16 I said to myself, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.”
17 And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.
18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.
I really like Ecclesiastes, and one might say I shouldn’t.
Ecclesiastes is a book in the Hebrew scriptures that almost never shows up in preaching. I can vouch for the fact that most theologians avoid it. It is only briefly touched in the Lectionary. I mentioned in a few sermons the idea of a “canon-within-canon”, or the tendency we all have to focus on some texts in the Bible far more than others. Ecclesiastes is in my canon-withincanon, and I don’t think it’s in many other people’s lists.
Ecclesiastes is part of the Writings (ketuvim) section of the Hebrew Bible, and the Wisdom section of the Christian Bible. In Hebrew the main voice of Ecclesiastes is Kohelet, which is a Hebrew feminine noun that means something like ‘someone speaking before an assembly.’ (As is often the case with Hebrew terms, there is a lot of scholarly debate on the details, and there might not be an English word that means exactly the same thing). We can call Kohelet ‘Preacher’ and be pretty close, though.
And if Kohelet is a preacher, this preacher is tired. The entire book of Ecclesiastes deals with existential questions, most notably: What matters? How do we find meaning amid all of the toil that life demands of us? Ecclesiastes is a controversial, unorthodox, and subversive book of the Bible (which might begin to explain why I like it). The answer that the Bible is supposed to give to existential questions, the answer we expect, is something like ‘do what is right’, or ‘obey God’, but Kohelet isn’t that easy. It’s one of those texts that I’m surprised, and impressed, that people left in the Bible. If the goal was to clean it up and simplify the message, this text would have to go. (One of the things I love about the Bible is how openly challenging it is, and has remained – with four different gospels, and a wide mix of genres, and plenty of questionable protagonists. I trust it more because it is so honest and varied.)
Ecclesiastes isn’t a long read, so I’ll leave it to each of you to decide if you want to read it for yourselves. Remember that it is to be read in the context of the rest of the Bible, not in a vacuum, but also that it is supposed to be challenging. There’s no way the original author(s) thought this would be an easy read. To my mind, it is intentionally distinct from most other texts in the Bible.
The text that I quoted above from the very beginning of Ecclesiastes came to mind in light of my Lenten discipline. This Lent, I’ve decided to be off social media entirely…almost. Because the church has two Facebook pages I need to be involved periodically, but other than what’s actually needed for church work I’m out. I deleted the apps from my phone and blocked them on my laptop. As a result, I definitely feel that I’m ‘out of the loop.’ I’m certain many things are going on that I do not know about. But I think I like being out of the loop.
I thought of this passage from Ecclesiastes because I think it reflects what kept bringing me back to my social media feeds, over and over, each day. I wanted to know – what’s going on, what people are saying and writing, hot takes and memes and threads. But I found, for the most part, vexation and sorrow. Social media is entirely driven by algorithms that maximize fear and outrage little dopamine hits, because fear and outrage make us stare at our screens more and dopamine hits are addictive, and that lets social media companies sell more advertising. What’s driving social media isn’t information, or social connection, or even entertainment, at least not primarily. Billions of dollars of research over the last couple of decades has taught billionaires that they can maximize advertising dollars if we are scared, angry and addicted – and overall, as a result, sad.
There is no research at all showing how social media is healthy. The only question for us as users is which form of social media, and which way of engaging with it, is least harmful. A few years ago, I took a Doctoral course at Lancaster Seminary: Forming Faith in an Internet World. The course covered a lot of topics in and around technology and its impact on faith communities. One of the books we read was Jared Lanier’s Ten Reasons to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Lanier worked for companies that developed social media in Silicon Valley, and noted, among other things, that none of his coworkers let their kids use social media. They were very familiar with the various harms – and this book came out in 2018. Everything he talked about is incrementally worse now, even leaving aside how much of the Internet is being taken over by AI slop (a connected, but distinct, issue).
I am still driven by a desire to know, to understand, and to be connected. What I’m realizing is that social media advertises these things but does not deliver them for the most part. Because, again, the design goal for social media is not to help us know, understand, and connect. It’s all about selling ads and gathering up all the information about us so that it can more effectively sell ads.
Vexation and sorrow.
So far, being off social media is nice. I still use some apps to talk to friends, or to be aware of what’s happening in Phoenixville, but these are all connections with people I know, or information about where I live, specifically. And now I read the Philly Inquirer more often, and even the Pottstown Mercury. I find I have a little more time to read books, and write, and do other things I enjoy. I know that technically Sunday is a ‘day off’ from a Lenten fast, but I don’t think I’ll take that day off. I think I’ll use the day for things that actually make me happy, instead. Or at the very least, things that don’t actively harm me.
Ironically this is in line with the conclusion of Ecclesiastes, but I’ll let you read for yourselves.
In the meantime, for those who have taken something on for Lent, or who have put something aside, I hope it is going well and creating space for whatever it is that gives you life.
Respectfully submitted,
Pastor Doug
