Needless to say, I am quite the fan of Google's convenient, yet not-so-free services. I particularly enjoy reading news and headlines on my Google Play Newsstand app. The app provides me headlines and articles on topics that interest me or that Google has reason to believe I have interest in, which is mostly news about the latest technology gadgets that I can't afford.
A while back I thought it seemed fitting to add a feed on a topic that particularly interests me, "Christianity". In the several months that I have been perusing the "Christianity" articles on my newsstand app, I have noticed Google seldom, if ever, gives me a story written by a Christian. No "Christianity Today" posts. No "Focus on the Family " articles. Not even an inspirational Osteen quote. Although, I will say that I have seen two articles featuring news story about an actor by the name of "Christian Bale". It took me far too long to figure why those articles were among my "Christian" articles.
Yes, most every one of my "Christianity" articles are written with a plethora of sass and sarcasm on all that is sacrosanct by "anti-religionists" bemoaning the ills of white Evangelicals. To my own surprise, most all of their criticisms of us religious folks are fairly spot on. Jesus says, "The world will know you are my disciples for your love for one another." Let me say if the writers of these articles are in any small way connected to "the world", then we're in luck. No one is confusing us Christians as disciples of Jesus.
All this to say, my recent time reading the pre-modern, secular philosophy of the Preacher--whose wisdom is crystallized in the book of Ecclesiastes--has shown me that it is a fairly normal response to dislike God and his people when you don't know God. These articles are written by people who have a poor understanding of God and his relationship to the world. Because of the Preacher, I am sympathetic to the absurdity of understanding either God or his Creation without Jesus, and am not at all surprised by either his or these "Christian" writers' conclusion about God and his people.
Again and again, the Preacher tells us that his thorough investigation of all things "under the sun" has lead him to conclude there is no greater purpose in life but to eat, drink, and be merry. In his pursuit to know all things, he repeatedly finds himself before the seemingly unknowable mystery of the Creator, and is happy to report he knows he doesn't know God. He confidently concludes there are many injustices in life, and they go something like this . . .
- "I work my fingers to the bone, building my wealth only to give it all to the well manicured hands of another."
- "Death happens to us all and it's gonna suck for everyone."
- "Good and bad things happen to both good and bad people."
- "At any moment, God is free to screw up my plans and there is nothing I can do to stop him."
The Preacher's somewhat pessimistic view on life can be traced back to the fact that he doesn't know the Father in heaven. In fact, I dare say the preacher's theology is founded on the same basic premise as all of the "Christian" writers I've been reading lately. Most all of them write with a not-so-subtle disdain for God and those who called themselves "religious" because they too don't know the Father.
I admit the Preacher comes to a different conclusion than they, saying, "Only a fool says in his heart there is no God." Even though their conclusions diverge, their philosophical foundations are the same. Everything they know about the world and in turn God is rooted in their own observations of it. The Preacher has examined the world with the same care and precision as an oncologist looking for cancer cells, and he concludes there's nothing benign about a life so utterly out of his own control.
The result is that the Preacher knows about God but does not know him. This may seem a bit odd seeing as the Preacher's wisdom is in the Bible and all, but if you read Ecclesiastes without rose-colored glasses, you'll see it. The God of Ecclesiastes is the Creator, the Uncaused Cause, the Big Bang, but not the Father. When everything you know about God comes from your own logical observances of this temporal world then he can never be anything more than a Creator, and if only a Creator then he either sucks at his job or he's a masochist enjoying our pain too much. Again, the Preacher is not foolish enough to draw the same conclusion about God as today's "anti-religionists", but he is not much closer to God than they are.
Essentially, without an "Our Father in Heaven" the world doesn't make sense--it's absurd--and it's all tantamount to catching a plume of smoke with a butterfly net (i.e. vanity of vanity). Without an eternal Abba, there is no greater moral virtue than to eat, drink, and be merry.
It’s easy to look at the world and conclude there is a Creator God. It’s also easy to look at the world and conclude that there is too much absurdity and pain to care about or believe in the Creator God. If you don't believe me, download Google Play Newsstand and read a few "Christian" articles. But you can't look at the world and come to the conclusion that God is the Father--not without Jesus the Son. Without Jesus, the greatest thing we could possibly know about God is in the complexities of the universe and the vanity of life, but with Jesus we know . . .
"God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son . . ."
Ok, I haven't only been reading the Preacher's wisdom. Credit should be given to Peter Kreeft's "Three Philosophies of Life" for helping me see the Preacher as he truly is.
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