fostered in me an over-confidence that meant I did not expect that we would ever hit a big enough iceberg to sink us, and because of that, I did not protect my marriage and ensure we had a healthy enough relationship to save us if disaster ever struck. So when we hit a big iceberg, the weakness of our marriage was exposed and the ship sunk.
The brick-like panels of my wedding ring reminds me that although my first marriage was broken, God is a God of redemption and restoration. He taught me so many things about his character, about my need and about how I should properly and biblically think about marriage, my identity in Christ, and where my hope must ultimately lie. So, like a broken wall being rebuilt, God has rebuilt my life and graciously given me a marriage that is built on the right foundations.
I look at my ring and the fact that it is made up of panels reminds me that on one level my marriage is fragile. Like a brick wall, it is made up of pieces, but it is also well constructed. I am confident that my marriage to Cat will last until death do us part, not because of the strength of our commitment or simply the fact that we are Christians and so divorce will never seem like an option… I am confident because acknowledging our fragility helps me to be committed daily and diligently and most importantly, it helps me to be dependent on the one thing that truly holds our marriage together – the gospel.
The Cross
Another aspect of the ring that you may have noticed is that the spaces between the panels create the shape of a cross.
For Christians, the cross is the heart of Christianity. There is nothing magical about the symbol itself. It refers to the horrible place of execution that Jesus experienced. So why is this symbol of death and disgrace the central symbol of Christianity? And why did I chose for it to be the key symbol on my wedding ring?
Well, there is so much that could be said about this topic, but I will try to just make three main points relevant to my marriage.
Firstly, the cross is the place where sin is acknowledged and dealt with. Marriage is always a commitment between two sinful people. In your wedding vows, you are making huge commitments that inevitably you will fail to keep perfectly. Your love will be mixed with selfishness. Your trust will go through seasons of doubt. Even your fidelity will be tested and you may struggle with attraction for other people or temptation to engage in porn use or even worse. If you have no way of dealing with sin and empowering forgiveness, then you will inevitably have a marriage that is based on performance and devoid of grace.
Our relationship with God is based on the grace found at the cross of Jesus. We can’t even begin to engage with the gospel if we can not acknowledge the most basic of all truths – that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We come to God with our sin in our hands and God comes to earth in Jesus and welcomes us into his family. But he doesn’t ignore our sin or sweep it under the carpet. He takes it onto himself and bears the full punishment it deserves. In the cross, our sin is rightly acknowledged as wrong and yet at the same time, it is paid for and dealt with. The cross is the place of atonement. It is the fulfilment of all the Old Testament sacrifices. It is the doorway to forgiveness. As Peter writes, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3:18).
The wonderful thing now is that, in trusting in what Jesus did on the cross, we can be reconciled to God and enter a relationship with our Creator that is not based on guilt or winning God’s favour by being good. Guilt is completely done away with. There is no judgement, no condemnation, no distance. Our relationship with God can begin and be built on grace and mercy and forgiveness. God still acknowledges our sin, but having being dealt with on the cross, is it no longer a thing that separates us from him, and so he can help us to change from the inside out.
This is how marriage should operate also. Because God has forgiven my sin and Cat’s sin, how could I hold any sin against my wife? As Paul instructs us, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Colossians 3:12-13)
Because the cross is the centre of our mariage, it is the place where we can acknowledge and deal with the sin in our marriage. It is the place that shows us and empowers us to forgive each other. When we are both daily remembering the wonder of God’s grace and mercy to us, this overflows into grace and mercy for each other and for ourselves.
It also means we can be honest about when we sin and when we are sinned against. Because we do not fear condemnation from God and we do not fear condemnation from each other, we can bring up areas of failure freely (though still with sensitivity) and we can deal with them quickly and without the need to justify, hide or defend our sin. Now, naturally, we sometimes fail at showing grace to each other, but even that failure is covered in grace!
Secondly, the cross is the greatest display and description of love. The bible passage that was central at our wedding was from 1 John 4:9-11. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
Probably Jesus’ most famous teaching was to love our enemies, or love your neighbour as yourself. Clearly love is so important to marriage and everyone would agree that one of the saddest relationships is a loveless marriage. Staying faithfully committed is not God’s central goal for marriage. God wants marriage to be a place where love is experienced and deepened and displayed.
But what is love? What does it look like? Is it a feeling? Is it a choice? Is it simply a biochemical reaction in the brain? Well, if you are looking for an extensive list describing how love must practically demonstrate itself, then I’d point you to Paul’s brilliant and beautiful description in 1 Corinthians 13, but if you want it shown to you in a picture form, then time and time again the New Testament points us to the cross as the place where we see the love of God most potently displayed.
Again, that may seem odd. How can this symbol of death and torture show us God’s love? And how can it show us how we are to love each other? Well, in being willing to die for our salvation, Jesus shows us that selflessness is at the heart of love. Being willing to “die to ourself” for the good of our spouse, to bless rather than curse, to bear pain rather than inflict it, is what love is all about. It is not simply a warm fuzzy feeling that comes and goes and that we “fall into” and “fall out of”. It is a verb. It is a doing word. But at the same time, it is not devoid of emotion, like some sort of cold duty or theological principle. Love is passionate and genuine. Love longs for the good of the other. Love weeps when the beloved is hurting and is bold to fight for their good. As Paul says, “Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:6-7) These are practical words, but they are also emotional words.
And this is way Jesus loved us in dying for us on the cross. The cross in my wedding ring is a reminder that I must love Cat with the same sacrificial love that Jesus showed me. This is especially relevant for me as a husband, as part of the meaning and purpose of marriage is to be a living parable of the covenant love between Christ and the church. Christ is the “bridegroom” and the church is his “bride” and the Bible instructs Christians to display this dynamic in the way husbands and wives relate to each other. Specifically, to Christian husbands, Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:25)
For Cat & I, the cross instructs our love, it models our love, it defines our love and it empowers our love.
Thirdly, the cross reminds me of my relationship with Cat that is deeper and longer lasting than marriage. Primarily, the cross is not about marriage. It is probably the greatest pivotal moment in all of history, where the greatest problem of mankind and all of creation was dealt its fatal blow. It is an event of epic and eternal consequences. Marriage, on the other hand, is quite insignificant in comparison. I do not define myself primarily by my marriage to Cat. Sure, I am her husband and she is my wife, but the cross on my ring reminds me that something so much more important is happening here. Our relationship as husband and wife will only last as long as we are both alive. As soon as one of us dies, we are instantly not married any more. Marriage is not eternal. It is fleeting like a breath, or as Ecclesiastes says… it is hevel (see my blog on Ecclesiastes for more). I do not put my hope or security or the centre of my identity in the fact that I am married. I think one of the problems in my first marriage was that I had done exactly that and came to discover just how “hevel” marriage really is.
At the most, I will be married to Cat for say, 40 years, and who knows, one of us could die any day (I work in the funeral industry, so I see how fragile life is). But as Christians who have come to the cross and put our trust in Jesus and found forgiveness and new life, we have become brother and sister in Christ. Now THAT is a relationship that will last! We will be worshippers of Jesus for eternity, which makes our 40 year long (if we’re lucky) marriage, seem quite small.
The best we can do for each other is to be faithful, not to each other, but first and foremost to Jesus. I want Cat to love Jesus more than she loves me, to be committed to Jesus more than she’s committed to me, and to seek to please Jesus more than she seeks to please me. And she wants that for me as well. Our relationship as spiritual siblings and fellow-followers of Jesus is deeper and richer and more eternal than our marriage. It is at the very core of our identity and so, consequently, it must be the very core of our marriage.
The cross is the mortar of my marriage
The reason why I did not design a ring with a cross engraved on to the gold surface is because the cross is not something I simply add on to my marriage to make it look more pretty or more religious. The cross is in the gaps of the broken pieces, holding them together. It is like the mortar in between the bricks. Take away the mortar and the brick wall can fall over with a bit of a push. But the mortar makes it all come together and gives it a strength that it would not otherwise have.
Likewise, the cross is fundamental to the strength of my mariage. Between every part of my marriage it can be found, and I like that my wedding ring displays this. When I look at it, the brick-like panels mean that I can see the cross in my direction, and in the next two panels, the cross is shown out to the world. This was unintentional, but I like the fact that this message of the centrality of the cross is displayed to myself and others at the same time.
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The final thing I have unintentionally found that my wedding ring teaches me is how much of a pain it is to clean! Because of all the little gaps, it is so easy to get dirt and grit and shaving cream and hair mousse stuck in between the panels. It makes me keep an eye on whether it is getting gummed up or dirty, and it reminds me to protect it when I am about to do something that could clog it up. But, I guess, that’s a great lesson for marriage as well!
So, what’s in a ring? Well, for me, quite a lot. I know that rings are just bits of metal, and that they are easily lost or stolen. I also know that symbols, like rings, can make us feel like we are really doing marriage, when they really mean nothing if we do not do the real and practical work of loving and forgiving and serving every day.
I only hope that for as long as I have it on my finger, I can look at my ring often and be reminded of what my marriage really means.
God says to you, “My child, I don’t usually do this, but I want to tell you what is going to happen to you over the next two years. You are going to get cancer and will need home care from https://homecareassistance.com/west-chester/. It’s going to be bad and it’s going to be untreatable. I could prevent it and I could cure it, and that would give you many more years with your spouse and your young son, but I am not going to do that. Your family and friends will be praying for a miracle and I will hear their prayers and I will comfort them and you in your pain and grief and loss, but in your situation, I will not grant their request for healing. I have other plans for you.
See, I have used the last two decades of your life since you accepted the gospel and my Spirit has been at work in you, to strengthen your faith and forge your character for such a time as this. I will allow this suffering in your life because, and only because, I know that it will not shipwreck your faith. Many other Christians I protect from going through such an ordeal because I know it would completely crush them. It would not bring them closer to me. But in your case, you will come through and finish the race with your trust in me deepened and your knowledge of my love grown. You will have very dark times of doubt and you will cry out to me in frustration and confusion and wonder where I am in the midst of your suffering, but I will always be there and you will discover me in the darkest of pits.
My ultimate concern is not that you have a long life (at least not in this creation), my ultimate concern is not that you see your son grow up or that you achieve your career potential. My concern isn’t even primarily that you have a happy and pain-free life. All those joys will be for you complete in the new creation. For this life, my ultimate concern is that you know me, and that others know me through you.
This is actually why you will get cancer. Your life, though it will only be for another couple of years, will be a testimony of how a Christian faces suffering. Many will see how you prayed and prayed and came to me and relied on me for comfort and joy and strength and hope. This ordeal will show many how precious I am to you, and how when much of the pleasures of this world is taken away, you still have me and you are still satisfied. That will glorify me so much and encourage so many fellow-believers to continue in their walk with me.
But more than all that, the most profound way that your testimony will be used will be something you will never see in this life. It will be for the sake of your grandchild who you will never meet until the new creation.
Her name will be Talibah. She will be your son’s third child. She will run away from me most of her life and after her second miscarriage she will deny that she even believes I exist, though I will still be seeking her and drawing her to me. When I chose a human soul that I wish to bring into the family of salvation, there is no use in running away from me. The story of Jonah should teach her that, especially after your son will spend so many of her childhood years reading her that and many other Bible stories. But it won’t be the story of Jonah that I will use to reveal myself to her… it will be your story.
At the age of 54, I will bring across her path a record that your sister will write of your last couple of years. Talibah will read of your faithfulness to me through your battle with cancer, of the way you found your joy in me and how I strengthened and comforted you. She will read of how you spoke of your relationship with me as the most valuable thing in your life and how you would not be able to have faced such a battle, without me in your life. She will read your story and I will speak to her through it. I will use your testimony to awaken her soul to the reality of my love for her and to woo her to consider the gospel anew. A year later, she will ask a Christian lady who I will place in the house next door to her, to explain to her how she can be saved and that faithful neighbour, who has never done anything more than make it known that she was a child of mine and show Talibah hospitality, will lead her to put her trust in my sacrifice for her sins.
I will use your story as the catalyst for her coming into the kingdom and in the new creation, you will meet her and she will give you the greatest hug as she thanks you for your story.
This is my plan for your life. My question is, are you willing to accept cancer, knowing that this is how I plan to use it?”
Every Christian I have shared this scenario with, has enthusiastically said that they would be willing to take cancer and have their life be shortened, if it meant their grandchild would meet Jesus through it.
Of course, this is just a theoretical, and who really knows how they will respond to the news of cancer (or any other type of suffering like a separation and divorce in my case)? But I still think, their response is a testimony of how much the Christians that I know cherish their relationship with Jesus and how much they value someone else finding salvation over their own physical comfort, happiness or even physical life.
The reality is though, we do not ever get this in-depth explanation from God. We sometimes see the fruit that our suffering bears and how God uses it for his glory and other people’s good, but often we don’t. Who knows if God’s plans span decades or even hundreds or thousands of years? The stories of Christians over the centuries who have been martyred or have faithfully faced suffering, have inspired many people to consider the gospel.
The reality is: God is good and God is in control.
Those two concepts sometimes feel at odds as we can’t always see the “good” that God will bring out of something and when it just seems bad, we have trouble thinking that God is “in control”.
But those two concepts stand as true and I encourage you to grapple with them, to questions them and to reflect on them… but ultimately, to trust them.
I do wish that God would explain every thing he is doing through every experience of suffering that I see and experience. But in the end, I will trust him and keep seeking him in all circumstances.
I hope and trust by God’s strength, that my story will be one of enduring faithfulness, whether I will see all the good fruit of that story in this life, or the next.
“When they sit around the campfires of the Kingdom, and they tell your story, what will they say?”– John Eldredge
“I thought my life was going to be like ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ and it ended up being more like ‘Lord of the Rings’! But in the end, which is a better movie?” – Simon Camilleri (something I said during the years leading up to my divorce)
“For even the very wise can not see all ends.” – Gandalf (from Lord of the Rings)
My divorce went through on the 13th of June 2009. Three years ago.
It was a dark and horrible time in my life as what I had fought long and hard to avoid, finally came to pass.
It had been a long and painful three and a half year long separation. God had used the whole experience to do wonderful and redemptive things in my life in the areas of personal purity, grounding my identity in Christ and deepening my intimacy and dependance with God, but sadly my marriage died in the process.
It was like sitting by the bedside of a terminally ill loved one and seeing them slip further and further away. No matter what I did, I could not convince my wife at the time to not go through with filing for divorce. Thankfully I talked with an affordable divorce lawyer putnam that guided me through this process.
The best expression of this time was given to me by a Christian counsellor who I began seeing as the divorce loomed closer and closer. On my very first session with him, after I had poured out my heart and told him exactly where the state of things was between me and my wife. He looked at me and said, “I hope you don’t mind me saying it like this but… you’re fucked.”
I was shocked that those words would come out of the mouth of a Christian counsellor, especially on the very first session, but I was also very impressed. He knew exactly what I needed to hear and in the next few sessions, he helped me face the reality of the divorce that was about to enter my life. Needed professional and legal help, continue reading to know more.
I wrote it three and a half days before the divorce became final. It is called “When the Fat Lady Sings.” Here is a recording I made of me singing it. (If you can’t watch YouTube clips, you can read the words here)
Three years has now passed.
God continues to show me his faithfulness in the midst of an uncertain world.
By God’s kindness and a wonderfully gracious woman’s willingness to give me a chance, I am now very happily married to Catherine.
My new marriage is a blessing, and Cat never expects me to forget my past. In fact, she thanks God for the ways in which my experience shaped and matured me.
On the three year anniversary of my divorce, I walked to work, and on the way, I reflected and prayed and became inspired to write a sequel to “The Fat Lady Sings”.
I could write several blogs on all the lessons I have learnt, and maybe one day, I’ll write more.
For now, I’ll simply leave you with the poem:
Three years later God is greater His faithfulness Has proved true And the girl in the wings With her song of redemption Everyday now sings Her song anew.
The lessons learnt Not left me burnt But showed me what I prayed they would When the fat lady sings There are still two true things… You will find God is kind And you will find God is good.
I have ever since I learnt how to make a coin disappear on a camp when I was 12 years old.
Here are some of the magic tricks I have recorded.
The first is my most recent magic performance, and the first time I have ever tried a magic trick with such a big crowd. Maybe this is why it doesn’t exactly go to plan!
Pedophilia Rape Sexual assault STDs The sex slave trade Prostitution Unwanted children out of wedlock Pornography addiction Child pornography Adultery in marriage Cheating in relationships Divorces that result from these things
and all the pain, shame, heartache, brokenness, destruction, isolation, family breakdown, depression, confusion, disease, slavery, emptiness and loss that comes from these things…
could all be avoided. Not by STD testing and prevention methods only…
but if humanity obeyed God in one area of life…
sex
God’s way is laughed at and ridiculed as old fashioned, outdated and irrelevant.
A man and a young boy met one day as they walked through the woods on their way to the nearby town. It was winter, and the sound of the snow crunching under their feet was all they could hear. This was odd, the boy thought, as last time he travelled this way he could also hear the raging sound of the river. He began to wonder if he had been walking in the wrong direction when finally the woods began to clear and the river revealed itself.
It had been a particularly cold winter that year and the surface of the river was frozen stiff.
The man stood next to the young boy on the bank of the frozen river and scratched his head looking as confused as he was. Neither of them knew how they were going to get across as their usual practise in times long past was to use a raft to cross the cold waters. Well, the raft was there by the river’s edge, covered in snow and clearly now, useless.
The man said to the boy, “I’ve heard of this happening when it’s particularly cold. The river is frozen solid. Like a giant ice cube. We can walk right across!”
The boy immediately grabbed the man’s coat and tugged at it to get his attention. Then he pointed to a sign that was sticking out of the surface of the frozen lake. It read: “Danger. Thin ice.”
“Poppycock!” the man said with a laugh, “Don’t believe everything you read, young lad! That sign could have been put there by anyone at any time! It may have been true once or it may never have been true. Be a man! I bet that it’s perfectly safe to walk across.”
The young boy admired the man’s confidence. He wished he could be so brave, but the boy was often scared and was always second-guessing himself.
As he looked away in embarrassment, the boy noticed something a little further down the river that had not been there last time he had crossed this way. It was a bridge. The boy tugged again at the coat of the man and pointed to the large stone bridge that stretched across the frozen river.
The boy and the man walked down to it and noticed another sign at the entrance of the bridge. It read: “Due to the common occurrence of freezing of the lake during the particularly cold winter months, this bridge has been erected by order of the king of the land to assist travellers to safely cross the lake and protect them from falling in the fatally icy waters. Do not attempt to cross the lake by any means other than this bridge as the ice is thin and you will surely drown.”
The boy pointed to the sign and the king’s royal seal which authenticated it at the bottom.
“Balderdash!” the man said with a laugh, “Use a bridge?? What nonsense! The king of the land doesn’t want wimps as subjects! Be a man! If you believe in yourself, you can do anything you put your mind to!”
The man walked back to the river’s edge near where the warning sign stuck out of the frozen surface. He gave the boy a small wave and stepped out onto the ice with a smile.
Once again, the young boy admired the man’s confidence. If only he could believe, he knew he could be like the man, but he was just a boy and he doubted. He could hear in his mind the echo of the words of the Faith Healer that sometimes visited his village… “Ye of little faith!” That’s what he was. He was ye of little faith.
Every summer the Faith Healer would come to his village and everyone would come out to hear him preach and hope for a miracle. They would bring out their sick and lamed – old women, coughing babies, even ducks with broken wings! But each time, many from the village would go home sad and disheartened as once again they were not granted the miracle they had been praying for. The Faith Healer would simply shake his head and say those solemn words… “Ye of little faith”.
So the young boy had no excuse as he stood by the frozen lake. He knew how it was supposed to work. The strong of faith would be saved, while the weak of faith would go home empty-handed. He wished his faith could be stronger, but he knew, deep down, that it wasn’t. He was always filled with doubts and fears. And so he stood before the bridge, wishing he had the strength of faith to cross the lake by walking across the ice, but knowing he didn’t.
He took one step on to the bridge and then another. As he started walking on the bridge, he began to worry. Would he be able to make it? What if the bridge collapsed? What if it crumbled beneath him?? What if he stumbled and fell over the side of the bridge?? He’d be a goner for sure then! Oh why didn’t he listen to the man? Oh ye of little faith!!
His faith was suddenly so weak and his confidence was so shaken that he collapsed to the ground in fear. Having all his belief in himself and the reliability of the bridge almost completely shattered, he closed his eyes and slowly crawled along clutching at the stones that made up the bridge with only the glimmer of hope that they would hold his weight.
For what seemed like hours, with the little faith he could muster, he crawled and crawled, putting his weak trust in the strength of the bridge. He half expected to drop at any moment into the river’s icy depths, and he scolded himself for being such a wimp and for proving the Faith Healer’s words to be true. He was ashamed too that he crawled upon a bridge that the king of the land had commissioned to be built. Surely, the man was right and the king would prefer for him to have had the confidence to walk across the ice rather than use the bridge to get across the lake.
As these thoughts continued to rattle around in his mind, suddenly, his hand felt the cold, wet touch of snow. The young boy opened his eyes and realised he had crawled over the bridge and had reached the other side! He was confused for a moment and then he stood up, shook off the layer of snow that had fallen over him as he had been crawling, and with a sense of amazement and awe, continued on his way with a spring in his step.
He gave no more thought to the doubts that still threatened to cripple the rest of his journey. He forgot the words of the Faith Healer. He didn’t even remember the man of great confidence who had been travelling with him before, or look back to see how successfully he had walked across the ice.
All he remembered was the words of his father who had sent him on this errand to buy a small bag of mustard seeds from the market in the nearby town. And so he went on his way, alone.
;
It does not matter how strong your faith is.
What really matters is the strength of the thing you put your faith in.
.
Click HERE if you’d like to see Simon read the story.
My post below is not as structured as one of my regular blogs as it was purely meant to be a response to my brother, but the word count was too big and blogspot wouldn’t accept it. So I put it here for your contemplation. Though I must encourage you to read his blog first, otherwise mine below possibly won’t really make much sense.
Tony, firstly I must correct you on a really simple point.
There is no problem with the existence of evil if there is objective good. As soon as God says something is good, then the opposite of that is evil. Evil is not a noun as you make out theists think. In some ways, evil does not actually exist – as an object anyway.
It’s like light and darkness. The sun is the object. It produces light. Without the sun, you have darkness. Night may feel like it has real substance and it definitely has real consequences (like stubbing your toe on the way to the bathroom) but all it really is, is the absence of light. God is the object. He is good and he says what is good. Anything that is against him or opposed to him, is what we define as evil. Hitler is not the personification of evil. The devil is not the personification of evil. They (like a lot of people) are simply opposed to one degree or another to God. In that sense they are defined as evil.
I think the experience of evil is to be expected in a world where there is a God that provides objective good, and where people reject, ignore and disobey him. I don’t really see the problem of evil’s existence.
But you move on from that to the moral dilemma of evil. I presume you have Epicurus’ argument rattling around, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?â€
You tackle the issue of evil by saying that we must come to one of three basic conclusions.
1. God is not all-powerful.
You assume this must be the case in light of human free will. But where do you get the idea of human free will from? Not the bible that’s for sure. The idea that human will ties God’s hands is quite silly really. The God that created the universe is not limited by anyone. The idea that we HAVE to have complete free will in order for us to be responsible for our actions also doesn’t stack up as we often hold people accountable for their actions, even when we know that there are always circumstances that influenced their decision.
But the argument you seem to be making is that the idea that we have any sort of will, means that God’s sovereignty is compromised. Why is that? Why can’t God allow us to do what we want to do, be free in his ability to stop us, and deem that we have acted against his will? If you say to Levity, don’t touch the stove and you can prevent her from touching the stove but as she goes to do it, you chose not to prevent her, why does her will to touch the stove mean that you have somehow lost control?  God being in control of the universe, doesn’t mean that every action that happens must either be caused by him or else he has lost control. He can allow actions against his desired will to take place. So is God responsible for evil’s existence? Well, in some sense, yes, of course! That doesn’t make him evil though or the cause of the evil.
But then you could say that if a good God allows evil then why does he still call it evil? Well, it doesn’t follow if someone can prevent an evil action you make, that means that you are no longer accountable for it. If you see a kid being beaten up by thugs and you do nothing to prevent it, that doesn’t mean that the thugs are not accountable for their actions. Likewise, God is still sovereign and able to prevent all evil, and yet we are still accountable for the evil we do.
That inevitably leads us to question God’s goodness, but that’s ok. Throughout the Bible people cry out to God wondering why he is taking so long and why doesn’t he get rid of evil (Jeremiah 12:1 for example, “You are always righteous, O Lord, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?”). Grappling with God’s goodness seems to be a healthy part of a relationship with God, though his sovereignty is never questioned.
2. God is not good.
So we come to the next conclusion. God must not be good. Now, I can’t imagine you missed the moral loop here. The idea is of course, that if God is good and he sees evil and is able to prevent it, then of course he would prevent it. A God that could prevent evil and doesn’t is ultimately not good. But where did you get the undeniable, objective truth that to allow evil is evil? Are there no exceptions? Is a time period relevant? Due you take into account the fact that God does promise to deal with and do away with evil completely and fully? Or is the issue that you just don’t like the way in which God prevents evil? Is it just that for you to judge God as “good” in your eyes, he has to deal with evil in your way and your time. And all this taking into consideration that you actually don’t believe that there is really a good or evil!
My present and limited understanding of the whole picture is that God allows the evil fruit that comes from people who reject and ignore him. Reject a good God and disobey his commands and you will find every kind of evil. Should God prevent this? I don’t see why, but I guess God is more good than me, because he does do something to prevent it. He provides the gospel – a message of what God has done to turn people’s hearts back to him. He makes it possible for the real root of the problem of evil – sin – to be dealt with. And more than that, he is coming to clean everything up and remove all evil from the world. One day, when Christ returns, evil will be prevented – not in a temporary sense, but in an ultimate, eternal sense. If one is deemed necessary to allow for the time being in order that the permanent solution is achieved then who are we to say God is not good in choosing what is best. This is the true solution to the problem of evil.
I still think it’s a valid question to ask why God deals with evil in this way, when we feel so compelled to just get rid of evil right now if we could. But possibly, if God didn’t worry about the whole gospel thing and just got rid of evil completely in one fell swoop, sure the Hitler and the rapist and the thug would be gone, but neither you nor I would be having this conversation. Would anyone be left?
Fortunately, for the non-theist though, they don’t have to worry about explaining evil or good for that matter, and this is your ultimate answer to the problem. Because if God can’t be all-powerful and he can’t be all good (by your definitions of those things), then he doesn’t exist, and so the perfect answer to the problem of evil is…
3. There is no such thing as evil.
This is apparently, the natural non-theist position, as no objective “good” means that you can’t have an objective “bad”. This position may be logically sound, but I find it deeply unsatisfying. The idea that evil is only evil because we all (mostly) agree on it or feel it is that way, makes it to be completely meaningless. It is just as likely, that what we feel about what is evil is affected by a certain cultural movement or by our evolutionary biology. Or we may be in the wrong crowd. I’m sure in the midst of a Nazi demonstration where everyone was shouting “Heil Hitler!” that would feel like it was good and anything that opposed it was evil. What shaky ground you stand on! Why trust it if you could simply be standing at the wrong place at the wrong time and be influenced to believe any evil.
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Doesn’t that feel like a problem? Isn’t that the ultimate “problem of evil” for the non-theist? – the problem that you feel some things (like torture or injustice or killing innocents) are evil and yet you have no grounding for that feeling or reason to think that something else couldn’t be just as right in a different crowd. I mean, you even make the argument that if God allows evil, he can’t be good. Why? If there IS no good or evil, then where does the moral weight for that position come from? On the other hand, if you trust God to instruct good and evil, then you even have a basis to question God.
Without God you are left with so many problems. Why fight evil if it doesn’t really exist? Why do I feel that evil and right and wrong does exist if it is just an illusion? Am I comfortable with the idea that my concept of evil may just as well be good in a different time or place or culture? If there is no God then where is there any hope that evil will not win? If there is no God where is there any hope that evil will not one day be fully dealt with?
I admit that God’s ways are at times strange to me, but I have answers to those questions. I think a non-theist has the real problem of evil to have to resolve.
(If you’ve never read Ecclesiastes, I recommend you read it and thinking about it yourself, rather than just reading my blog about it! Download a special copy I have produced by clicking HERE)
The Book of Ecclesiastes is quite confusing to many Christians. If you don’t know about it, it’s a book of poetry and philosophy found in the Old Testament, written around the mid to late third century BC. The author of the book is potentially questionable, but the voice of the book is King Solomon. Whether he wrote it directly, or whether it was written as a collection of his writings or as a summary of his philosophy, I don’t think that matters. What I think does matter is that the protagonist of the book is, as the first verse says, “The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem.” Now “Son of David” could easily also mean “descendant” of David, but as the book progresses, we see that the content of the book – the focus on wisdom and the description of utter opulence for instance – do suggest that it is referring to King Solomon.
The problem Christians have had with this letter often revolves around the book’s key word, which in the NIV is translated “meaningless”. “Meaningless, meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” the King writes. And then he spends twelve chapters describing lots of what we experience in life – the pursuit of pleasure, eating, drinking, laughter, education, career, power and even wisdom – and for each one he concludes, “This too is meaningless.”
Ecclesiastes can seem bleak and depressing and also just plain wrong. I mean, how can King Solomon the Wise say that the pursuit of wisdom can be meaningless?? Or how can the King of Israel, entrusted to guard God’s Word and explain it to the people, saying that everything has no meaning?
This is what has confused many Christians, and the response by those who study the book is generally to point out three vitally important things.
1. When it says life is meaningless, it is only referring to life “under the sun”
2. The word “meaningless” is a really unhelpful word to use.Â
3. That isn’t the conclusion of the matter.
Well, let’s look at these three points briefly.
1. When it says life is meaningless, it is only referring to life “under the sun”.
As common as the word, “meaningless” is, the phrase, “under the sun” or “under heaven” is used 32 times in the book’s 12 chapters. It’s even worked its way into our common language: the phrase “there’s nothing new under the sun” actually originally comes from this book (Ecclesiastes 1:9). This phrase is not meant to describe all of life in all of eternity. It specifically means our life while we live. We see this clearly in Ecclesiastes 2:3, where the King says, “I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.” It is used similarly elsewhere in the Bible, such as in reference to the Flood in Genesis 6-8, where God destroys all life “under the heavens”.
“Under heaven” or “under the sun” points to the time that we have on earth while we work and live with the sun over us. It does not refer to the heavens themselves or the Creator who resides in heaven, but only to the life of the Creation. Some have stressed this to make the argument, “See, life is not meaningless with God. It’s just meaningless outside of God. That’s what ‘under heaven’ means.” But I’m not really convinced by that argument. I mean, is the writer saying life is meaningless until you go to be with God? I don’t think so. Ecclesiastes is quite silent on the issue of an afterlife (other than the promise of an ultimate judgement in the very last verse of the book). The focus of the book is very much THIS life. So, is the writer saying, if you live a life ignoring God then your life has no meaning? Or that God provides the only true meaning to life and so everything else is meaningless? Well, this is a true sentiment from a biblical perspective, but you can’t really get it from Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes is written from the perspective of someone who does know God. Sure, King Solomon majorly went off the rails, but still, I think it’s clear that “under heaven” does not mean “outside of the stuff God’s interested in”. God is mentioned throughout Ecclesiastes as actively involved in the life of people, causing both their blessing and their frustration. Whatever life “under the sun” means – it does not mean life “outside of God”. “Under the sun” just means life from birth to death.
When Ecclesiastes says “everything under the sun is meaningless”, the harder part of that phrase to understand is not “under the sun”, but the word “meaningless”.
2. The word “meaningless” is a really unhelpful word to use.Â
The Hebrew word that the NIV translates as meaningless is “hevel” (הבל). In older translations you may have heard it translated as “vanity”. This is not in the sense of “loving yourself”. “Vanity” here means “in vain” or a wasted effort. This helps us get more of a feel for the meaning of the word, but even that does not capture it. “Hevel” also means “fleeting” or “temporary” or “passing”. Look at the picture at the top of this blog – it’s like breathing on an icy cold morning and you see your breath… and then it’s gone. That’s what “hevel” literally means – “breath” or “vapor”. Ecclesiastes uses a powerful image to describe it as well. Coupled with the phrase, “this is hevel” the writer often adds the phrase “a chasing after the wind”. He uses this description 9 times throughout the book and one other time he uses the phrase, “toiling for the wind”. Throughout the letter “wind” is described as elemental and ever-returning (1:6) but never being able to be caught, tamed or predicted (8:8 & 11:5).
“Hevel” is a concept that, like the wind, is hard to pin down, but I don’t think we’re meant to pin it down. It’s not supposed to be a hard definition for something. It’s supposed to be almost a feeling. That feeling of trying to grasp at an illusion, like a cat trying to catch a shimmer of light on the floor. Life, the writer of Ecclesiastes says, is like chasing the wind. Everything in life is transitory, everything is passing away, nothing stays, nothing under heaven is permanent, and if we work our guts out for it all we shouldn’t be surprised that we find life frustrating. In the end, ultimately, nothing is gained, everything is like breath.
Now, does that make life “meaningless”? Well, I guess that’s up for discussion. It definitely doesn’t force us to conclude such a bleak prognosis about it all. But if we’re trying to work out not just what “hevel” means, but also how we should feel about “hevel”, it’s quite hard to pin down the author’s emotional response. Sometimes he finds “hevel” wearisome (1:8), sometimes it leads him to hate life (2:17) and then other times he speak of how good it is to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his lot in life (2:24, 3:12-13, 5:18, 8:15 & 9:7-10). If everything is “hevel”, what are we to make of it? Is everything depressing or full of enjoyment? Is everything meaningless or meaningful?
As I explored this question myself I decided to re-read Ecclesiastes with a little experiment. As the word “hevel” was a tricky word to translate, I thought I would read through the book and whenever I came to the word “meaningless” (I was reading the NIV translation), I would simply say the word “hevel” instead. What resulted was really enlightening.
The book opens up with the declaration, “Hevel! Hevel! Everything is hevel!” and then launches into a description of how life never changes and yet in every cycle of life, nothing is ultimately gained. He then moves into his own autobiography, how he worked so hard to find what was the best thing to do in life and achieved amazing things that would be counted as great success by our society’s standards, and yet at the end of it all he looked at his hands and everything was “hevel”, a chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun. This seems confusing, as how can he say nothing was gained – he gained so many great achievements – and what does it mean to say it was all “hevel”? Well, from here on, the writer continues for the rest of the book to explain that very question. What is “hevel”? What does it look like? What does it feel like?
For example, consider the following passage:
“So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is ‘hevel’, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is ‘hevel’.Â
So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is ‘hevel’ and a great misfortune. What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labours under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is ‘hevel’.Â
A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is ‘hevel’, a chasing after the wind.”– Ecclesiastes 2:17-26
What struck me, when I stopped defining “hevel” and just included the original fuzzily-defined word, the meaning of the passage took on a completely different feel. Instead of the writer labelling life as “meaningless”, and saying something like, “You know this thing you do in life, well it’s actually a complete waste of time,” the writer seems to be USING these experiences in life, to help define “hevel”. It’s more like he’s saying, “Everything is hevel, and to understand what that means, let me show you these breath-like, transitory, frustrating things that we all experience.” When he talks about life, he is exploring the fuzzy definition of “hevel” rather than just using “hevel” as a label to attach to all things.
I’m not sure if I’ve explained this point well enough, so I’ll use an example of how Jesus did this. Think about when Jesus talks about sin. Jesus could say, “Lying – that is sin”, but that would be rather limiting and people would just look for the loopholes. Rather, Jesus uses things like parables to get his point across. Like the story of the Prodigal Son. He tells of a son who rejects his father’s generosity and takes and squanders the gifts that the father had given him – that is sin. See the difference? One reduces a complex thing like lying to the simple label of “sin”, and the other expands the complex concept of “sin” by using a real life example.
The same thing could be said of love. When Jesus said, “love your neighbour”, someone asked, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus could have answered that by simply saying “everyone is your neighbour”, but instead he went on to share the story of the Good Samaritan, a story with many layers and a powerful message of love shown by an enemy of the Jewish people. Jesus is saying “love” is big and complex and beautiful and it can’t be reduced to a bumper sticker. And throughout the epistles, whenever “love” is defined, the writer’s point us to the greatest example of the love of God, namely the cross: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.”– 1 John 3:16
I think, possibly, the writer of Ecclesiastes is doing the same thing when it comes to defining “hevel”. This, to me, opens up the letter wonderfully. Rather than it being like a conveyer-belt, where as each part of life is described it gets stamped with a big “HEVEL” label, the writer is grappling with the concept, teasing it out, showing it, explaining it, chewing on it and inviting us to see it as well. This doesn’t leave us with no sense of it’s meaning, but like his description of “chasing after the wind”, the meaning of the phrase, “everything is hevel” opens up the discussion rather than closes it down.
3. That isn’t the conclusion of the matter.
Now, all this may leave you a bit confused still as to the point of Ecclesiastes. The writer may not be saying that everything that you do in life is meaningless, but what exactly IS he saying? He obviously wants us to see how life is like chasing after the wind, but is he simply saying that chasing after the wind is a bad thing? I don’t think so. He doesn’t necessarily give any moral value to all the things he describes as “hevel”. He definitely acknowledges that life is frustrating and that our efforts can seem to just dissipate like a vapour, but he also says that’s just the way God’s made it: “Consider what God has done. Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.”– Ecclesiastes 7:13-14
And this is the ultimate direction the book takes us. Whenever the writer speaks of God, he never uses the word “hevel”. All things under heaven are “hevel” – passing away, like a vapour – but heaven is not. God is not like a vapour. As he writes in Ecclesiastes 3:14, “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.” His point, as far as I can see, is that this whole world is as frustrating as it is, because God has deliberately made it that way so that people will come to him, or at least they will see their need for him to put things right. I wonder if you’ve ever thought of your frustrations in life that way? Could it be that God has made life crooked so that we would turn to him and revere him? To “stand in awe of God” (5:7) and remember him:
“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them  Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. ‘Hevel! Hevel!’ says the Teacher. ‘Everything is hevel!'”– Ecclesiastes 12:1,6-8
Is the writer’s proclamation that everything is “hevel” sort of a warning? Life is short so don’t forget God.
One other emotion I find throughout the book of Ecclesiastes is regret.
The story of King Solomon is actually quite a sad one. He was the son of the great King David, he was given by God greater wisdom than anyone else in his day, he had the amazing privileges and luxuries that came along with being king, and yet he forgot God. For political reason and to satisfy his own lust, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, all appeasing his every sexual fantasy. These women also worshipped gods other than Yahweh, and as his moral decay grew King Solomon’s faithfulness to God wained and he was led into setting up shrines to these other gods to appease his wives.
I think Ecclesiastes can be seen as a book of philosophy written by an old king who looks back on his life with great regret. He reflects on all his success and writes: “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was hevel, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”– Ecclesiastes 2:10-11
He tries to appeal to us not to make the same mistakes. Don’t forget your Creator in the days of your youth! Please! Don’t waste your time and your life on things that are simply hevel. That’s as stupid as chasing after the wind.
The final part of the book seal the deal. He has finished his rant. He has pour out his heart. He has made his point. Now he states his simple conclusion.
I will leave you with these words that finish the book:
“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
For more on Ecclesiastes, check the wikipedia article HERE.
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The seventh blind man was stunned and confused. “And what of the others?” he asked.
