On What to Do with Our Hands: Philip Matherne

(15) In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. (16) Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? (17) Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? (18) It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them. (Ecclesiastes 7:15-18)

Ecclesiastes stands on utterly human feet, seeing the world through human eyes, eyes that struggle to make sense of fate and how to act in a reality absent of a resurrection. Our eyes. Not for the first or the last time under the sun, The Preacher asks, why do the good die young and the evil prosper? What does it profit us if our hands gain both the world and righteousness, if neither can ensure that our life doesn’t end just like the poor and sinful, like the grasshopper and the lion, the republican or democrat, the citizen or alien? We’ve been promised that if we are obedient, we are blessed and that the wages of sin is death. Death for having been righteous does not follow this rule. It is no wonder that the preacher tells us to take the middle road. Why destroy myself by being too righteous or too evil if I'm not guaranteed that I get what I deserve?

I want to believe him. I want to take hold of both the good and the bad and believe that both lifestyles produce people who fear God in the end. I think this view is a meager, narrow view of life that forgets the resurrection. If only my life matters because there is nothing afterwards, then it makes sense to walk a middle road, avoiding as much destruction and death as possible. On the other hand, if this life doesn’t really matter because of its transience compared to eternity, then what does it matter what our hands do while we’re here? Or we can get all we can while we are alive? 

I think we are confused when we imagine that a long life is a good thing that results from many years of faithful obedience. No, I’m not trying to say that we should try to hurry the process along, and I don’t think scripture supports that view either, but I do think that the Bible doesn’t try too hard to conceal the fact that it’s not fair. Our preoccupation with reward and condemnation is not lauded. The good do die young in spite of their righteousness, and the evil do grow old in spite of their wickedness. However, it is not an affront to truth to die young and righteousness. But it does feel that way. If I envy The Preacher, who knew wisdom and folly and explored righteousness and pleasure, if I envy the awareness of Adam and Eve, eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and perishing in their sin, then I, too, have strayed from tending the garden. Or if I strive to keep the law like the Pharisees, as if it were by some shortcoming that the almost righteous die early, then I'll find my cell full of bones and white walls that can't be escaped. In both, I count equality with God as something to be grasped with my hands.

The one who fears God shall come out of both of them. Thank God that we are rescued from believing that anything we do can save us and that any measure of righteousness will preserve our life. Thank God that I am delivered from the self-deception that nothing matters and all I can do is what suits me best. Both worldviews find within them sinners who are both going to die, both going to receive rain and pain. God does care what we do with our hands, and it seems that only the ones who fear him get it right. So what are we taking hold of and not withholding our hand from? I don’t think that it is the competing lifestyles between verses 16 and 17, although we should still heed the warning to avoid being overly (self)-righteous and the obvious instruction against sin.

It is good that we should grasp righteousness and wisdom as long as it is a partial and alternative righteousness and wisdom. One not preoccupied with rewards and merited compensation. We lay hold of a life in view of the unfair resurrection of Christ, perishing in His condemning righteousness, and a reward that isn’t in this life but the next.

Philip Matherne is an intern at the Wesley Foundation. He is passionate about the Lord and loves reading, hammocking, and oranges.