Ecclesiastes Talk 5: Wisdom for an Unfinished Future

In Talk One of this series on Ecclesiastes, we learned that there are limits to how much we may know and how much we may achieve in life “under the sun.” The more the Preacher learns, the more aware he becomes of how much remains unknown. 

In Talk Two, we explored the strange tension between our finite life under the sun and the infinite existence—the eternity—the lies beyond the sun and that God has placed in the human heart.

In Talk Three, we further explored the limits to knowledge and considered the distinctions among the knowledge-related concepts of intelligence, wisdom, and virtue, and the realities that no amount of intelligence or effort can overcome.

In Talk Four, we confronted our knowledge of injustice and evil, discovering that intelligence without wisdom often magnifies human suffering rather than alleviates it.

The Preacher has tested nearly every path by which human beings have sought meaning: Knowledge of course, plus wealth, pleasure, success, work, power, and even wisdom itself. Yet as we arrive at the final chapter of Ecclesiastes and the final talk in this series, we discover that the Preacher is neither a cynic nor a nihilist. He has not withdrawn from life in despair. If anything, he has become more attentive to life, more appreciative of its gifts, and more aware of its mysteries.

How can a man who sees so clearly, and so pessimistically,  the limits of human understanding continue to value wisdom? Why does the most skeptical book in the Bible turn out to be (in my humble and under -informed opinion) one of the most spiritual? And what might its answer to the meaning of life mean for a generation confronting a future that Solomon himself could never have imagined?

For although the technologies have changed, the fundamental questions have not. We continue to seek knowledge, pursue prosperity, and search for security, happiness, and meaning. Increasingly, we even seek to overcome the limitations that have defined the human condition for millennia and that left the Preacher near to despair. 

Yet Ecclesiastes asks a question that remains as relevant now as it was three thousand years ago: What if the problem is not that we know too little, that knowledge has limits? What if the deeper problem is that we expect our growing intelligence to provide answers that only wisdom can provide?

One of the reasons Ecclesiastes continues to resonate with us today is that the Preacher’s experiment remains our experiment. The details may have changed through the ages, but the underlying questions remain remarkably constant. We continue to seek fulfillment—a sense of purpose and meaning in life—through the same broad avenues that Solomon explored thousands of years ago. We still pursue knowledge in the hope that understanding will bring certainty. We still pursue achievement in the hope that success will bring satisfaction. We still pursue wealth in the hope that financial security will bring peace. We still pursue pleasure in the belief that it will bring happiness and contentment.

The Preacher certainly does not condemn any of these pursuits. In fact, he engages in them more fully than you or I ever could hope:

“I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens.” (Ecclesiastes 1:13)

“I said to myself, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.’” (Ecclesiastes 2:1)

“I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards.” (Ecclesiastes 2:4)

“I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces.” (Ecclesiastes 2:8)

And yet each success leads to the same realization: that none of these things can provide a final answer to the question of meaning. The reason is not that these things are worthless. Wisdom is valuable. Work is valuable. Beauty is valuable. Friendship is valuable. Achievement is valuable. The problem is that none of them lasts.

Wisdom expands understanding, but it does not eliminate mystery. Success creates opportunities, but it does not eliminate mortality. Wealth can provide comfort, but it cannot provide permanence. Pleasure can bring joy, but joy remains fleeting. Every finite solution has a finite horizon.

Again and again the Preacher returns to the fact that death is the great equalizer.

“For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered; the days have already come when both have been forgotten. Like the fool, the wise too must die!” (Ecclesiastes 2:16)

This is not merely an observation about mortality. It is an observation about the limits of every human project. No matter how successful we become, no matter how much knowledge we accumulate, no matter how much influence we acquire, there remains a boundary beyond which our control does not extend.

What is different today is that the boundary seems to be on the move. We speak of curing cancer, extending life, developing superintelligence, and solving existential problems such as climate change. Many of these ambitions are admirable. Some have already produced extraordinary benefits. Yet Ecclesiastes invites us to ask a deeper question: Suppose we succeed? Suppose we do indeed grow healthier, wealthier, more knowledgeable, and more powerful than any previous generation? What problem would we actually have solved?

The Preacher would likely answer: Many, but not the deepest one. Not the question of the meaning of life, no matter how far we push life’s boundaries.

The single phrase that helps explain the entire human condition, and which to me lies at the heart of Ecclesiastes, is that eternity which God has placed in the human heart (Eccl. 3:11). Searching for meaning, we grow dissatisfied with merely surviving because the eternity within us points to a possibility beyond the immediate circumstances of life. We are finite creatures who can perceive the infinite. We live in time, yet we can contemplate eternity. We inhabit a grain of sand on the cosmic shore, and here we are, asking questions about ultimate reality that go even beyond the cosmos.

This tension runs through all of human history. It lies behind philosophy, science, literature, art, and religion. We are not content merely to experience the world. We seek to understand it. Some even seek to dominate it, but most of us seek only (it doesn’t seem much to ask!) to locate ourselves within a larger story. We seek significance beyond the present moment. 

At the same time, the Preacher immediately adds an important qualification. Even with eternity in our hearts, we can never fully comprehend the whole of God’s work. 

The search for meaning never ends. The goal is not to arrive at a final explanation that leaves no stone unturned, no question unanswered. The goal is to remain responsive to truths that are now and will forever be larger than our understanding du jour. The Preacher’s greatest insight may therefore be that our longing for meaning is a sign that we were made for something more than a finite existence.

The Preacher says:

“Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.” — Ecclesiastes 8:17

Now, this is a bit deflating, considering that Ecclesiastes the book is part of the “Wisdom Literature” of the Old Testament and Ecclesiastes the Preacher is probably King Solomon, famous for the very wisdom he aments in that verse. But the Preacher does not say that wisdom is useless. He does not say that the search for understanding should be abandoned. He does not say that truth does not exist. He just says that reality is too big to wrap our heads around. 

This is one of the great paradoxes of Ecclesiastes. The wiser the Preacher becomes, the less certain of his wisdom he becomes. Yet the less certain he becomes, the wiser he becomes. 

Then why does he say this?…

“For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” (Ecclesiastes 1:18)

The Preacher is not condemning wisdom. He is describing its cost. But grief and sorrow do not necessarily reach the point of despair. They can be the beginning of maturity. Only the fool demands certainty. The wise person accepts mystery. The fool seeks answers that end the conversation. The wise person remains open to further insight.

Perhaps we can now see the connection between the “eternity in the heart” and wisdom. Human beings possess an awareness that there is (and always will be) something beyond the horizon of present understanding. We sense that reality is larger than ourselves. We are drawn toward truths we cannot fully grasp. Wisdom is not the elimination of that tension. Wisdom is learning to live with it.

To put it another way, wisdom is not the possession of truth. It is openness to truth. An open mind does not outlaw convictions, but it refuses to conflate conviction with truth. This is an important distinction. A mind can be so open that it accepts everything indiscriminately. That is not wisdom. A mind can be so closed that it refuses to consider anything outside of it. That is not wisdom either. Wisdom lies somewhere between gullibility and dogmatism. It remains open without becoming naïve. It remains discerning without becoming rigid. It remains committed without becoming closed.

Perhaps this is why wisdom occupies such a central place throughout Scripture. Wisdom is the posture that keeps us receptive—open—to God. It is the willingness to listen, to learn, to question, to grow, and sometimes to discover that reality is indeed larger than we previously imagined.

The Preacher’s great achievement, then, is not that he solved the mystery of existence. It is that he learned how to live faithfully in the presence of mystery and uncertainty. And that may be the most valuable lesson Ecclesiastes has to offer a world that increasingly mistakes knowledge for understanding, and intelligence for wisdom.

The Preacher sees clearly that life under the sun is incomplete. He recognizes that human beings long for something beyond the visible world. He acknowledges that God has placed eternity in the human heart. Yet he also insists that no one can fully comprehend God’s purposes from beginning to end.

As a result, Ecclesiastes often adopts a posture of humility and acceptance. The Preacher counsels us to enjoy life’s gifts, to act wisely, to fear God, and to recognize our limitations. There is profound wisdom in this. 

But when we turn to the Gospels, we encounter something unexpected. Jesus shares the Preacher’s understanding of the human condition. He recognizes suffering, injustice, mortality, and uncertainty. He is under no illusion about the world as it is. 

Yet he speaks and acts as though a new reality is breaking into that world.

The central theme of Jesus’ ministry is the Kingdom of God. Again and again he announces that the Kingdom is near; indeed, so near as to be among us. He shows us that the Kingdom of God is already working to transform human lives. Where the Preacher just observes the world, Jesus intervenes in it. Where the Preacher asks unanswerable questions, Jesus tells parables that point to answers without actually giving them. Where the Preacher accepts many realities as unavoidable, Jesus repeatedly challenges them.

The Preacher shrugs and accepts many of life’s obstacles as just part of the human condition. Jesus repeatedly seeks to overcome life’s obstacles. This does not mean that Jesus rejects the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. In many ways he builds upon it. The Preacher teaches humility before mysteries we cannot control. Jesus teaches trust in the God who stands beyond those mysteries. The Preacher teaches that human understanding is limited. Jesus teaches that divine grace is not. The Preacher sees the closed cycles of life under the sun. Jesus asserts that the Kingdom of Heaven can enter those cycles and transform them.

Over the years, our class discussions have often turned to the relationship between acceptance and transformation. Ecclesiastes leans strongly toward acceptance. It teaches us to recognize reality as it is rather than as we wish it to be. Jesus begins there, but he does not end there. He acts as though reality itself is open to redemption.

Perhaps we might put it this way: The Preacher discovers that human beings are not self-sufficient. We cannot generate ultimate meaning through our own efforts. We cannot solve every mystery. We cannot overcome every limitation. And Jesus agrees. 

But he then introduces a possibility that Ecclesiastes only hints at: What if meaning, wisdom, and transformation do not arise solely from within the system under the sun? What if they enter from beyond it? What if the eternity placed in the human heart is not merely a longing for something greater? What if it is also a point of connection with something greater?

This hardly eliminates mystery. If anything, it deepens it. But it changes the character of the mystery. The Preacher asks if there is more than what we see in life under the sun; Jesus answers by living as though there is. The Preacher just leaves the door open; Jesus walks us through it.

And that brings us to the final question—not only for Ecclesiastes, but for our own age. What happens when humanity acquires powers and knowledge, and pushes the boundaries of life, far beyond anything the Preacher could have imagined?

Increasingly, we are confronted by a possibility that would have seemed like science fiction only a few decades ago: intelligence itself is becoming a technology (or, more controversially, technology is becoming an intelligence). Whether we welcome this development or fear it, it raises questions that are strikingly similar to those posed by Ecclesiastes. Suppose human beings become superintelligent. Suppose disease is greatly reduced. Suppose lifespans are greatly extended. Suppose machines solve problems that have always seemed intractable.

Then what? Will this provide meaning? The answer, I suspect, is both yes and no. Greater intelligence can solve many problems. It can expand knowledge. It can reduce suffering in many ways. It can create opportunities that do not presently exist.

These are real “Goods” with a capital G, and we should not dismiss them. But intelligence alone cannot tell us what is worth doing. Knowledge may explain how to accomplish a goal. Wisdom may determine whether the goal is worth pursuing from a pragmatic viewpoint. But it takes the grace of virtue to know whether the goal is righteous. Knowledge can increase power. Wisdom can steer power toward more creative and less destructive ends. But it takes the grace of virtue to steer it toward righteous ends. Knowledge can answer technical questions. Wisdom addresses pragmatic questions. Virtue addresses moral questions. Knowledge can help us live longer. Wisdom helps us understand what a life is for. Virtue helps us lead a righteous life. 

Whether virtue is a gift we receive or a habit we build (and I am given to understand that the church has argued about this for a very long time) the Preacher’s point stands: intelligence supplies neither the gift nor the habit. This is why the central challenge of the future may not be the development of greater intelligence or even wisdom, but the cultivation of virtue. Indeed, the more intelligence expands, the more important virtue becomes. The Preacher understood long before the age of computers, biotechnology, or artificial intelligence that human beings do not suffer primarily from a lack of cleverness, but from pride, greed, fear, envy, tribalism, hatred, and self-deception. These are not failures of intelligence or of wisdom. They are failures of virtue. And they are persistent.

We human beings have repeatedly used our greatest achievements in knowledge to amplify both our noblest aspirations and our worst impulses. The challenge of the future, therefore, is not merely technological. It is spiritual.

As our capacity to extend life’s boundaries increases, our need for virtue increases as well. Our deepest questions will remain remarkably familiar: What is a good life? What is worth loving? What is worth sacrificing for? What does justice require? How should we treat one another? What gives life meaning? These are questions of virtue. No machine can answer them for us. They arise from the eternity that God has placed within the human heart. 

Throughout this series, I have adopted the Preacher’s assumption that we are time-bound creatures who can perceive eternity, finite beings who ask infinite questions. Five weeks ago I promised you something shocking at the end. Here it is: We are no longer just human. We are becoming inextricably intertwined with technology. We are an embryonic new species—cyborgs, Homo cyborgensis—and Homo cyborgensis is evolving at an accelerating pace.

The human part of a cyborg still has eternity in its metaphysical “heart”, even if the physical heart becomes electro-mechanical. The Preacher’s experiment is thus applicable to cyborgs. But suppose the engineers are right that aging itself is a treatable condition, then mortality—the constraint that drove the Preacher’s whole investigation—becomes moot merely by replacing failing electro-mechanical hearts and other organs with new ones off the shelf. In that case, does hevel (the Hebrew word translated as “meaningless” or “vanity” but literally meaning a vapor, breath, or mist) dissolve? Or does it intensify? My strong suspicion is that it intensifies. The Preacher’s nightmare was never death. It was endless repetition without resolution. Mortality at least gives the cycle a terminus: If you remove the literal deadline, an immortal being must face the insufficiency of wealth, pleasure, achievement, and knowledge as answers to the meaning of life not once, but endlessly.

Hevel signifies that the meaning of life is elusive. It slips through our fingers. It cannot be fully grasped or controlled. Just when we think we understand it, it changes. This insight lies behind everything we have discussed in this series. And this, I think, is why the Preacher’s own conclusion survives even the cyborg transformation I have just described. After twelve chapters of questions, observations, paradoxes, and reflections, the Preacher finally arrives at his conclusion:

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” 

— Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

For some readers, these verses seem almost anticlimactic. Some even suspect they were added by a later writer, to give the book a religious veneer. After all the questioning and uncertainty that precede them, they can appear to offer a conventional religious answer. Yet I do not think that is what is happening here. The Preacher has spent an entire book demonstrating the limits of human understanding. He has shown that life cannot be reduced to simple formulas. He has exposed the inadequacy of wealth, pleasure, achievement, power, and even wisdom itself as sources of ultimate meaning.

I think he ends with “Fear God” because fearing is the beginning of humility, the recognition that reality is larger than ourselves, the acknowledgment that we are not the center of the universe. It is the acceptance that there are truths we have not discovered, mysteries we have not penetrated, and dimensions of existence that will forever exceed our understanding.

Such a conclusion seems to me entirely consistent with everything that has come before. The Preacher has not abandoned wisdom. He has become wiser. He has learned that wisdom is not the possession of certainty but the recognition of its limits. He has learned that meaning cannot be manufactured through human effort alone. He has learned that life remains a gift even if it is a mystery. Most importantly, he has learned how to remain open.

The Preacher never fully resolves the contradiction of finite creatures with infinite longings. Neither does Jesus. Neither, for that matter, do science, philosophy, or theology. 

Wisdom may consist not in eliminating the contradiction, but in living within it. Virtue consists in doing so righteously. If wisdom is what keeps open the connection between what we know and what we do not know, between the visible and the invisible, then virtue is what keeps open the connection between the finite and the infinite, between ourselves and God.

Intelligence expands possibilities, wisdom keeps the mind open to truths beyond current understanding, virtue guides action toward righteousness, and grace is the source that makes wisdom and virtue possible. The eternity in the heart, put there by the grace of God, is the spark that sets off the search.

There endeth the lesson and the series, but before we open the discussion I want to say something. I ended just now by saying that grace is the source that makes wisdom and virtue possible. I would like to take up that assertion properly, in a second series. It’s still at the formative stage, but it will ask questions such as: What happens to a mathematician, or a diagnostician, or a teacher, when AI produces the same output better and faster? If science can add another seventy-five years to your three score and ten, what will they be for? And can character be formed in a world that has removed difficulty and absorbed consequence? You might have other questions.

We will draw perspectives and inspiration from philosophers and theologians, and from another book in the Bible: the Song of Songs, which describes something which, like manna, the Preacher could not accumulate in his quest for the meaning of life.

You can help me shape the second series today by telling me what this series of five talks has left you with. Not what you thought of the talks, but what thoughts did they stimulate in you? Were there questions these five talks raised for you but did not answer? And was there anything I said, or something I assumed, that you are not sure you accept?

C-J: I think it was very important to ask that last question. If it’s obvious that AI can do the job of a human being, such as a teacher, quicker and better, what happens to the teacher? My initial thought was that we created this device, this thing, and that person might have a different role in creating the language and the algorithm, and teaching younger people how to access it. But also, to remember, as Solomon said, what seems to be obvious really isn’t. What seems to be obvious cannot always be intuitive. We can give it a prompt and the response might be: “If you give me more information, maybe I can give you more information.” I see that a lot lately.

But really, it comes down to the spiritual piece. Humanity is spiritual. The machine is not, and grace is not something that can be extended by a machine. But humans can. And we understand, when we look at another organic entity—whether it’s my dog, a human being, or even the grass or fruit I’m trying to produce in a garden—that there’s something that I cannot see: that life source, what it’s taking out of the nutrients of the soil, how much sun it gets, the watering, and what kind of water. I don’t think humanity in this dimension is going to change a great deal in how we interact with our environment and see ourselves as being accountable spiritually. I think that’s what Solomon was turning us toward: This is temporal. Look toward the ethereal.

So, in some ways, I’m saying, no, I don’t want to live to be 100. I’ve lived through enough war. I don’t like what I see politically and what we’ve done to our planet. But if I think of it in the temporal and the story of creation and recreation, in terms of extinction and a new species, then I’m not afraid of it, because then I can release it to God and say, “I won’t see it, but I believe that you can produce whatever is relevant and necessary for those that are in this dimension.”

But it’s a long time coming because our brain is binary: it’s either right or wrong; it’s either going to make my life better or make it worse. But if I think in the spiritual world, I remember a friend talking about her battle with cancer and how she was angry, and it was painful, and it wasn’t fair, and she just wished it was over. “Just waiting to die” is how that echoes in my head. And then, months later, she says, “I have released it. I am at peace. I knew I was going to die, but I had not released it because the passage was hard.”

And even with medication, and even understanding, as people say to her, “We are at this stage. Our next step would be this. How would you like to be a part of that decision-making process?” We all do that throughout our lifetime. Do I want to learn to walk? Do I want to learn language? Do I want to work with my body, or do I want to work with my mind? The process that we can tolerate, endure, and produce good fruit from is constantly evolving.

I look at my cousin, and how hard it was to say goodbye to his brother and his mother over a long stretch of time. But now he’s made a decision that will help him breathe and be restored, by visiting Europe and seeing the world in a different light, through a different lens. I think that happens throughout a lifetime, and that’s in part what Solomon was redirecting us toward: Don’t focus on the temporal. Understand that this is much deeper than that, much wider than that, much more relevant than the temporal. Thank you so much, David.

Donald: Humanity was designed to live forever. Humanity was eternal, but once sin entered, it cut that off. We can’t see the other side. We speculate about what the other side might look like, but actually, it seems to me that eternity is beyond our imagination. We can talk about it. We can define what that might mean. But to imagine what it actually was going to be for humanity prior to sin, I don’t think we can comprehend.

We search for wealth, pleasure, success, work, power, and wisdom, thinking they produce security, happiness, significance, purpose, control, and understanding. We want to know that we are safe, to know that we are loved, to know that we matter, to know that our lives have meaning, and to believe death will not make everything meaningless.

But as my AI put it: “Perhaps the deepest human desire is not simply to possess more, accomplish more, or understand more. It’s to become whole, to love and be loved, to belong, and to know that our brief lives participate in something eternal.” That’s a lot of food for thought, it seems to me.

So I return to the idea that I’m not sure we can talk about what eternity might be. Recently, I saw a dog with almost its whole body out of the window of a car going 50 miles an hour down the highway. Technology allowed that dog to move that fast, but the dog was a dog. It enjoyed the experience. I don’t know that it even understood that it was going 50 miles an hour, but I think there’s something there.

For a dog to comprehend more than what we know a dog is capable of understanding (we know they’re quite capable; seeing-eye dogs, and so on and so forth) but a dog is still a dog. And a human being, once it disengaged with eternity, lost its ability to really see over the horizon. And so what we do is spend a great deal of time studying, researching, and investigating ideas. But those are only ideas. We can’t imagine what it feels like to be a dog jumping in a car and going 50 miles an hour.

Don: I’m puzzled by the observation that we cannot be content with uncertainty. There’s something about human nature, and I’m not sure what it is, that demands that we know some answers to some questions. I’ve been accused many times of being able to hold more than one possibility at a time and live with “certain uncertainty,” if there is such a thing.

Why is it that we demand answers, and even if we don’t know the answers, we make up the answers? It seems to me that there’s something inherent in the fallen condition of man that requires answers, and living with mystery is not something that we’re capable of doing. At least we don’t do it very well.

Donald: Is that potentially at the heart of what we’re talking about? Some people do say, “I can tell you what eternity is going to be like.” Of course, they can’t. They’re human too. But we will look to those people because we ourselves don’t seem to be able to understand it. So we say, “Okay, that guy does seem sure of understanding, so I’m going to follow that person.” But is it arrogant that that person thinks they know the answers?

Don: Let me ask you this: Do you think Solomon would be a good preacher to have in your church, raising questions with no answers?

Donald: No, there would be chaos.

C-J: I think it depends on the church. In the Universalist Church, they’d be having a hallelujah moment. They believe that’s exactly what humanity is supposed to be doing: questioning authority and seeing us in this, and then telescoping out—that yes, we are spirit beings having a human experience, and we are accountable as stewards to one another, the planet, and future generations.

I think religions that will go unnamed that are very stylized and ritualistic—“This is etched in stone, and we will repeat it and repeat it and repeat it generationally”—there’s a comfort in that. And it oftentimes produces good fruit in terms of better behavior, people working toward goals, discipline, et cetera. But I think God—we are created in God’s image in the sense that we are creators by design. We want to build. We want to move earth. We want to have power and authority over where we live.

And churches really don’t want you to think of “me, mine.” They want you to think “we, us, our.” “I want a tenth of everything you have before taxes. I want you to show up. I want you to live a life of service to this church, to this community.” And then everything outside of that—government—serve God, but give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.

But the churches that I’ve been in that are the most predictable may grow but they don’t bring in diversity. They don’t bring in children who ask questions. Questions are discouraged. But the churches that really are megalithic churches are very diverse, and the people come in for the spiritual piece. They are the most diverse, highly educated, highly motivated people that I’ve met.

Alyssa: Every now and again, some big advancement in technology or some big discovery leads us to innovation through a process called “creative destruction.” It kind of shifts humanity to the next step, a kind of upgrade. But in that wake of innovation, there’s destruction. It is similar to AI and automation leading to no need for people, thus leading to unemployment. But history tells us these are the kinds of things that will eventually sort themselves out.

But I think that now we are at a different point, and it relates back to virtue, wisdom, and knowledge. First of all, the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of greatness: As humanity, we’re always trying to evolve. I think that’s natural. But I think the problem with this new wave of technology—or maybe not even just this one, but throughout the history of the advancement of technology—is that we’re pursuing knowledge, but we’ve left wisdom and (especially) virtue to the side.

I think the neglect of this very important aspect of humanity, which gives us our ethics and our morals, is where a lot of our issues are starting to arise. I think we’re losing this part of our humanity. I think we’re becoming less empathetic and more disconnected from human beings.

AI has its merits. There are a lot of good things that it helps us do. But because we have lost the discernment that wisdom and virtue give us, I think that we are beginning to lose that aspect of our humanity. It’s as though we’re becoming machines as well. We are experiencing a kind of decadence, of immorality, I think, because we have lost discernment. So I took forward to exploring such issues in the next series.

David: Alyssa’s comments sparked in me the question: Could sin be this driver of creative destruction? Just a thought.

Don: Whose responsibility is it to be the virtue policeman?

C-J: The Holy Spirit. You know, when God taps you on the shoulder and you go, “Oops,” and you begin to weep for the innocent, you may start to question what you once thought was necessary—the sacrifices made for the sake of the collective whole. Governments choose to go to war and say, “It will be worth it in the end. Even if we lose people, this needed to happen.” Think of the atomic bomb, or nuclear fission in terms of energy, or solar batteries. We don’t even know what we’re going to do with those batteries when they’re finished, because they contain toxic chemicals.

I think we’re always teetering on that balance. But when you have oppression, that’s an ugly thing, and ultimately God takes care of the balance—through disease, famine, or other things. God is the one who holds the fulcrum and the balance. It isn’t simply that one night we get a revelation and say, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that. Let me go help these people.” Humanity just isn’t that good.

Don: I’m wondering who has institutional responsibility, if anyone, for education in virtue. It seems as if there’s a lacuna in responsibility for teaching character, morals, and virtue.

C-J: Didn’t that traditionally come from the home? I mean, if a person can’t take responsibility for the headship of the household—and I mean humanity here, not necessarily the male gender—then there’s a problem. I think God says pretty clearly that the home has that responsibility. And then there’s the church. The church is supposed to have an influence as well.

Donald: You do need some institutional responsibility. We have the good fortune of having a sweet young family in our home this week, with two girls, one seven and the other ten. We were talking about how they had attended what is now described in this community as a “forest school,” which allows children to spend a fair amount of their education outdoors, relating what they’re learning to the natural environment. This particular forest school has now closed, not because it lacked success, but perhaps because it was so successful that others are now starting up.

We were chatting about what happens if they send their children to public school. How does a public school actually build character? By what principles can a public institution go about building character in young people? Or do we leave that entirely to the family? And we know that the family itself is under great pressure. So there is the question as it relates to children.

The other point I would like to make is that I highly value Don’s perspective. His ability to hold two possibilities at the same time is certainly something that seems quite distinctive about you as a person. I’m not sure how many people can comfortably do that. Most people want to be sure they’re holding onto one thing and that it is the right thing—even when it may actually be the wrong thing.

What would a congregation look like if the preacher preached one position and then said, “But now let’s consider the other side of the coin,” and simply left it there, without bringing the question to closure? I’m not sure most people would feel very comfortable with that. Maybe there are communities of faith that can live with that kind of uncertainty, but I think most people want one thing to hang onto. They want to be reasonably sure it’s the right thing, even if somewhere inside they recognize that perhaps it isn’t. At least it gives them something firm to hold onto. So this idea of being able to hold two possibilities at once is fascinating. I think that could be explored further.

David: The interesting thing about the Song of Solomon is that it introduces something that Solomon himself didn’t really introduce in Ecclesiastes. It introduces a good that you cannot hoard. Solomon hoarded everything. He accumulated wisdom, vineyards, wealth, possessions, and everything else. But there is this good in the Song of Solomon, and it is love. You can’t hoard love; if you try to, it grows toxic, like manna.

So this is part of what we will be discussing in the next series. It brings us back again to the question of virtue. As I said, I think virtue is going to be the crucial component going forward, precisely because we are becoming so much more knowledgeable and, as a result, potentially so much more destructive than we ever were before. But the opposite is also possible. If we are virtuous, our growing knowledge and capabilities can open up so much more of the wonders of God for us to discover and appreciate.

That’s what the next series will be about. I’ve begun looking into what I want to say, and I’m realizing that it’s going to take me quite a long time to say it. I’m thinking perhaps as many as eight sessions, which is a lot of time. I’m not sure whether you can all stand me for eight subsequent sessions! But anyway, Don and I will be working on that. Thank you all for listening and for your participation.

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