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Ecclesiastes – Not a Theodicy but a Humanodicy
Ecclesiastes: Not A Theodicy but A Humanodicy
In a pointed way, Ecclesiastes goes in a different direction than a theodicy – it is a “humanodicy”.
A theodicy is a defense of God’s justice and goodness within this world of pain and suffering. While the Teacher (Ecclesiastes 1:1) periodically refers to God’s blessings within this world, he also does something very common to atheists without denying God’s existence. Ecclesiastes is a man’s opinion on how he would run the world – a humanodicy. That is why he constantly refers to life’s futility.
This leads us with three approaches to life’s sorrows:
1. Christian Theodicy – God is good despite evil even if we can’t explain God’s choices. Ultimate justice is founding the resurrection and final judgment.
2. Atheism – God cannot exist because evil exists and a good God would not allow such choices. There is no ultimate justice.
3. The Teacher – God is good, but life is unfair, and so I my choices would be to do things differently now and not wait until final judgment.
How much are we really like this Teacher? When we don’t accept God’s ways as better, we are unrealistically arguing we would run the universe differently.
I use three truths when dealing with suffering – I don’t know, I’m not God, Deal with it. Instead of accepting the obvious, do we fall into the trap of the Teacher: I know better, I’m not God, I can’t deal with this unfair Life.
No one will deny life is filled with suffering. One of the best things we can say about the Teacher is, he was a realist when viewing the world and yet still didn’t deny God. Unfortunately, his wisdom made him think he knew better than God. That makes me wonder if he knew of God, but didn’t know God.
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