The Matrix
That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9 NASB
Nothing new – On the surface, this claim seems preposterous if not outright false. Of course, there are new things. Every birth is a new life. Every twist and turn of our journey is new. Reincarnation doesn’t even claim that everything you do is exactly repeated again. There are new technologies, new agreements, new discoveries. How can Koheleth be so naïve? Life itself is constantly new.
Ah, but Koheleth isn’t thinking about the particulars of our experience. He’s thinking about the big picture, the repetition of the general categories of existence, like birth itself, death itself, work, toil, purpose, achievement, hope, trust—all those summary ideas about living.
“Koheleth’s real concern is not the natural phenomena but rather human efforts. These fail to achieve anything new and can thus attain no true ‘profit.’ He is not claiming that specific historical events recur, but rather that all types of events (wars, say, or national disasters) recur, and therefore nothing that happens can be fundamentally new. We are like figures in a computer game, whose actions seem to vary with each play but are really just ephemeral variants of possibilities dictated by the software.”[1]
Koheleth must have been the screenwriter for The Matrix (one of my favorite movies). Life is just a program; invisible to the participants because they are inside the program so that it feels real, but, in fact, it’s all just zeros and ones in digital arrangement. Philosophers struggled with this idea long ago. What if it’s all just a thought in God’s mind? How do we know that what we perceive about the world is actually true? We’re just pawns in God’s game. He’s the only one who understands that it’s all a program He built. When Koheleth tries to pull back the curtain, he only discovers that the big picture actions of human existence just go around in big circles. Nothing really new ever really happens.
Or so it seems.
Koheleth wrote sometime between the end of the Babylonian captivity and 180 BCE. Clearly Solomon did not write this material, although as the world’s wisest man he may have come to the same conclusions. This means that Koheleth was unfamiliar with one incredibly important new thing under heaven—the resurrection of Yeshua. That one new thing changes everything. Life doesn’t end with the big circle. There is more than going around and around. What there is isn’t clear but this is certain: if Yeshua came back from the dead, then there is hope for all of us. And that’s brand new.
You can live without the resurrection. You can run your race, complete your circle, and fade into oblivion—meaningless, purposeless, in the end, a nothing. Or . . .
Topical Index: nothing new, The Matrix, resurrection, Ecclesiastes 1:9
[1] Michael V. Fox, The JPS Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes (JPS, 2004), pp. 6-7.
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