Everything sucks. Nothing makes sense. It seems that since birth, these two statements have bounced off the walls of my mind. I am a pessimist, and proud of it. Little did I know, until the last 2 years, that such a mindset bears a striking resemblance to that of the author of one book in the Bible.
I am talking, of course, about Ecclesiastes. If you have read any of my other writings, you know that I have a certain fascination with this book. An obsession, you might even say. Well, in this post, I intend to finally share why this is.
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It seems the world has been on fire this month. Granted, I could say that about any month of the last year and you would agree. I have struggled to keep up. It is just weeks before I graduate, I am still balancing 2 jobs, and trying to navigate this increasingly frustrating world like everyone else. Needless to say, this blog has been one of my lower priorities.
Yet, I have felt the need to write. I have already scrapped at least 2 posts in the last week. There is so much to write about. The President of the United States, who just months ago influenced the firing of a talk show host, who made insensitive comments in the wake of a podcaster’s death, just expressed gratitude for someone else’s death. The War in Iran continues. The world just lost the great Chuck Norris. So much utter futility everywhere we look.
But if I were to just write on all the bad news, I would be just that: the news. I feel that this is a time for reflection, and this post is intended to serve as just that. Because the message of Ecclesiastes is not only true, but also something we need to hear.
Of course, that message will vary person-to-person. And you are about to enter just mine. Over the next seven weeks, as I anxiously refine and revise my thesis, I will be sharing a more accessible version of that work here.
Why theology?
If I am going to tell you why I study Ecclesiastes, I might as well begin with why I study theology. I mention my agnosticism in nearly every post; this is to inform the reader that, although I am discussing the Bible, I am not religious and what you are reading is not, either. So, let’s peel back the layers.
Grief and pain are fucking beasts. Let’s be honest. They can absolutely change a person, and rarely, it seems, for the better. Grief functions like a bacteria, infecting and consuming everything that defines you. Suddenly, the world as you know it is no longer the same, and everywhere you turn, you see nothing but vanity.
I was raised in a middle-class southern family. We were Southern Baptists for many years. I was taught to fear. The world will end soon, and I should not hope to be left behind. The framework remained strong, until I became an adult.
Literally. Turning 18 can be fun. I remember making myself jam out to Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” on my birthday. That seems like such a pleasant place to be, when I think about it. I graduated high school about a month later. And within two weeks of graduating, I received the most devastating news I could receive.
My mother had been sick much of that year. It seemed like nothing serious. But, after a weekend at the hospital, just a week or two after I graduated, she received a diagnosis. She had inoperable stage four liver cancer. She was given only weeks to live.
When she pulled me to her room to tell me, I tried my very best to stay strong. I’m an eighteen year-old man, I told myself. But the moment I returned to my room… I collapsed on the floor.
This was a level of pain I had never felt before. I could not bear it. My soul has been uneasy ever since that fateful night.
Studying Theology to Please a Silent God
And in my strength, there was weakness. I had dreamed of studying political science since middle school. I was finally doing so, at my dream university… and hating it.
One summer semester and I never wanted to touch a political debate again. Absolutely futile. I was working for a popular grocery store chain in the southeast, one my family had consistently made careers out of. Out of frustration, I decided that I wanted to abandon college and take the easy way.
I told my mother my plan… and I will never forget the feeling of disappointment I felt. She had homeschooled me. She made me read and write endlessly. Here I was, ready to give it all up for a good salary.
The disappointment worked. Quickly, I changed course. To please her, I decided I would study theology. It was my other best subject (as a homeschooler). I could go be a missionary or something, as I’ve always known I could never be a pastor. Simultaneously, my own faith was on fire, but not in the passionate sense.
How could God allow this to happen? Of course that was my question. I had been quite pious up to that point. But that night, the floodgates opened. And I have been drowning in a sea of skepticism ever since. I needed to know why God allows suffering; the Sunday school theodicies weren’t working.
The Deeper Crisis: Psychosis and the Failure of Modern Medicine
Flash-forward. It’s May, 2023. I received my Bachelor’s back in October 2022. Everything seems wonderful, right?
I could never let myself off so easily. No, I felt nothing when I graduated—I was numb. I refused to walk. I graduated with a 4.0, I should’ve walked that stage proudly. But I did not.
I had been on antidepressants since losing my mother. It was time to come off them. If you expect this story to end badly, you’re absolutely correct. They were no longer working, so I decided to see our family’s physician.
I cannot sugarcoat this, our doctor was a serious liability. She had diagnosed my mother with mono. She could’ve caught it sooner. This sounds like insecurity, I’m sure. Do I hold some animosity? Of course I do—who couldn’t?! But I was about to find out for myself that human lives are but tissues to her.
This doctor put me on a 1-month taper plan. You cannot do that with SSRIs. Seriously, I know I’m writing this in hindsight, but how the hell do you… maybe I should go for a PhD!
I went into psychosis. I started doing drugs and drinking relentlessly. It was not a good time to be alive, to say the least.
I sure did not think so. In May 2023, just 5 years after my mother received her diagnosis, I attempted to end it all. I attempted an overdose.
It’s hard for me to write this story. Speaking it aloud is, strangely for this introvert, easier. There was a lot of pain, which I could go into much greater detail on.
But I’ll skip ahead. I called 988.
Finding Qoheleth in a Psych Ward Library
Of course, I was unstable. I was absolutely a danger to myself. I was taken to a local psychiatric hospital.
once I was in a somewhat more stable and sentient state of mind, I wanted to read. There were only a handful of books available in their “library,” with a questionable translation of the Bible in the collection. I grabbed it and took it to my room.
I had always remembered my mother saying Ecclesiastes was her favorite book in the Bible. That changed, occasionally, but I remember her saying, more than once, that it was her favorite.
As a kid, I could never read it. What is this guy talking about?! Everything is vanity? I was, of course, reading vanity in the contemporary sense.
But that read stuck with me. I had recently become agnostic. I had read Amos. Amos is… a dastardly book. It made me agnostic. The God of Amos is a cosmic bully (cf. Amos 3:6, NRSVue; “Does disaster befall a city unless the LORD has done it?”).
My fundamentalist upbringing had shattered. I mean… it was gone. The Old Testament God was not just a God of wrath, but a God of destruction. This shattered any notion of a loving, caring God. But I found a different theology in Ecclesiastes. The God of Qoheleth is frustratingly absent, but never strikes.
A year later, one day while bored at work, I decided I would do something incredibly whimsical. Let’s go for a masters in theology! I applied, and was accepted, to Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.
The school my pastoral mentor, who also died when I was young, was pursuing a PhD at. I remember him preaching on Ecclesiastes as well, but even as a teenager… I still did not understand any of it.
The Hidden God: Why I Chose Ecclesiastes Over Amos
There have been a lot of time jumps in this post. It’s thrown me off as well, so I feel for you, the reader. Yikes.
Maybe we should take one step back. As I prepared to formulate a prospectus for a final project this time last year, I was confronted with two paths. I could research and write on the absent God in Ecclesiastes, or the cosmic bully in Amos.
I chose Ecclesiastes. While Amos made me agnostic… well, that’s exactly the problem. I read Amos’ God as a bully. Qoheleth’s God, however, is missing. I figured the latter might be a path less defined by the biases I carry in.
So I set off. And now my thesis is nearly finished.
I hope that you will stick around to hear what lies therein! While I may not post again until April, in the next post I intend to introduce Qoheleth’s hebel world, as described in 3:16-5:8.