On Ecclesiastes

When I was seventeen, I went to school in the morning, drove to work, got nachos at the gas station for dinner, arrived home by half-past eleven, did homework until two, and read Ecclesiastes until three.  Then I went to bed.

I did this a lot; Ecclesiastes is my favorite book.

It’s also the one the church has the hardest time incorporating into worship.

The problem, I think, is our cultural assumption that religion ought to give us satisfaction.  Our lives are spent in the pursuit of happiness.  Or, if happiness is ephemeral, then satisfaction, a permanent sense of fulfillment, of “this is it!”  We all want a Purpose Driven Life.

The results are predictable.  We are capitalists, our currency is commodity.  If the consumers demand satisfaction, then that is what we sell them.  Ipso facto, church is business, and, by all accounts, business is booming.  In fact, the Buddhists and Spiritualists got jealous of the Christian cash cow, and now “soul rest” is generating best-sellers and 12-step satisfaction recovery programs.

Which is why Ecclesiastes sits so uncomfortably in our Holy Book.  The unrelenting message is this:

You will have no satisfaction.  Ever.  Trying to get it is like trying to capture the wind.

My father used to say, “You can’t satisfy the flesh.”  And this is true.  You’ll always want more.  His implication, however, was that you could satisfy the soul.  Tame the flesh (or don’t, whatever) but indulge the Spirit.  That the Gospel of John’s “living water” would quench a deep soul need.

Ecclesiastes says it won’t.  That your feeling of satisfaction will come and go, that whatever secret knowledge you acquire, whatever possessions you gain, whatever fulfilling relationships you have (even with Jesus!), nothing will ever stop the Need.  You will have many “This is it!” moments, and none will last.

Well, if the needs of the Church override the meaning of the Book, then so much the worse for the Book.  So when you hear sermons on Ecclesiastes—they are more common now than they used to be—there is always an explicit appeal to Christ.  Like, well, that was true for Solomon (btw, not that it matters, but Solomon didn’t actually write Ecc.), but now we’ve got Jesus.  He lives in our hearts.  He satisfies our deepest needs.

Except that he doesn’t.  At least not in the way we want.  You show me a guy with American “soul satisfaction” and I’ll show you somebody who is successful, with good kids, an attractive wife, a nice house, and a job he likes.  I’ll also show you someone in denial.

Every Ecclesiastes sermon appeals to the one “hopeful” verse in the book, 12:13b, which reads, “Fear God and keep his commands, for this is your all.”  Except if you read it in context, this is more or less a kind of foundering.  The writer has tried it all, done everything, and given up.  He’s discovered that satisfaction is not the lot of human beings.  Rather, our role, our duty, our lot, our place, is just to live out reverence for God by doing what he asks.  That’s it.  It won’t lead to happiness or satisfaction (sometimes it demands the opposite).  It won’t cure us of all our ills.  It’s just what human life is.  The question is not, “What must I do to be satisfied?”, it is, “How can I stop this incessant striving for satisfaction?”  (Answer: Fear God and keep his commands.)

When my father implied that the soul could be satisfied, he made the mistake of believing in a soul.  Like there is a magical ghost inside your flesh and sinew that wars with your flesh and sinew (this is really more a Platonic notion than a biblical one, though it could be argued that Paul occasionally seems to agree).  The truth of the matter is that we are simply enlivened bodies, and so, as long as we await the renewal of all creation, we are subject to bodily longings.  Longing is our evolutionary heritage—life which does not always seek to expand, extend, etc. is not the fittest and does not survive.  Do not be surprised when biology trumps your search for soul satisfaction.

Which brings us back to church.  Christian religion is no commodity (despite the Nashville music scene’s best attempts to make it one).  It is rather the greatest and most accurate human description of what the world is actually like and the communal project of living faithfully in light of that description.  And part of that true description is the lesson of Ecclesiastes—every pursuit in life is like trying to lasso the wind.  But we are Americans, and there are some truths Americans—even good Christian ones—would rather not hear.  Truths we don’t even want to tell ourselves.  And so it goes: Ecclesiastes squirms uncomfortably in our canon, vainly proclaiming to us a dour truth we do not want to hear, that our declaration of independence didn’t quite get God right, that our freedom will not end in perfect human satisfaction, that our faith in Christ is not a get-out-of-despair free card. 

The gospel of Christ is no “soul satisfier.”  It is the engine of hope and the key to living faithfully in light of that hope.  Hope that when Christ shall come, the endless longing that is human life will finally know fulfillment.  That the vain pursuit of satisfaction does indeed have a terminus: death and resurrection.  That in our glorified skins, we will be at peace only when we practice the fruits of the Spirit.

Trust me, patience, joy, peace, etc. will not make you happy in this life, or at least, not always.  No, they will often lead you in to despair.  Seriously, have you ever seen what happens to people who are actually meek, who actually live for the best interests of others, even those who hurt them?  Really think about it.  The meek inherit nothing.  But they are a preparation, a “fitting in to your wedding dress.”  They are the firstfruits of a people destined for a glorious debutante ball (mixed metaphors, I know).

If “satisfaction” is what you’re after, go be a hedonist, or a Buddhist, or a new-ager, or whatever.  They’re doing it way better than Saddleback anyway.  If, on the other hand, you desire to live in light of the true end of the Universe, come to the cross.

*BREAKING NEWS* Millennials Not Psychologically Prepared for Lost Decade!!!

First, the fiddling:

It’s likely, then, that for the next several years or more, the jobs environment will more closely resemble today’s environment than that of 2006 or 2007—or for that matter, the environment to which we were accustomed for a generation. Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, notes that if the recovery follows the same basic path as the last two (in 1991 and 2001), unemployment will stand at roughly 8 percent in 2014.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before: a really deep recession combined with a really extended period, maybe as much as eight years, all told, of highly elevated unemployment,” Shierholz told me. “We’re about to see a big national experiment on stress.”

Fortunately, this is America.  You know, head down, full steam ahead, pull yourself up by the bootstraps.  That sort of thing.  Er, I mean, I think there’s some of that still going around.  Of course I don’t buy into that nonsense.  I listened in college.  Takes a village.  Hillary Clinton.  But there are probably plenty of rubes tilling the earth in flyover country who still believe the myth.  You know, just enough to pull the rest of us out of this mess. 

Uh, right?

Oh crap:

Many of today’s young adults seem temperamentally unprepared for the circumstances in which they now find themselves. Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, has carefully compared the attitudes of today’s young adults to those of previous generations when they were the same age. Using national survey data, she’s found that to an unprecedented degree, people who graduated from high school in the 2000s dislike the idea of work for work’s sake, and expect jobs and career to be tailored to their interests and lifestyle. Yet they also have much higher material expectations than previous generations, and believe financial success is extremely important. “There’s this idea that, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to work, but I’m still going to get all the stuff I want,’” Twenge told me. “It’s a generation in which every kid has been told, ‘You can be anything you want. You’re special.’”

Woah, hold on a second here.  How could this have happened?  People don’t just wake up pathetic and lazy do they?  How do you take the grandchildren of the greatest generation and turn them into a bunch of spoiled ninnies?

Twenge attributes the shift to broad changes in parenting styles and teaching methods, in response to the growing belief that children should always feel good about themselves, no matter what. As the years have passed, efforts to boost self-esteem—and to decouple it from performance—have become widespread.

Wait.  Are you saying that I should be…accomplishing something?  That what I do is part of what makes me who I am?  This is starting to sound a lot like heresy.  Dude, I am amazing!  Have you ever heard me riff on how bad Coldplay sucks?  Seriously, it is hilarious.  Everybody thinks so.  If that doesn’t make me great, I can’t even imagine what would.

These efforts have succeeded in making today’s youth more confident and individualistic. But that may not benefit them in adulthood, particularly in this economic environment. Twenge writes that “self-esteem without basis encourages laziness rather than hard work,” and that “the ability to persevere and keep going” is “a much better predictor of life outcomes than self-esteem.” She worries that many young people might be inclined to simply give up in this job market. “You’d think if people are more individualistic, they’d be more independent,” she told me. “But it’s not really true. There’s an element of entitlement—they expect people to figure things out for them.”

Look, lady.  I don’t know what planet you’re from, but here in America, we have been born into excellence.  Take a look around: we are the young aristocrats, inheritors of the world.  There is no artisan-fashioned pleasure we haven’t sampled by the age of fifteen.  Our ennui is the only thing we’ve truly earned and all we truly need.  Leave shoe-shining and manufacture to our imported servants and sweatshop trinket fabricators and be sure your satellites and cell towers never falter, for the only way you’ll ever really incur our wrath is by disrupting our endless supply of novel distractions.

Oh, and keep fiddling.

Technorati Tags: millennials,economy,great recession,virtue,ennui

Reductio ad Zeitgeist

Wikipedia:

Zeitgeist (German pronunciation: [ˈtsaɪtɡaɪst] ( listen)) (from German Zeit- time and Geist- spirit) is "the spirit of the times" and/or "the spirit of the age." Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambience, morals, and sociocultural direction or mood of an era (similar to the English word mainstream or trend).

The spirit of the 90s may be summed up in two pieces of pop culture: Smells Like Teen Spirit, and Fight Club.  Listen to that song and watch that movie and you can pretty much understand the entire decade in terms of fashion, attitude, prevailing mores, etc.

Now that the Noughties are just about over, it’s time to take stock, to think them through, and then reduce their rich and varied contributions to our American cultural heritage down to a song and a movie.

Song of the Decade

Geez, this song is responsible for about fifteen million mortal musical sins.  Seriously, the She Wants Chemical Fallout at the Disco to Mars brain trust has obliterated the musical palate of an entire generation trying to make just one song half as good as Mr. Brightside.  It’s all here, kids.  The self-absorbed, tortured, love-sick 28 yr. old adolescent bears all on top of throwback 80’s synth and a dance beat.  Catchy, cold, brooding: like Duran Duran and Peter Schilling grow up listening to Nirvana and Sunny Day Real Estate.  What really channels the Noughties, though, is the feeling, that, despite the deep emotional scars, Mr. Flowers will have no confrontation, no catharsis, no nothing.  It’s as if the last lyric of the song, “I never…” really ought to be extended to, “I never do a goshdarn thing to fix any of my problems!  Bartender?  Another Michelob Ultra, please; I have a feeling I’ll be here for a while.”

Great.  On to…

Movie of the Decade

And, in the movie department, thanks, Wes Anderson, not only for making #3 on my all-time favorite movie list, but also for getting Noughties alienation and family just right.  In Tenenbaums, the dysfunction so endlessly decried in 90s alt. rock has become a virtue.  Familial loyalty has become salvific, and, it is worth mentioning, “family” has been extended beyond in-laws to include friends, enemies, and even the guy who’s screwing your wife (who is sometimes all three at once).  And, in a prophetic coup de grace, Luke Wilson’s attempted suicide scene pre-figures not only the suicide attempt of his brother Owen, but also the successful suicide of Elliot Smith, whose song “Needle in the Hay” is playing in the background.  It’s like the 90s went on a cocaine binge, got lost in the middle of the city at 4:42 AM, and fell all over themselves.

You may leave your dissent (or your effusion, as is probably more likely) in the comments.

Fiddling

A Haitian orphan in the aftermath of the earthquake:

A bumper sticker I just saw on the road:

Fail.

Get your own awesome Adopt sticker here.  Seriously, the dogs of the world need your help.

Technorati Tags: Haiti,earthquake,adoption,dogs,pets

In which his trusty fiddle channels the soul of Kappa Alpha

Dude. That English major you set me up with totally freaked me out. She was all in to me "reading more" so she made me waste two hours reading the first chapter of this book Hooking Up. It was way more lame than I expected, but whatever. And no, before you ask, of course I'm not answering her texts because I am way over it. But that's not my point. This guy Wolfe's book was all sounding the alarm because the sexual revolution might be bad for women because he had learned about "hooking up." Kind of freaked me out, you know? I was like, is this the stuff these chicks are starting to read? And are they getting it? I mean, the book was 2001 so I figured it was probably too old for too many girls to be interested, but damn. See, Wolfe was predicting that hooking up might make women unhappy. Yeah, yeah, who cares, right? But still, better if they're not thinking about this stuff, you know?

Thank God the New York Times is on the case. They're all like, the problem isn't the death of time-honored traditions which have been evolutionarily tested over ten thousand years of human civilization. Hell no! It's math and economics:

Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. “Out of that 40 percent [of males making up the student body], there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.

Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories. Rachel Sasser, a senior history major at the table, said that before she and her boyfriend started dating, he had “hooked up with a least five of my friends in my sorority — that I know of.”

Can't beat the numbers! See, Tom Wolfe, you crotchety old hack, there's nothing these poor little biddies can do! Dude, the Times is so badass! Them and their friends, Bro, they're like a fleet of wingmen all flying in the name of science.

[T]here’s currently a buyer’s market in women who are up for just about anything with the right kind of cad.

Supply and demand, Wolfe, get a frickin' clue. It's like, oh boo hoo let's all have a pity party for these liberated nymphos who finally got everything their forbears dreamed about. These chicks are simply making the proper adjustments to changing market conditions. Natural selection! Survival of the fittest! The future is NOW and it is AWESOME, Bro!

So some yoked Alpha like our boy Skyler gets his pick of the litter no strings attached? I say do the evolution! Weepy emo-douchebag-Betas backed the wrong pony and, hey, it works out better for us anyway, because now she has a shoulder to cry on in the morning when Sky gotta skip class for a High Life and Boondock Saints with you and me at the House.

I mean, this is like paradise! It's like we're all Solomon with fifty Shebas, you know? All I'm saying is look out, though. The market can turn on you like way fast. Housing bust, dude, check your six.

A group of ersatz alpha males seems to have garnered a disproportionate number of women, while the beta and gamma males, nice guys, guys who would make good husbands or boy friends, are left out of the game.

Naturally, they want to be in the game. They do not esteem themselves and are not esteemed by women for their good qualities, so they decide that they want to become pick-up artists.

Okay, I don't want you to stress out too much, Bro, and seriously, like any Secondhand Serenade-listening, Chardonnay-sipping, progressive choir boy could pwn us? I know, crazy, right? I'm just saying you gotta keep your edge. Own it, man. Own her. It's the only way to stay on top.

__________________________________________________
Check all the links for the various stories. Via Dr. Helen, Via Stuart Schneiderman

On theological job security, or, “You ask the impossible.”

The facts of the case:

(1) A Jewish prophet is tortured to death for blasphemy and sedition.

(2) This man’s followers claim he is the true Lord of the world and that his murder was somehow “for us.”

(3) They answer the question, “How do you know this?” with claims of personal experiences or trustworthy secondhand accounts of his having been “raised from the dead.”

Supposing we believe their story, how can we make sense of what is plainly lunacy?

Christian theology.

Never mind, I fixed it. With science!

 Why are my followers and post archives at the bottom of the page?

The facts of navel-gazing, or, Tyler Durden: 1 Solipsism: 0

There's another Nero's Fiddle Blog.  First post: 2005.  Last post: 2008.

There's also a Nerosfiddle.com, where there is one huge picture of wenches and nothing else.

Google is what makes us feel unoriginal and alienated in a sea of connectivity.  Just look what happens when you have a common name.

I think it was King Solomon who once said:

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. 

But the proof is in the Google image search.  Hi Tom!  Love your bright orange hair, your pasty Irish-German skin.  You must really stand out in a crowd.  What?  You’re left-handed too?  With hazel eyes?  I bet there’s no one in the whole world who is just like you.  And don’t stress it, by the time you’re oh, 25 or so, I bet your beard will finally fill in and those two hairs next to your left nipple will become a veritable forest.  Good luck with the razor-burn, though, that rash might just be here to stay.

Take that, Facebook Dopplegangers!

Saints of Doubt: Mark Salomon

Patron Saint of Pioneers

There is an old saying: “the pioneers take the arrows, the settlers take the land.”  Which is interesting because the best contemporary translation of Hebrews 12:1-2 goes like this:

¹ Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ² fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.*

Pioneers get killed, settlers enjoy the land.  Thanks, Jesus.  And thank you too, Mark Salomon, lead singer of the most awesomest God band ever.

All my theological life, I have been walking in Mark’s footsteps. 

A young fundamentalist, hot-headed, arguing for the faith, condemning all outsiders to the flames:

...watching you torture yourself 
and whoever else you can bring down 
with you... 
...a song took from our souls 
a home that is our own 
we're all born remembering 
but few of us will know" 
the tip of your tongue 
a memory in mind 
just outside of you... 
will you wake to find 
the rest you so clearly seek 
or painfully realize that it's lost 
forever? 
suffer.

Lost in guilt, desiring redemption:

with a sigh i greet the day/ i feel the morning on my face/ weary at the moment i awake/ even as i lie/ the thought returns to mind/ "welcome to the rest of your life"./ somewhere i've lost my way/ from saved to stray and failing/ in silence my spirit pleads,/ is the vision lost/ or has it been passed on?/ is there any use continuing?

Confused but confident:

But I think I know the way,/ I got a promise on the mind,/ and I'll be looking for what's mine/ Sovereign stillness whispers trust in me/ In just a little while/ They'll wish that they were silent/

Keep waiting,/ I'll be right on time/ Keep waiting,/ I'll be right on time

Betrayed by “brothers and sisters”:

The usual mourners attend/ eager to pay their last respects/ say what they usually say/ and hope today will somehow be different/ 'We welcome you into our fold/ We've been waiting/ Always have room for one more/ Will you be staying?'/

it's a time-honored tradition we hold/ we build up and then tear down our own/ now I know why I never come home/ I get tired of climbing up out of this hole

Abandoned by the church:

Your steady stream of throwaway words has flooded/ this already crowded room/ I've lost my taste for the race and the running/ there's nothing here to prove/ all I want/

want to know is what you're waiting for/

I'll flood the wreckage build a bridge into the next age and/ say goodbye and leave a cloud of dust behind

I could go on, but you got the idea four songs ago.  In a church culture that has selectively deleted the Psalms, Mark taught me that worship includes complaint, doubt, frustration, and fear.  He had already been to those places, committed them feverishly, passionately to disc; he had experienced it all, a journey out of fundamentalism and into the sundown motel.  Honestly, faithfully, never pulling punches, always telling the truth.

So they shot him for it.

On the road, pastors rejected him because he wouldn’t preach (as if any one of his songs weren’t worth ten thousand sermons).  He was viewed with suspicion for doubting and revealing the scars he earned in church.  He and his band were consigned to the Christian music ghetto where they would never fit in (truthtellers rarely do).  And yet, the band plays on.

It sounds strange to say, but Mark Salomon is one of the top five most influential theologians in my life.  His is a faith of relentless heartbreak, private suffering, enduring commitment, and exuberant, irrational hope.

Which is, of course, the faith of the cross.  If he had a bumper sticker, it would read:

My boss was tortured to death for blasphemy and sedition.

Here’s to the Patron Saint of Pioneers:

*For a quick exegetical explanation for why this is a better translation, see this post.

Technorati Tags: stavesacre,church,christian Rock,rock Music,doubt,saints of Doubt,mark salomon,pioneers,hebrews,bible

In which I indulge my darlings

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ² fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

I was writing a post on Mark Salomon and I began to digress into an exegesis of Hebrews 12:1-2, and I decided that this was one of my darlings, totally inappropriate for the Saints of Doubt post, but instead of killing it, I made it another post.

Pathetic.

Whatever.  If you’re interested, here’s a quick word study/exegetical remark on the passage that explains why I prefer “trailblazer” or “pioneer” to “author” or “founder.”

Older translations render ἀρχηγὸν as “author” or “founder,” but the word does literally mean “one who goes first down the path.”  And so the description makes more sense, because Hebrew 12 follows—you guessed it—Hebrews 11, which is a recitation of great heroes of the faith.  But if Jesus comes after guys like Enoch and Abraham, how can he be the “first one down the path” of faith?  Older translations “fix” the problem by inserting a less common meaning, namely, “author.”  Of course, that doesn’t really solve the problem, because how can Jesus be the “founder” of something that has been going on since ancient times?  The translation reflects a theological/historical bias.  Surely the author of Hebrews is musing on a new dispensation of faith, a new era, in which faith *for us* is different than faith *for them*.  To which I say nay.

The book of Hebrews is set in the context of “these last days", when God “has spoken to us by his son.”  Possibly meaning that post-Easter faith is somehow new, different, of changed content.  Another, better, possibility is that Jesus has shown us the first fulfillment of the promise of faith.  Meaning that Jesus’ faith was not qualitatively different from Abraham’s, but, rather than just dying in faith (as did all the faithful in Hebrews 11), Jesus “pioneers” the experience-of-coming-into-the-promise-of-faith.  This makes better sense of “the joy” of being “sat at the right hand” as well as the end of Hebrews 11 which reminds us that all those other guys died and that was it.  Nothing else.  They did many heroic deeds, suffered martyrs deaths, and stayed in the grave.  Jesus follows their example of death by torture, but “pioneers” the deepest fulfillment of faith, namely, the joy of glory and vindication.

For our purposes, Jesus’ “pioneering work” should be seen as a continuation of OT/Apocryphal faith—that is, the life of a martyr—with a certain knowledge of “what comes next” in these “last days”: resurrection, glory, and new life.