Absurdity and hope

EVERYTHING IS NEVER ENOUGH:
Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness
By Bobby Jamieson
Waterbrook. 255 pages. £15.99
ISBN 978 0 593 601 310

This book comes with some A-list commendations. I can see why they liked this book; it is well-conceived and well-written.

The Book of Ecclesiastes is a tough nut to crack for the Bible reader and preacher. Many an attempt to read or preach on Ecclesiastes hits the buffers because the argument appears so dense and the tone seems so negative. I remember preaching on the book in my mid-twenties, when people would say that the book was depressing and even made them feel disloyal to God to entertain such thoughts.

To travel through difficult Biblical terrain, we need a sure-footed guide and Bobby Jameson is such a guide in this welcome book. His treatment is thematic rather than verse by verse, chapter by chapter, but his methodology results in having a sense of the mood and message of the whole Ecclesiastes.

Jamison treats Ecclesiastes as a three-story building. “Ground Floor” explores the absurdity of life that gives Ecclesiastes its world-weary tone. It looks at the various ways that life can suck all the joy out of everything we see, think, do and possess. “Middle Floor” explores the hopeful message of Ecclesiastes that life can be experienced as a gift from God that provides joy in the moment as we see God’s generosity in this gift. The final part of this gift is resonance. Jamieson says: “Resonance is a signpost pointing the way up and out. This universe is one impossibly vast bell, struck by the hand that made it. The joy you feel in your best moments is a share of the joy of your maker.”

“Top Floor” explores the themes of fear and judgement that allow us to find a centre in a relationship with our Creator and a sense that life is moving toward a God-determined conclusion. At this point in the book, I was thinking to myself: where is Christ in all of this? Then the author concluded with a section entitled: “Pierced from Above”.

This section reminds us that Ecclesiastes gives us a sense that “everything is never enough,” which leaves us grasping for something more. Here the author reminds us that Christ absorbs the forces of absurdity and alienation to eradicate them through His life, death and resurrection.

The book is richly adorned with a wide range of cultural references and insights into how to read and preach on this enigmatic section of Scripture. Highly recommended.