Make it Make Sense

Meaningless.

The book of Ecclesiastes begins like this:

It takes on a slightly different vibe in the King James Version:

Back in the day, my preferred study Bible was the New American Standard Bible, and it renders the passage thusly:

And then there’s my personal version, the AKV:

The above block quotes give a pretty thorough array of perspectives of how Ecclesiastes—which is totally in the Bible, by the way—begins, but this is how every single Christian in the history of the sport reacts to it:

Remember last week when I mentioned The Sixth Sense?

The dastardly thing about that movie is how the director practically gives away the twist without so much as a spoiler alert by shooting the main character in the opening scene. He hides the truth in plain sight. Surely this guy didn’t die when he was shot and lay bleeding on the floor in his house. That’s preposterous! I wonder what is really going to happen.

No, he’s dead. He died right there, and this kid who can see dead people can totally see him. That’s the movie. But don’t worry that you were fooled—even the dead guy didn’t know.

Ecclesiastes does the same damn thing. It says over and over (and over and over and over) again that everything in life is meaningless, and Christians take that as a personal challenge. Alright, boys, let’s set up camp here. We’re mining for meaning, and we’re gonna strike it rich!

There’s this phrase that’s become popular in the social media to bemoan an obvious case of cognitive dissonance: Make it make sense. It is said both rhetorically and sarcastically. No one is inviting you to actually try to make the nonsense things people do make sense. Likewise, I invite you today not to try to make Ecclesiastes (or any book of the Bible or the Bible as a whole) make sense in any direction.

Ecclesiastes is a mess. It reads like a satirical work of ancient allegory with other passages—absent of irony or metaphor, riddled with bipolar contradiction, and possibly penned by a completely different author—spliced in after the fact by a team of editors determined to make it suitable for Sunday School.

But when you’re predisposed with a core belief that everything in the Bible is inspired by God and divinely planned to deliver a seamless, unified message of hope and wisdom, well, you just don’t ever give up on a single word.

Ecclesiastes is interesting, though, if you take it at its word that everything is meaningless. The only maxim repeated nearly as frequently as everything is pointless is that the best you can really do on this earth is to enjoy life. Enjoy what you eat. Enjoy what you drink. Enjoy the people you’re with. Enjoy what you do—whatever you find to do, do it with everything you have. Enjoy life. Beyond that, good luck making sense of this bullshit.

As jaded as that interpretation sounds, that is exactly what an objective reading of the text leaves you with. You don’t have to make it make sense.

That’s kind of where I’m at with life right now. I don’t think Ecclesiastes sums up the meaning of life—it sums up the futility of trying to find the point. There is value in the life we help create for others, and Ecclesiastes doesn’t really touch on that. But the idea of enjoying the life I do have and the meaning I’m able to find in what I do and who I’m fortunate enough to see and talk to . . . that isn’t bad.

Yes, the meaninglessness and injustices of life can be frustrating, disheartening, and painful. But every day has moments and people to enjoy. It might not be the point, but it’s something to be grateful for.