Thursday - Ecclesiastes 9 - Universal Randomness... or Consistency

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N honest and objective view of life verifies Ecclesiastes 9:11, which reads like this, "Under the sun... the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happens to all." We all know fine folks who have a hard row to hoe, and we know worthless louses who seem to always have an easy go with things.  Is this an indication of the randomness of our existence, or of uniformity?  Well, it depends on how you look at it.  On one hand, the principles of justice are supposed to ensure that diligence is rewarded, and that apathy costs the culprit.  On the other hand, absolute justice insures that we all die (Ecclesiastes 9:3), because though some snakes are bigger and more venomous than other snakes, all snakes are still snakes.  And you know, the only good snake is a dead one.

So anyway, here Solomon addresses the universality of death, and the things we should do because of its dominance.  Essentially, he says that the things we are going to do, we must do now, while we are alive (Ecclesiastes 9:10).  The universal enemy of all men is death... and nobody can stop it.  No one can control it.  No one can destroy it.  No one can prevent it.  Delay or hasten it in some cases, yes.  But ultimately, death always prevails.  No matter how rightly or how wrongly a man has lived, he is eventually going to have to look death straight in the face.  And, it may be sooner rather than later, no matter what kind of life one leads.

This is not to say that we can't do anything under any circumstances to prolong our days.  If I get out tonight and drive my car pedal to the metal down the wet country roads around Hurlock, then I'm more likely than not going to meet my Maker this very evening.  If I continue to sit in my recliner with a blanket and a computer keyboard in my lap, perhaps I'm in a little less danger of checking out right away.  But again, death comes to all. I could very well be drawing my last breath even as I type these words.  That was what caused Solomon such pause - the universal indiscriminateness of troubles and death.  It all seemed a bit arbitrary to him.  Of course, by God's word we know that "arbitrary" is never a fair description of God's universe.  Solomon knew it too, but he couldn't help but muse about the message of the raw evidence.

One thing which we must keep in mind is that there are other conclusions (other than what is stated here) to draw from the same evidence.  Seeing the brevity of one righteous man and the longevity of one evil man (or even many such cases) does not in and of itself prove that good behavior isn't necessarily rewarded.  Remember that we are only looking at things "under the sun."  One might postulate from the same evidence that perhaps justice is best and most excellently meted out in an afterlife rather than in this life (since so many people die with what appears to us to be "unbalanced scales").  Of course, we have the advantage of reading the red letters of Luke 16:25 (and other excellent revelations), so we're at a distinct advantage.