We can't live without them.
Vanity Fare (3)
Two are better than one,
Because they have a good reward for their labor.
For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.
But woe to him who isalone when he falls,
For he has no one to help him up. Ecclesiastes 4.9, 10
Made for relationships
The image of God in people realizes its fullest potential in relationships of various kinds. In the beginning, God made human beings male and female, saying that they together expressed the image of God (Gen. 1.27). In the combining and blending of our interests, skills, personalities, aspirations, and powers, we achieve our greatest fruitfulness and fulfillment.
It is doubtless for this reason that Bible has so much to say about the importance of relationships, and how we should conduct them. Marriage, friendships, neighbors, societies, partnerships, and parentage are all presented as integral to human flourishing. The Scriptures teach that relationships succeed best when they are governed by attitudes of love, respect, caring, self-denial, mutual edification, and sacrifice. What ruins relationships is self-interest, an attitude which is difficult to sustain when one is keeping one eye on God, but that too easily becomes the guiding principle when one is pursuing his life only under the sun.
Human beings are made for community. We thrive best in relationships of mutual affirmation, encouragement, sharing, help, and edification. Such relationships require trust and love, and every human being longs to know such relationship.
But, as Solomon understood, when men are cut off from God, from the fount and focus of love, sustaining meaningful relationships can be a challenge.
A catalog of relational woes
As important as relationships are, they do not factor large in Solomon’s account of his own wanderings apart from God. While he understood the power of relationships to bring health, peace, joy, and prosperity, his observations, reason, and experience told him that relationship tended to be more disappointing than beneficial.
The world apart from God, and apart from His power to love others selflessly, can be a lonely and depressing place. In Solomon’s observations on relationships, we sense the hope that springs eternal in the human breast – that deep-seated longing for relationships that bless – but we end up experiencing the disappointment that too often results in relationships which are detached from eternal anchorage.
The problem, Solomon explained, is that people are sinners and fools (Eccl. 9.3). We may not acknowledge this, but it is true nonetheless. Our hearts are bent toward self-centeredness and evil, and the surrounding culture of wickedness and injustice only encourages us to give vent to our sinful inclinations (8.11). Solomon was describing only what he observed and experienced in his own day, but he may just as well have been writing about our sensual, narcissistic, and violent age.
Solomon bemoaned the fact that many of our closest associates tend to be fools and flatterers, more interested in getting something than in giving what may be meaningful or helpful to others (7.5, 6; 10.12). It’s good to have a close friend you can rely on, Solomon opined (4.9-11); however, all too often, people are inconstant, untrustworthy, and ready to stab you in the back (7.21, 22).
In a world apart from God, every neighbor is named Jones, and we waste ourselves with envy and frustration trying to keep up with them (4.4). The best relationship people can hope for apart from God is marriage (9.9); however, under the sun, seduction and perversion stalk the land, and with them, all the adulterous temptations that have wrought havoc on marriages in our secular age (7.26).
We can’t live without relationships of various kinds; but apart from God, we struggle to make those relationships anything other than a competition for place, power, and possessions, in which, as often as not, we end up with the short end of the stick. Such fare is but the measure of our vanity, when we make ourselves, rather than God, the center of our world.
Our narcissistic age
The problem with sustaining meaningful relationships in an age that cuts itself off from God is that everyone is “looking out for number 1” – to recall a widely-read Robert Ringer title from the ‘70s. In our secular and materialistic world, people are regarded means to ends, objects to enjoy, use, and discard as we see fit, only there for what we can get from them.
And while there are of course many exceptions to this truth – and these only because of the grace of God – the fleeting nature of happiness, contentment, and durability in relationships confirms Solomon’s warnings about the vanity of relationships in a world without God. We know that we need them, that we are made for relationships, but our experiences of relationships in a secular world is all too often self-serving, predatory, hurtful, disappointing, and mean.
People today are made for community, for relationships, and for love, but they struggle, and mostly fail, to realize the full potential of such relationships, because they lack the power of God to make them work.
For reflection
1. We cannot escape the need to relate to others? How many different relationships characterize your life? What is the purpose of each of these?
2. Do you agree that, in perhaps most relationships, the driving question is, “What’s in it for me?” Why?
3. Meditate on Philippians 2.5-11. How did Jesus provide a new model or template for thinking about relationships? What can we learn from Him to help our relationships realize their full potential?
Next steps – Conversation: Talk with a Christian friend about the role of relationships in life. What’s important in a relationship? What makes relationships work best? What gets in the way of good relationships? How can believers help one another to maintain fruitful relationships?
T. M. Moore
For a more complete study of the book of Ecclesiastes, download our Scriptorium series on Ecclesiastes by clicking here. Ecclesiastes is an excellent book to share with an unbelieving friend, as it confronts all the idols and vain hopes of unbelief, exposing their folly and holding out the hope of life in God alone. We’ve prepared a verse translation of Ecclesiastes which is suitable for sharing with believers and unbelievers alike. Order your copy of Comparatio, by clicking here.
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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved
