The Frustrated Scholar

Dr. Jeff Bolton recently told me something that a professor of his at Virginia Tech told him. He said, Jeff, when you get your bachelor's degree, you think you know a lot. By the time you finish your master's degree, you realize you don't know anything. By the time you finish your PhD, you realize nobody else knows anything either. A lot of truth to that. Education is a very wonderful thing, but it does not hold all the answers to the meaning of life. And yet there are many who feel that ultimate reality, that personal fulfillment in life lives in the pursuit of knowledge. And so the pursuit of knowledge is attempted at very deep levels. Oh, we think, oh, to be enlightened, oh, to understand the new technology, the goal to grasp and make new scientific discoveries. That would be the real goal of life. And so knowledge goes deeper and more complex and more intricate and more specialized. One encyclopedia, you remember those? One encyclopedia has nine columns on Christ, 21 columns on lace. Some people spend their whole lives studying lace. The history of lace, how to make lace, the different uses of lace, the chemical components of lace, different designs of lace. It's hard to imagine, but knowledge sometimes gets that specialized and that intricate. Solomon talks about that in the book of Ecclesiastes, not lace, but about the pursuit of knowledge. In Ecclesiastes chapter one, I invite your attention to that book Ecclesiastes chapter one, where we will find Solomon talking about the frustrated scholar. Just to review a moment, remind you of the thrust of this book, Solomon begins the book of Ecclesiastes with these startling words in chapter one, verse two, meaningless. Meaningless, says the teacher, utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. And with those startling words, he kind of grabs us by the throat and pulls us close to him and says, I've got something to say to you. And in the next few verses of the first chapter, he says, I want you to face a hard reality of life. And that hard reality of life is that there is a tedious sameness, a routine monotony about life, that at some point in your life, if you're really honest and if you're thinking very deeply at all, at some point in your life, that tedious sameness, that routine monotony will cause you to wake up some morning saying, is this all there is to life? Surely there's got to be more. What's the real purpose of life anyway? What is there really of substance in life with all of this tedious sameness? Given that background and introduction to the book, Solomon then spends the rest of the first two chapters of his book, talking about several ways that people pursue real meaning and purpose and fulfillment in life. If you wake up in the morning saying, there's got to be more to life than this routine sameness than this monotony day in and day out, then people begin to search for where that meaning really is. And Solomon says, I'm going to tell you where people typically search and he gives us four or five arenas of life where people genuinely search, sometimes with a maddening pursuit for that elusive purpose and fulfillment in meaning and life. The first one is the pursuit of knowledge. In verses 12 through 18, Solomon investigates three stages of the pursuit of knowledge. Now just to let you know a little bit about the structure of these verses, this is not only wisdom literature, it's also poetic literature and there is a feature in Hebrew poetry that sometimes works this way and this passage does this. There's kind of a book in the approach, actually called a chiasmus, but that's not of really an importance to us. It's a book in the approach. In this passage, verse 13 and verse 17 say the same thing and go together. Move in a little bit, verse 14 and verse 16 say the same thing and go together. Verse 15 is the conclusion. And that's the way sometimes Hebrew poetry would work. They would work from both ends to the middle. And verse 15 really is the conclusion and then he reinforces that conclusion in verse 18 once again. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to take the passage as it's structured, as it's designed to be understood with verses 13 and 17 going together. In those two verses, Solomon gives us the first stage in the pursuit of knowledge. The first stage is the search for knowledge, obviously. And then you get the attainment of knowledge and then the application of knowledge. But the first stage in this pursuit of knowledge is the search, the search for knowledge. And Solomon describes that. Look at verse 13. Verse 12 says, either teacher was king over Israel and Jerusalem. Verse 13, I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind. Now skip down to verse 17, you'll find much the same thought. Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom and also of madness and folly. But I learned that this too is a chasing after the wind. What you find in these verses is Solomon does two things. He describes two things about this search for knowledge. First of all, he describes the intensity of the search. It's clear from the words he uses that he plunged in wholeheartedly with intensity into this search. And I can remember many of you have experienced that if you've had much educational experience. I can remember my first year of Hebrew in seminary. Hebrew is a very difficult language. It's not at all like English. None of the letters in the alphabet look the same. So it's a very humbling thing. The first thing you have to do in learning that language is to learn the alphabet and learn how to draw the alphabet. And so the first few quizzes are learning how to draw the Hebrew letters in the alphabet. And you feel like you're in kindergarten all over again. But it's the kind of study that Hebrew has read differently. It's read from right to left. It goes across the page differently. And so it's a very difficult language to learn. Nothing like English at all. And I remember that the professor said the first day, if you get one day behind, you might as well call it quits. You cannot, you cannot get behind in Hebrew or you will not be able to keep up. And so everybody in the class is kind of amping up, you know, the energy level to really get with an intense attitude toward Hebrew and learning this stuff. And I can remember that it was in January. I had gone through the first semester. I was just into the second semester. I'd been asked to speak, this was in 1982. It's 30 years ago. I'd been asked to speak at Piedmont at the alumni rally. And so traveled from Indiana to Winston-Salem. And I remember the alumni meetings on a Tuesday morning. And I spoke at the alumni rally. I think it was somewhere around 1030. And as soon as it was over, we hopped in the car and drove 12 hours back to Indiana. Well, I had a 730 Hebrew class the next morning. And I knew that I wasn't ready. I had not done my homework. I wasn't ready for the inevitable quiz that would come up. And so after preaching in Winston-Salem, driving 12 hours home, I studied for two hours on Hebrew. I mean, I was really into this. There was an intensity about I've got to get this. And I can't get one day behind. Of course, I was 30 years old too. I can remember that as well. I couldn't do that today. But there's an intensity about educational pursuits that Solomon describes here in these words. Look at it in verse 13 again. He says, I applied my mind. What he's talking about there is that this search was deliberate. The intensity of this search, it was deliberate. I applied my mind, literally assigned my mind to this. I gave my mind this assignment. I appointed my mind to study this. That's how serious it was. He's not dabbling in the pursuit of knowledge. He is dedicating and devoting his mind to learning all that he can learn with the same kind of resolve and dedication and devotion and deliberate effort that you would have in any major project, a major remodeling project, a spring cleaning, a new job. It's that kind of, I'm going to dive in with all I have into this. That's the idea. I applied my mind, assigned my mind to do this. But the intensity of the search is seen in the next words too. Not only was it deliberate, it was thorough. It was thorough. Verse 13, I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom. Three words there that describe how thorough this search was. He said, I assigned my mind, first of all, to study. The word study means to investigate the roots of something. This is meticulous research. This is dissertation type research. Going to the deepest levels and intricacies of arguments, that's what Solomon said I'm going to do. I'm going to study with that kind of meticulous research. The word explore means to investigate all sides of an issue. It's not to go deeper on something, but it's to look at every angle, every facet of something. And so not only the Solomon say, I'm going to get to the very depths of this, but I'm going to look at all sides of it. I'm going to experiment everything I find. I'm going to test it to make sure it holds up. I'm going to get the facts. I'm going to really study and explore everything I can. But not only was this search intense and that it was deliberate and thorough, it's also intense in that it was wide-ranging. Notice what he says in verse 13, I applied my mind to study, to explore, oh by the way, by wisdom, he says, using the God-given wisdom that he'd been given in answer to his prayer, by wisdom, but I'm going to explore everything. All that is done under the heavens. All that is done under the heavens. That sounds pretty wide-ranging, doesn't it? And that's exactly what Solomon meant. I want to cover everything. I want to investigate and devote my mind to a deep research on everything. You say, that's an impossible task. Remember Solomon's position and his wealth gave him access to people and records that the average person would not have. And so Solomon says, I am going to investigate everything I possibly can. All the data of life, no doubt the habits of animals, patterns of plants, the intricacies of human behavior, the cultural customs of other people. Solomon is going to cover everything he can think of, to cover in this search for knowledge. The Bible talks about the extensiveness with which Solomon undertook this kind of pursuit when it describes in 1 Kings chapter 4, his wisdom and how he applied it. Listen to these verses from the historical record of Solomon. 1 Kings 4 verse 29 says, God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. Solomon's wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the people of the east, greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than anyone else, including Ethan the Ezra height, wiser than hemen, Calcol and Dada, the sons of Mayhaw, evidently these were well-known wise men in the day. And then it goes on to say, end his fame, spread to all the surrounding nations. He spoke 3000 Proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. So I mean he's into literatures, into music. But then notice what verse 33 says, he spoke about plant life from the cedar of Lebanon to the hissep that grows out of the walls. He also spoke about animals and birds, reptiles and fish. Do you see the wide range of knowledge that he explored? Verse 34 says, from all nations, people came to listen to Solomon's wisdom. Just about spiritual thinking? No, no, about plant life, about animal life, those kinds of things. Sent by all the kings of the world who had heard of his wisdom. I mean this is a kind of intense search for knowledge that no one else was doing in his day, probably, at least to the level at which he attempted it. And so here is someone who describes the intensity of his search. In verse 17, he even says, I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom and also of madness and folly. Those two words have to do with the absurd side of knowledge, the extremes of knowledge. When you run out of legitimate things to discover you get into the crazy stuff and Solomon was even doing that. And so there's an intensity in his search here. The whole point is this, you will not go deeper, you will not explore more, you will not have a more wide ranging or intense search for knowledge than what I did. You will not. But notice what he describes next. He not only describes the intensity of this search for knowledge. He describes the result of this search. Again, verse 13, the result. I applied my mind to study and explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind. See those words heavy burden literally mean a burdensome task. What a burdensome task this is. Why Solomon? He gives us two reasons why this intense search for knowledge is a burdensome task. First of all, because it is painstaking, he says what a heavy burden God has laid on mankind. Interesting words, the anivit translates laid on mankind. The idea literally is to keep him occupied or to keep him busy. What a heavy burden God has put on man to keep him occupied and keeping busy. It is painstaking because once you delve into the deeper aspects of knowledge, you find there's even more. You overturn one stone and there are 50 stones underneath it to be looked at. And so this is absolutely painstaking. It's hard work. Anybody who's done this kind of research knows you sweat the details. It is fatiguing. It's hard. It's painstaking. The second thing Solomon says about the result of research, it's such a burdensome task because it's never ending for 17. I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, madness, folly, but I learned this too is a chasing after the wind. In other words, you can never really get it. You can never really get at what you're looking for. Again, it's never ending. Each new discovery reveals more things to be studied, more discoveries to be made, more information to look into, more areas to research. Anybody who's done research on any depth knows that that is true. Remember when I was working on my major project for my doctorate, the dissertation type project, it had to be a practical project from church life and ministry, but it also had to involve a research component. And so I spent a year and a half working on this and I went everywhere I could think of whenever I was at Trinity, I would explore their library and their databases and all of their dissertations that applied to the subject I was writing on, strategic planning. And I would look at all the go online and get excurses from different dissertations and projects and so forth. And I'd be end of realize, this is a maddening search. There is more out there than you can possibly even read much less investigate. But I felt like I had to dig even deeper and so I spent a day at Concord in their library, day at Bluefield College and their library, day at Appalachian Bible College, day at Liberty University. I knew the dean of the library there and so called him up and I said, here's the area I'm looking at and here's what I'm studying, here's some books I'm looking for, and when I got down there the library opened he had them all laid out in the big library cart and it's full. And so I spent a day as feverishly as I could reading and taking notes and doing everything I could. And you know what I realized after 350 pages of writing I realized I'm not even scratching the surface. There is more to discover than I've even begun to see and it is maddening. It is almost like a chasing after the wind. You cannot really get to the end of, you can't really grasp what you're reaching for. That's what Solomon's talking about. Again his point is nobody has ever done more research than I have done. I've been there, I've done that Solomon says, I know what I'm talking about. It is not the answer to the meaning of life. It's a burden, some task. It is never ending. It is painstaking and you will never find ultimate purpose and meaning in life that way. But notice this, it is a heavy burden that God has laid on mankind. He says in verse 13, God has done that. Why does God do that? Why does God have so many levels of knowledge that you can never get to the end of it so that we will realize that is not where ultimate meaning and fulfillment in life is to be found. Once we go down that path, once we initiate that intense search for knowledge, thinking that the right knowledge or enough of it will give me true meaning and purpose in life, we simply come to the end of ourselves and realize I've got to stop. There is more to be learned and I can never learn. God does that to humble us. To realize we are searching for ultimate meaning in life in the wrong way. The search for an knowledge, painstaking, never ending. What a heavy burden some task. But Solomon finally did learn a lot. Obviously people came from all over the world to hear him talk about plants and animals and other things. So he learned a lot. So you might think, well, maybe in the attainment of knowledge, you find some measure of fulfillment and purpose in life. Solomon deals with that in his next little coupling of verses, verses 14 and 16, where he deals with the attainment of knowledge. The search, wow, that was awful frustrating. But once you get the knowledge, once you finish that search, you got it made, right? I'll never forget Dr. John Davis, who was a president of Grace Theological Seminary. He's been here to speak before at Bible conferences. Some of you will remember him. I remember him telling the story of when he got his doctorate in theology and he felt like, well, yeah, I'm really ready now. I'm really ready to take on the world theologically speaking. He was filling in at a little church near the seminary and one day the junior girls class teacher didn't show up and he was thrust into the classroom with a bunch of junior girls. And he was just asking some questions. And one of the girls asked him, who is God? And immediately with his theologically trained mind, he spat it off the typical theological definition. God is a living, intelligent, purposeive, free, self-conscious, emotional spirit being. Well, here's this little junior girl just looking at him with a blank stare. And he realized, I'm in the wrong place for that kind of a definition of God. But the little girl just looked at that and said, what is a spirit? And he said, it was then that I realized my collar seemed really tight and I was sweating a lot. And he realized that not even with a junior age girl, can I explain adequately what the Bible teaches about God? I really don't know anything. What an amazing discovery. The attainment of knowledge, look at what Solomon attained. First, Sport Teen, he says, I have seen all the things that are done under the sun for 16. I said to myself, look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me. I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge. That says it all, doesn't it? Solomon says, I got it. I've gained it more than anybody else before me. I've done the research. I've done the hard work. I have learned. I've got it. And remember, he was using God-given wisdom. So what did Solomon find with all of this? That's what he attained. But what Solomon found is this. Look back at verse 14, I have seen all the things that are done under the sun. All of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Does that mean education is bad? Of course not. Please don't hear me saying that. What Solomon is saying is this, in this brutal conclusion, I have attained more knowledge than anybody ever before me. And I realize more deeply than ever the futility, the emptiness of life. Now here's his point. Educated people have the same problems we do. Have you ever noticed that? Educated people who have the greatest degrees of education still come up with a gnawing sense of futility, of all of their knowledge to solve the deepest problems of life, their personal problems, their family problems, their emotional problems, and they realize all this knowledge I've got doesn't help me with the real purpose and meaning of life. I may have a head full of knowledge, I may have attained a lot, but it doesn't help me answer the real deepest questions of life. You remember the professor on Gilligan's Island? You remember the professor who was able to fashion generators out of palm fronds, who was able to discover all kinds of vaccines out of algae, but somehow he never got around to fix in the huge hole in the boat that will allow him to get home. What is going on there with all that knowledge? Just like people who learn all there is to learn about a certain specific specialized area of educational endeavor, they learn all there is to learn. They get to the very bottom of it they think and realize they've got the same questions about how to fill the huge hole in their soul and somehow never get around to fixing that. That's what Solomon's talking about. I found the same futility and emptiness in life. You see, if intellectualism were the answer to all of life's questions, universities would be four tastes of heaven, universities would be places of great peace, but what do we find quite often? Just the opposite. Quite often universities are boiling pots of controversy and confusion of activism and far out philosophies and far out lifestyles and far out religions, hedonistic pleasures in lifestyles, drug and alcohol abuse. In this maddening search for knowledge, there are sometimes accompanies it quite often, a reckless drive to find meaning in life. Why do those two go together? Because the maddening pursuit of knowledge is not filling the hole in the soul. It's not repairing the deepest needs and answering the deepest questions of a person's life, the attainment of knowledge. Solomon says, I got it all. He's told that I had time to get. It's chasing after the wind. Well, okay, Solomon, the search was frustrating. The attainment of knowledge leaves you still empty. Well, what about the application of knowledge? What about taking that knowledge and doing something with it? What about taking that knowledge and fixing the problems of the world? Solve the problems of society. Straighten things out. Okay, let's see where that got him. And he comes to this conclusion in verse 15, he gives a proverb that summarizes the application of knowledge. Verse 15, what is crooked cannot be straightened. What is lacking cannot be counted. Now let's take a few moments to unpack that. Make sure we understand what Solomon is saying here. He's talking about the application of knowledge. When you've got the knowledge and you try to apply it to the problems of mankind, what happens? Well, there are lots of things that can be solved. Certainly, as I've said before, Solomon is not denying that there are wonderful scientific discoveries that benefit mankind, new technologies, new medications that help with new procedures, new surgical procedures, all those things. They're wonderful discoveries. And we ought to thank God for those who spend their lives investigating and studying and learning those things, uncovering what God has put into his creation. That's a wonderful thing. But Solomon's not talking about medicine. He's not talking about new technology. He's not talking about cures for diseases. He's talking about the cure for the whole in your soul. And he's saying, education can't do that for you. Because when he says that which is crooked cannot be straightened, the word for crooked is a word which literally means bent, twisted, or perverse. Perverted is the idea. It's talking about the nature of man. It's talking about what we are on the inside. Yes, thank God that knowledge and search for understanding can lead us to new discoveries that will benefit mankind. That's wonderful. But it does not, it does not straighten out the twisted sinful nature of man and get at his deepest need. It can't do that. That's what Solomon is saying. All knowledge seems powerless to really change society because it doesn't untwist the twisted nature of man. It doesn't straighten out the nature of man. David Hubbard who's written a very excellent commentary on Ecclesiastes says this. I like the way he says it. He says, much of what is wrong with life is not wisdom's fault. It is just the way things are. Full of injustice stamped by suffering, plagued by weakness, terrorized by crime. Life has so much wrong about it that wisdom stands by powerless to do more than observe. Think of the massive problems that confront our huge cities. Treasuries on the edge of bankruptcy. Numbers of homeless growing to a large numbers of the homeless growing to alarming levels. Education perplexed about its directions. Crime rates soaring to vulture heights. Wisdom is much better able to analyze the trends than it is to prescribe the solutions. Our wise men must have had this in mind. When he wrote these puzzling words, what his crooked cannot be made straight, what his lacking cannot be numbered or counted. Wisdom may finger the problem, Hubbard says, but it cannot straighten out what is crooked, nor count what is simply not there. Wisdom cannot change reality. The idea Solomon's getting at is that knowledge in and of itself, gaining all the information you can gain will not help with the deepest need of man's soul. And that is his twisted sinful nature. How do you deal with that? You can give all the education that will help to society, but as long as man has a sinful nature, society will abandon problems that are not solved by all the knowledge that is thrown at those problems. Notice the next thing he says, not only what his crooked cannot be straightened, but what his lacking cannot be counted. Now here's the idea in that expression. What is lacking means the deficiencies in your life. What is lacking in your life? Not what is lacking in knowledge. What is lacking in your life? There is so much of that, so many deficiencies in our lives that it boggles our mind. We can't count them. That's the point here. Again, Solomon is dealing with the deeper issues of the purpose and meaning of life here. He's talking about what life really is to us. He's not saying that we shouldn't try to change things. He's not saying that we shouldn't use technology and knowledge to make life better for people. Certainly, that's a wise and a good endeavor. That's part of the mandate God gave man in creation. Bring creation under your control. Subdue it. That's part of what God wants us to do. That's good and healthy. What Solomon is saying is there are so many things wrong in life because of man's twisted sin nature. That education itself, knowledge itself cannot even make a dent in that. So it leaves you frustrated. And what he's saying is that you cannot affect permanent change in man's soul with the things of this world with the knowledge that you can gain from this world. Yale University law professor Anthony Cronman recently said this in an article I read. He said, now this is a university professor of law at Yale University. This is not a believer as you'll see from his comments. He said students who begin their college careers today suffer from one glaring omission in their studies. Nowhere will they really study the meaning of life? That interesting. American colleges have embraced so embraced a research driven model of scholarship that metaphysical interests, other words spiritual interests is what we would say. Metaphysical interests once the subject matter of the humanities have been all but eliminated from higher education because students are unable to wrestle with critical questions in the university setting. The issues are left and I quote he says in the hands of those motivated by religious convictions. A prospect that he says and again I quote he says is disturbing and dangerous. He goes on to say this. Dr. Cronman says the university should provide a new approach to the question of human purpose that speaks and I'm quoting here again that speaks to the conversation broader than any church alone can conduct without pretending to answer in a doctrine air way. He says our culture may be spiritually impoverished but what it needs is not more religion what it needs is an alternative to religion for universities to become again the places they once were spiritually serious but non-dogmatic. Now listen to this next phrase concerned with the soul but agnostic about God. Wow that's the kind of drivel that often comes in the pursuit of knowledge. What Solomon is saying is good luck with that. I don't even believe in a lock but good luck with that. We'll see where that takes you because I've been there and done that. I searched after knowledge with an intensity unparalleled in human history. I attained knowledge unlike anyone before me and I'm here to tell you it does not repair the whole in your soul. It may do a lot of wonderful things but it will not give you ultimate purpose and meaning in life. If you're headed down that road if that's where you're looking for it you will be chasing after the wind never able to put your hands on it. You will find it to be futile and aggrievous task that God has given you and so he concludes this way in verse 18 or with much wisdom comes much sorrow literally frustration. The more knowledge the more grief literally the Hebrew word means mental pain. That's the conclusion. Frustration. Mental anguish. You know why that is? The more knowledge you get the more clearly you see the difficulties the misery the inequities the hardships of life. The more knowledge you get this is what Solomon's talking about the more knowledge you get the more your naive illusions about life vanish and the more you see you know what life is hard life can be cruel it can be unjust and you see in a very raw way the hardships and problems of life the more knowledge you get the more empty your soul can become. Now please again don't understand me to say that education is wrong and ignorance is great that's certainly not what I'm saying I certainly don't feel that way. What I'm saying and what Solomon is saying I believe is this if all you get is human wisdom human philosophy human knowledge without God like Professor Kroneman was suggesting then that'll only make things worse you'll only discover all of the stuff about life that can't be fixed by that pursuit of knowledge you cannot untangle the twisted sinful nature of man that way you cannot fix the hole in the soul that way you have to begin with a relationship with God and then all the pursuit of knowledge finds its proper place but without God it is a chasing after the wind it is futile it is meaningless it is empty that is what Solomon is saying so Solomon is basically saying this if I can conclude it this way the pursuit of knowledge on a human level apart from God will leave you frustrated and you will become a highly educated well-degreed frustrated scholar and you know what God ordained it that way God ordained it that way to bring us to the end of ourselves when we go down that path and we'll see at least four other paths he suggests people try but when you go down that path God ordained that we would come to the end of ourselves and realize the futility of life without him without him and my friend you can find real purpose and meaning in life in a relationship with him through his son Jesus Christ who died for your sins on the cross who died to pay the penalty for your sins so that you might enjoy a relationship with God you can find that in Christ all that people search for with the intricate specialization of the pursuit of knowledge and they find their soul is still empty and the real meaning and purpose of life is still elusive the meaning and purpose of life begins with a relationship with God and then all the other knowledge begins to fit together in the wonderful puzzle of life what you buy with me in prayer