Life sucks. Let’s just name it as it is. It is one of the most fundamental facts of life itself. It is packed to the brim with absurdities and disappointments, and this is no novel fact. In ancient literature, we find many depictions of sages deeply frustrated by the incoherence of life on earth. We even find it in the Bible, in what I consider the Bible’s shadow journal.
Recently, I had the opportunity to teach on Ecclesiastes in one of my classes at Emory University. It is the book that—much to nobody’s surprise—has been the focus of my research in this program. But I did not wish to teach on Qoheleth’s theology.
In a class focusing on wisdom, I wanted to lean more heavily into this aspect of Ecclesiastes. And what I found, I admittedly find quite strange. For Qoheleth, there is wisdom in being pessimistic. What follows isn’t a devotional. It is a guide for applying the wisdom of Ecclesiastes in a postmodern world.
Everything is Hebel
What is one word you would use to describe everything “under the sun?” Stop reading. Close your eyes. Think of one word. Now, hold onto that.
Those who are familiar with Ecclesiastes already have an idea of where I’m going with this. Qoheleth has one word for it all, and that word is hebel. It’s such a strange word, and here I do want to pause for some exegetical work.
A growing theology “quick fact” is that hebel—also Abel’s name—literally means vapor or breath. This is accurate. But the little nugget continues: if Qoheleth is saying everything is vapor or breath, he is saying it is fleeting or temporal. Maybe absurd. There is nothing inherently negative in these translations. It sounds very appealing.
We’ve now moved into a very strange case of biblical literalism. We are so focused on the literal meaning of this one word that we willingly scrap the full context of the book in which it appears a whopping 38 times. We are missing a massive piece of the puzzle.
I began this post with the common phrase “life sucks.” I hope I do not have to tell you that life does not literally “suck.” That is not what we think when someone says it. They are expressing a sentiment we all know deeply—life is utterly frustrating.
The class served as an excellent case study. Broadly speaking, the class ultimately determined that absurd or fleeting best captured the essence of hebel. But as the professor pointed out, such depictions leave out a key aspect Ecclesiastes: frustration.
There is something that deeply troubles Qoheleth. To understand this, we have to step into his world. Into his world “under the sun.”
The Domain of Disappointment
Qoheleth paints quite a grim portrait of life on earth. Under the sun exists what I call the Domain of Disappointment. This is why:
- Injustice is everywhere and the oppressed have no comfort (3:16; 4:1)
- Death is the ultimate equalizer (2:14-16; 3:19-20)
- Labor and wisdom are both futile (1:14; 2:22-23)
- Life is a repeating cycle of absurdity where nothing changes and nothing new can be made (1:4, 9-10; 3:1-8).
- The wicked prosper, the righteous suffer (7:15; 8:12-14; cf. 3:16)
- Death is preferable to life itself (12:1-7; 4:2-3; 7:1)
The very last verse gets me. I read it in preparation for this assignment, and I believe I have found my new favorite passage in all of scripture: “A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death, than the day of birth” (Ecc. 7:1, NRSVue).
…huh?
Maybe there is some sarcasm here. I would need to dig a little deeper. But as an isolated passage, I think it is sexy.
Jokes aside, Qoheleth invites us into his painful reality. In 4:1, a key verse in my thesis, Qoheleth begs us to “Behold! The tears of the oppressed; and there is not for them a comforter.” This life does not just make zero sense; for Qoheleth, it is better to have never existed (4:2-3).
This is not a New Jerusalem. This is Qoheleth’s empirical reality. Everything around him is broken. Within his teaching, we meet a frustrated shadow. One that is deeply disturbed by the prevalence of injustice and wickedness in the world.
Qoheleth’s repeated emphasis on death and non-existence being preferable to life under the sun tells us exactly what we need to know. I repeat once more, solely because it is my favorite exegetical sentence I have ever crafted: Life is a repeating cycle of absurdity where nothing changes and nothing new can be made.
Shadow Journaling with Ecclesiastes
To bring this point home in my presentation, I needed to create a thoroughly “Ecclesiastical” learning activity. I decided that I would lean heavily into Qoheleth’s psychology, as well as my own background in behavioral health.
Once again, I hate buzzwords, and especially those associated with mental health. But let’s talk about an invaluable “coping skill.” As a behavioral health technician, one of the most valuable aspects of the job was teaching people the art of the shadow journal.
A shadow journal, as you might imagine, is not a diary. Shadow journaling is the practice of writing down the darker, unconscious or hidden parts of your brain. It involves identifying and confronting the uncomfortable and the hidden.
Based on the Jungian concept of the “shadow self,” this exercise is an introspective practice of writing down those deepest, darkest, repressed aspects of the psyche. You let all the negativity, frustration, and darkness out onto the page. The goal is to uncover, identify, and integrate the shadow.
If you want to practice this—or if you lead a congregation or group and want to guide them through it—here is the framework:
Step 1: Choose Your Domain
Pick the area of your life that is currently causing you the most existential frustration. For example:
- Labor & Ambition: (Career burnout, grades, “The Grind”)
- Justice & Fairness: (Systemic issues, unfair treatment, politics)
- Wisdom & Knowledge: (The exhaustion of being “aware”)
- Time & Legacy: (Aging, being forgotten, losing the past)
Step 2: The Inquiry (Write it out)
Once you have your domain, get a piece of paper and answer these three prompts honestly. Do not filter yourself. Do not try to be “holy” or optimistic.
The Lie: Does the world promise us anything about this? What?
(e.g., “If you work hard, you’ll succeed.”)
The Hebel: What is the painful reality?
(e.g., Work: “You can grind hard and still get laid off.”)
The Wisdom: Is there any advantage (profit) in acknowledging this reality? How or how not?
(e.g., Work: “It stops me from selling my soul to a job that won’t love me back.”)
My point to the class—and my point to you—is that life is not just wind. There is an element of utter frustration that literal translations skip over, just as toxic positivity skips over our genuine pain. Certain translations focus so heavily on pessimism that it becomes nihilism (e.g., the NIV’s choice of “meaningless”), missing the deeper utility of the struggle.
I invite you to do exactly what I asked my class to do. Construct a Qoheleth-style Shadow Journal entry.
The Lesson of the Glass
I do not think Qoheleth is a pessimist. But he’s certainly no optimist. The quintessential pessimist/optimist example is the glass of water. Qoheleth views the glass as neither half-full nor half-empty. While he doesn’t use the exact idiom, he gives us something similar.
“All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they continue to flow.” Ecc. 1:7
This is not a negative statement. If the seas were full, we would not be here. If the seas were empty, again, we would not be here. It makes absolutely no sense why the sea is being filled only to never be full, from a logical standpoint, but that is how it must be. Qoheleth’s overarching message, I contend, is that we do have to accept life on life’s terms.
However, that does not mean we must do so meekly. While I do not consider Qoheleth a rigid pessimist, his message is heavily influenced by deeply pessimistic thoughts and struggles. In doing so, Qoheleth teaches us that there can, in fact, be wisdom in the pessimistic mind. In the shadow that we sometimes feel is the place where wisdom goes to die.
That’s why the shadow matters. Qoheleth isn’t teaching you to despair… he’s teaching you to stop lying. Name the domain. Write the lie. Write the hebel. Then ask whether there’s any profit in seeing clearly. That’s not optimism. It’s wisdom.