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Against the Grain: Unconventional Wisdom from Ecclesiastes
By Ray Waddle
published by Upper Room Books (August 2005)
$15
This is a book about finding God in the strangest corner of the Bible, the
Book of Ecclesiastes, and why it's ignored and what if it weren't.
After
9/11, two questions haunt us: Are we safe? and, Is God on our side?
This is
a book about some common assumptions about God, and about how
Ecclesiastes,
in the Bible, illuminates them. Or contradicts them. Or points
the way to a
place of uncommon serenity and wisdom, all gifts of God.
Ecclesiastes is
located close to the middle of the Holy Bible itself, in
the Hebrew
scriptures or Old Testament, set between the Book of Proverbs and
the Song
of Songs.
It's right there in the middle of the Holy Bible, yet The Book
of
Ecclesiastes makes organized religion nervous. Ecclesiastes was written
by a
mysterious biblical sage, but he's usually ignored. He's considered too
disturbing for the day-to-day style of American faith and spirituality. The
highly competitive marketplace of religion has no use for his moody
outbursts and observations.
But Ecclesiastes is something rare -- a poet
of emotional honesty and
spiritual realism. That's why I wrote this book --
to bring his words to
light in an era of fast and furious public religion,
war and social
conflict. In Against The Grain, I work through the whole of
Ecclesiastes to
produce a memoir of reading him. It's a record of
impressions of facing his
harsh outcries against human vanity and his steady
reverence for God.
If believers say the Bible is true (I do), then they'll
have to concede
Ecclesiastes contains truth too.
Like an ancient stranger
riding into town, he comes with candor and courage.
He challenges our 21st
century idolatry --
the careless use of God's name to bless every
self-serving political and
religious purpose. Ecclesiastes stands as a
rebuke to this breaking of the
Third Commandment, the widespread taking of
God's name in vain, whether to
justify political agendas, spiritual
hypocrisy, or mass murder.
So Against The Grain is about the neglected themes
of Ecclesiastes -- the
goodness of creation, the fingerprints of Providence,
the frustrations of
spirit in a world of affluence and suffering, the beauty
of everyday
pleasures, the duty to remember the dead, the duty, indeed, to
be happy.
It's about feeling the wind in your face, the wind of being alive.
Despite
his reputation, Ecclesiastes marks the surprising arrival of
consolation and
hope.
I wrote Against The Grain for three reasons: 1) I'm
a writer intrigued by
the neglect of Ecclesiastes by public religion. 2) I'm
a churchgoer who
wants to take the whole Bible seriously. 3) I'm a
professional observer of
the religion scene who thinks Ecclesiastes is an
antidote to the world's
abuses of politicized religion and the deadly use of
belief to promote
terror, suffering and injustice.
As a Christian I don't
believe Ecclesiastes gets the last word. He doesn't
have the whole story.
Yet we can't avoid this troublesome, countercultural
voice from Scripture.
Christians keep a strange relationship to the Old
Testament: We conveniently
quote what we like and shun what we don't. But
believers should read
Ecclesiastes -- with alertness, not fear. He teaches
and toughens. He tells
of the ways of God in a hard world. He presses
readers to work harder to
find a balance between praise and remembrance --
praise of eternal God and
remembrance of everyday suffering, all at once.
He's in the Bible for a
reason.
-- RAY WADDLE
(adapted from the prologue of Against the Grain)
