Live the Tension: Part 3

You can check out Gary Caplinger teaching on The Pursuit of Pleasure here.

Live the Tension: Part 2

We just posted the second talk from our study through Ecclesiastes:

Rob Davis - The Pursuit of Knowledge

And, here is a song that was played:

Colin Ingersol - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

As always, feel free to post any comments about these things.

The Pursuit of Knowledge

The Scriptures imply a tension between a lack of knowledge (ignorance) and a foolish pursuit of knowledge (which leads to arrogance and isolation). The text this Sunday will be the final few verses in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. Here are some related passages which may aid in your personal participation with the text:

Romans 10:2 - ...they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

Isaiah 5:13 - ...my people go into exile
for lack of knowledge...

1 Timothy 6:20 - ...Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge"...

1 Corinthians 13 (The Message) - If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love...

Live the Tension begins...

We just uploaded the introduction to our study through Ecclesiastes, and some great songs played by Jon Joyce.

Scott Scrivner - Intro

Songs:
In Tall Buildings (written by John Hartford)
Prayer of St. Francis
Hard Times (written by Eastmountainsouth)
You Have Redeemed My Soul (written by Don Chaffer)

Hope you all enjoy this stuff. There will be much more to come...

Under the sun?

"I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind."

"Under the Sun" is the quality of the Quester's search within life. The assessment offered in much of the book of Ecclesiastes is an exercise in taking life at its complete face value. Isn't this why it resonates with us at times and at other times it frightens us, that such a bleak take on life could be uttered in the Bible? The Quester's search is limited to the life that is seen -- no spiritual effect, no God in the picture. Any time we read "under the sun" we could essentially swap the language for "apart from God." Read the Quester as the one who was willing to experience life to its limits -- as if God did not exist, as if satisfaction and fulfillment would one day be found in life "under the sun." We get his assessment of life in the first few sentences of the book:

"Smoke, nothing but smoke. [That's what the Quester says.] There's nothing to anything - it's all smoke."

For me...the main question becomes How much of my day do I function as if God is not a reality?

(Scriv)

Alone?

I turned my head and saw yet another wisp of smoke on its way to nothingness: a solitary person, completely alone—no children, no family, no friends—yet working obsessively late into the night, compulsively greedy for more and more...

It's better to have a partner than go it alone.
Share the work, share the wealth.
And if one falls down, the other helps,
But if there's no one to help, tough!

Two in a bed warm each other.
Alone, you shiver all night.

By yourself you're unprotected.
With a friend you can face the worst.
Can you round up a third?
A three-stranded rope isn't easily snapped.

How often do you feel that you are the only person in the world?

Are your seemingly close relationships really shallow and transitory?

Do you have a place "where everyone knows your name," a place where you belong, a place where you can be truly you?

Bored?

"Everything's boring, utterly boring -- no one can find any meaning in it.
Boring to the eye, boring to the ear."

Is this the lenss you view life through?

Are you jaded, unimpressed with the day to day?

How bored have you become with life?

Smoke!

"Smoke, nothing but smoke. There's nothing to anything -- it's all smoke."

How does this description of life ring true to you?

Is there any substance to life? Anything that matters and makes life "worth
it"?

Truth?

The book of Ecclesiastes contains this troublesome phrase toward the beginning:

Much learning earns you much trouble.
The more you know, the more you hurt.

Then, toward the end, the Quester says this:

There's no end to the publishing of books, and constant study wears you out so you're no good for anything else.

Has our journey toward the "truth" or our own quest for "knowledge" brought us more joy, or more pain?

Have you spent more time debating and arguing over your own understanding than actually living life?

Crooked...

The Quester says this:

Life's a corkscrew that can't be straightened,
A minus that won't add up.

Does this reality resonate with you?

Does life seem to be a series of bad events, with an occasional good one?