THE PUNDIT'S FOLLY

This afternoon I read Dr. Sinclair Ferguson's 1995 book The Pundit's Folly: Chronicles of an Empty Life. The book is an exposition of Ecclesiastes. It is very good, stimulating and edifying.

Ferguson calls the author of Ecclesiastes the Pundit (i.e. a learned man who considers himself an authority). The Pundit's quest is twofold: (1) What is the nature of life under the sun? and (2) What is the meaning of life under the sun? He looks to education, pleasure, work, and success for answers but time after time he comes up short, declaring that everything is meaninglessness and foolishness. Why does he reach these conclusions? Ferguson writes:

The Pundit's error was to begin from the wrong starting point. All his thinking presupposed that his spiritual condition was normal. But the truth is that we are all spiritually abnormal; we are diseased, broken and twisted (42).

In other words, the Pundit initially failed to take into account the problem of sin. To look for the nature and meaning of life without accounting for sin is the height of folly. Any answers we may derive must be, by definition, meaningless, since they fail to recognize the triune God who is the primary referent upon which nature (i.e. ontology) and meaning (i.e. epistemology, axiology) are derived.

So what is the final message of the Pundit? Well, eventually he recognizes his error. Ferguson writes:

Life is sick; we are sick. This is the Pundit's message. You need an emetic. Painful and embarrassing though it may be, you need to vomit out of your soul everything that is destroying your life and will eventually lead you to an endless emptiness. The fear of God is the medicine you need (72).

And what is the fear of God?

The fear of God in some ways defies our attempts at definition, because it is really another way of saying 'knowing God'. It is a heart-felt love for him because of who he is and what he has done; a sense of being in his majestic presence. It is a thrilling awareness that we have this greatest of all privileges, mingled with the realisation that now the only thing that really matters is his opinion. To have the assurance of his smile is everything; to feel that he frowns on what we do is desolation. To fear God is to be sensitive to both his greatness and his graciousness. It is to know him and to love him wholeheartedly and unreservedly.

To fear God, to trust God, to love God, and to know God--these are all really one and the same thing. In fact, the fear of God about which the Pundit speaks arises from the discovery of God's love for us in our sin and weakness. It is the sense of awe that results from the discovery that he knows me through and through, means to destroy all that is sinful in me, and yet does so because he loves me with an intensely faithful love. That stretches my mind and emotions to their limit (74).

This fear, the fear of God, is what transforms life from an endless puzzle of foolishness and tragedy into a meaningful and purposeful act of worship.

Without him, life is at best a puzzle, at worst a tragedy; this is not a self-contained 'user friendly' universe. With him we learn that even when his immediate purposes are hidden from us his ways are perfect (for we do not always, nor do we ever fully, understand his plans). We also learn this: even though we will never know everything about this world, we do know something about everything: God is its Creator, and he is our heavenly Father (77).

The Pundit says it this way: "Fear God and keep his commandments [IN THAT ORDER], for this is the whole duty of man."