Climate Change
“Futility of futilities,” says the Preacher, “Futility of futilities! All is futility.” Ecclesiastes 1:2 NASB
Futility – Vanity of vanities. You probably know this verse with the KJV rendering of the Hebrew hebel. “Futility” is much better. Qohelet isn’t decrying pride. He’s exasperated about life’s purposelessness. In the end, it all turns to rot. As my college history professor liked to say, “In the end, we’re all dead.” Why work so hard? Where does it really get you? A better tombstone?
But it’s not just death’s eraser that haunts us. It’s the muck we have to trek through to get there. If life were a straight-line depreciation schedule of hard work accomplishments followed by a long cold rest in the ground, well, we might be okay with that. But life isn’t a straight-line effort. All kinds of stupid, annoying, tragic, disturbing, and disastrous things happen along the way. In particular, bad things happen to good people. The real biblical question isn’t, “Is there a God?” The real biblical question is, “Why?”
“How to live in a world pestered with lies and remain unpolluted, how not to be stricken with despair, not to flee but to fight and succeed in keeping the soul unsoiled and even aid in purifying the world?”[1]
That’s the real fight, isn’t it?
And the biblical answer? Well, it’s not so comforting either:
“God’s ways are just, right, wise, but neither transparent nor immune to misunderstanding. There is an unfolding and a shrouding, a concealing within a disclosing, consoling as well as confusing.”[2]
What can we do? Don’t take this as a trivial set-up question for some noble theological answer. No, not at all. It’s more like, “How can I even hope that there is anything I can really do about all this?” “Why should I go on?” “What’s the point of it?”
Once again I find some solace in the thought of Abraham Heschel. “Without cleanliness of will the mind is impervious to the relevance of God.”[3] Cleanliness of will. That’s what I can do! Maybe that’s all I can do. I can (kind of) change my inner climate (no carbon tax, please) and, since everything is connected (a good Hebrew concept), in the process I will change things. For me, and . . . maybe my ripple on the pond sends a hurricane of righteousness across the distant ocean. Maybe it’s not all pointless hebel after all. Maybe, as we will see, a holy festival changes the world.
Topical Index: hebel, futility, pointless, pollution, Ecclesiastes 1:2
[1] Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, p. 179.
[2] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol 1, p. 175.
[3] Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, p. 88.
To will the goodness of God is the “cleanliness of the will” by which the relevance of God is both known and acquired, and in relation to “the pond” “sends a hurricane of righteousness across the distant ocean.”
The goodness of God is that he has not left his human creatures to wallow in the senselessness of a pointless hebel. Rather, in his goodness God has undertaken costly and concrete actions to put the world right, despite that we presently live in a condition in which we experience the knowledge of both good and evil. (Moreover, in his goodness, he gave us freedom to enjoy all the goodness of all the trees, except only that fruit of a sole tree in the midst of the garden, also in his goodness warning us that this tree produced fruit that was not good for food and must not be eaten else we die.) Now we live with the reality of sin and death, and because this is not good we ask, “What is the point of it all?”
Thanks be to God! In his goodness there is provided a “cleanliness of the will.” This is the will of the one who says, “Behold, I have come to do your will,” thus, “He takes away the first in order to establish the second, by which will we are made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all… this one, having offered one cleansing sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, (having excluded habel and pointlessness) from now on waiting until his enemies are made a footstool for his feet. For by one offering he has made whole and complete and without futility for all time those who are made holy.” (cf. Hebrews 10:5-14)
Perhaps a holy festival does change the world.