9Be happy, young man, while you are young,
and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth.
Follow the ways of your heart
and whatever your eyes see,
but know that for all these things
God will bring you to judgment.
10So then, banish anxiety from your heart
and cast off the troubles of your body,
for youth and vigor are meaningless.
12:1Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
“I find no pleasure in them”—
2before the sun and the light
and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;
3when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim;
4when the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding fades;
when men rise up at the sound of birds,
but all their songs grow faint;
5when men are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags himself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then man goes to his eternal home
and mourners go about the streets.
6Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
or the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
or the wheel broken at the well,
7and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
8“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.
“Everything is meaningless!”
Original Meaning
QOHELET HAS ADVOCATED the embrace of joy while our brief life lasts, before the darkness of death overshadows us. His thoughts now turn in particular to the young man who, because the time of youth is also brief (11:10), has a still shorter period in which to make the most of his opportunities. In view not only of death (12:6–7) but also of the slow and steady intrusion of death into life as people age (12:1–5), the young man is urged to live life to the full (11:9–10).
Qohelet’s view of what a full young life looks like is articulated in 11:9–10. The young man is urged to pursue joy (Heb. śmḥ, as in 11:8; NIV “be happy”), to allow his heart to do him good (Heb. ṭwb; NIV “give you joy”). This is to be achieved by following the leading of the heart and the eyes—by experiencing the good things in life that are first imagined, desired, or seen. Once again Qohelet affirms the goodness of creation and the rightness of enjoying all that is gifted to us by God in it. The young person is to make the most of it all.
That this is not an invitation to hedonism, especially not to atheistic hedonism, is already clear from our reading of Ecclesiastes to this point. The language used in 11:9a also indicates this, for yeṭib leb (“let your heart give you joy”) reminds us of yiṭab leb (“is good for the heart”) in 7:3 (in the midst of a passage exhorting the adoption of a serious attitude to life), while marʾe ʿenayim (“whatever your eyes see”) reminds us of marʾeh ʿenayim in 6:9 (“what the eye sees”), in the midst of a passage advocating that we should rest content with what lies before us rather than wandering off in search of more. It is not foolish behavior that Qohelet advocates here, but life lived out joyfully in the world God has made and governs.
This is what he explicitly reminds us of in the last part of 11:9. The following of the heart and the eyes is to be carried out in the sure knowledge that there is moral accountability in the universe: “God will bring you to judgment [mišpat]” (as in 3:16, leading on to the mention of divine judgment in 3:17; 5:8; 8:5–6; cf. also in the final verse of the book, 12:14). Joy is to be pursued within the boundaries set by goodness and virtue—the boundaries set by God.
Yet joy is indeed to be pursued. The young man is to make the most of his brief moment of youth (11:10). He is to banish from his heart “frustration” (kaʿas; not “anxiety,” as in NIV; see comment on 1:18). He is also to cast off “troubles” (raʿa; lit., “evil”) from his body. In other words, he is to embrace with his whole being (his inner and outer life) the pathway through life that Qohelet has advocated throughout the book (e.g., 2:24–26; 3:12–13, 22; 5:18–20; 9:7–10), rather than conforming himself to and defining himself by the world of frustration and evil that has also been described therein (cf. kaʿas in 1:18; 2:23; raʿa in, e.g., 5:13, 16).
The world may well be marked by frustration and evil, and indeed “futility” (hebel; NIV “meaningless” in 11:10; see comments on 1:3), but a life marked by “brevity” (another trans. of hebel) need not also be a life of futility, if life is embraced for what it is and joy is pursued therein. Qohelet’s advice is to start early on this pathway of joyful existence before God (Heb. šaḥarut, “vigor,” in 11:10 is most likely derived from šaḥar, “dawn,” referring to the dawn of life), in the sure knowledge that life will only ever become more challenging as time passes and as we move inexorably toward the darkness of death: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble [raʿa] come” (12:1).
The days of trouble Qohelet particularly has in mind are those of advancing years, which are now graphically described in 12:1b–5, culminating in the description of death and burial in 12:6–7. These are days in which people eventually “find no pleasure” (12:1) because of the challenging circumstances in which they find themselves. They are times of darkness (12:2), similar to the darkness at the close of day (cf. 11:8; contrast the sunlight that is enjoyed in the early morning of life, 11:7, 10) but of a more ultimate nature. For at nightfall the sun, the moon, and the stars themselves do not normally “grow dark,” as they do in 12:2. This is the language of the unmaking of creation (note the “light” in Gen. 1:3–5, and the sun, moon, and stars in 1:14–18)—the apocalyptic language of the end times (cf., e.g., Isa. 13:9–10; Joel 2:31; Amos 5:18; Zeph. 1:14–15), in which “clouds” also often feature.
A particularly striking example of the application of this language to the life of an individual is found in Ezekiel 32:7–8:
When I snuff you out, I will cover the heavens
and darken their stars;
I will cover the sun with a cloud,
and the moon will not give its light.
All the shining lights in the heavens
I will darken over you;
I will bring darkness over your land,
declares the Sovereign LORD.
As Ezekiel brings this kind of language to bear on the pharaoh of Egypt, so Qohelet uses it to describe the end of every person, for every person is in the end “unmade” (cf. Eccl. 12:7). It is forceful language with which to address the young man, who is thus confronted with the unmaking of creation as his inevitable future, so that he may take seriously the exhortation to remember his Creator in the present (12:1).
The description of the “unmaking” that follows in 12:3–8 has often been interpreted entirely allegorically by commentators, who have found in the powerful imagery veiled references to multiple aspects of the aging process in the individual.1 In this kind of reading the trembling “keepers of the house” in verse 3, for example, become the legs or the arms, and the few “grinders” are understood as the teeth. It is, however, difficult convincingly to read bodily parts out of much of the material, which in turn calls into question whether such reference is truly intended in the few examples where there is some plausibility to the idea. This interpretation is not adopted here.
Others have noted funerary aspects to some of the description in verses 3–5 especially and have wondered whether a funeral is in fact being described. The question is, however, whether such language, insofar as one can find it in the passage (again, it is difficult to account convincingly for many of the details in terms of a funeral), is employed so much to depict a funeral as to depict the funereal-type emotions of those who face the apocalyptic darkness just described in verse 2.
The interpretation offered here takes seriously as its cue precisely this apocalyptic introduction to the section and moves on to interpret verses 3–5 as for the most part a generalized description of advancing old age, using the analogy of a community facing the end times. It is not until verse 5b that death and burial come into the picture. Since every translation is also an interpretation, and the NIV translation seems to be influenced by the allegorical approach, the translation offered here of verses 3–5a is different in places from that in the NIV, and it is probably best for the sake of clarity to provide it at this point:
. . . in the day that the men looking after the house tremble
and the powerful cringe,
and the women grinding corn cease from toil because they are few,
and those peering from their windows draw back into the gloom;
and the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of the mill is quieted—
one used to rise in the morning to the sound of birds,
but now all the singers are silent.
Yes, they are all afraid of what is above,
and great terrors lie along the path,
where the almond tree spurns,
and the locust carries a heavy load,
and the caper plant fails . . .
As metaphorical darkness falls across the land, various reactions are to be found among its inhabitants, who are characterized in verse 3 as “keepers of the house,” “strong men,” “grinders,” and “those looking through the windows.” The “strong men” (ʾanše heḥayil) are probably those of high social status (cf. the use of ḥayil in verses like Ruth 2:1; Isa. 30:6), while the “keepers of the house” are male servants (cf. 2 Sam. 20:3 for the function, albeit that these are females). Likewise, the “grinders” are female servants, whose responsibilities include crushing grain with millstones to make flour for bread (cf. Isa. 47:2, where a princess becomes a servant), and “those looking through the windows” are likely women of higher social status, who have the leisure to sit and watch the world go by.
These four types of people represent the totality of the community—everyone, whether servant or noble, male or female. The male servants “tremble” in response to the apocalyptic darkness, while the male nobility “stoop” (lit., “make themselves crooked”—the same verbal root as in Ecclesiastes 1:15; 7:13, suggesting a fearful cringing in response to the divinely ordained darkening). The female servants cease their work because their numbers have dwindled—presumably because they have fearfully left their workplaces and retired indoors (cf. v. 4). Similarly, the women of leisure “grow dim” (ḥšk, v. 3) in response to the darkening (ḥšk, v. 2), which in context must refer either to emotional darkness and dread or (more likely, in view of the parallel case of the servants) to abandonment of their viewing point at the windows, so that they are (from the perspective of the observer) lost in the gloom.2
Verse 4a certainly presents us with a picture of general withdrawal inside the home in the face of the terrors outside. One would expect a similar reference to the cessation of normal activity in verse 4b (which the NIV translates in a way that leaves me puzzled), particularly given the similar meanings of Hebrew špl, “become low” (NIV “fades”) and Hebrew šḥḥ, “be bowed down/prostrated” (cf. Isa. 2:11, 17, for the two verbs in parallel). It is better to understand the line in this way: “One3 used to rise [in the morning] to the sound of birds, but [now] all the singers [lit., daughters of song] are laid low.” Either this refers literally to the effect of the darkness on the birds, who depart from their normal activity because of the unexpected darkness (cf. the behavior of birds during a solar eclipse), or it refers metaphorically to the female servants, shut indoors and now no longer audible early in the morning as they go about their everyday tasks. All “sound” (qol in both cases) has vanished as its makers have abandoned their everyday activities.
Verse 5 is best taken as a summarizing and climactic review, as well as an expansion in terms of detail, of the apocalyptic events introduced in verses 2–4. It is introduced by Heb. gam (not trans. by NIV): “Yes, they are afraid of what is above, and great terrors lie along the path.” “They” are all the people mentioned in verses 3–4, both male and female, and the “high thing” (gaboah; NIV “heights”) of which they are afraid is what is happening above them in the heavens.
The details that are then provided in the admittedly difficult Hebrew text of the middle part of verse 5 are best understood as earthly events that accompany the heavenly darkening—the “great terrors” (ḥatḥattim, in intensive, duplicated form) that would be encountered if one were brave enough to venture outdoors and walk through the countryside.
The key to understanding the triplet of images in verse 5 (almond tree, locust, caper plant) is found in the mention of the locust (NIV “grasshopper”) that “drags itself along” (sbl in the Hithpael, only here in the Bible) because it has eaten too much. The Hebrew verb sbl means “to bear a heavy load” in the Qal, and (once) in the Pual seemingly refers either to being fat or to pregnancy (Ps. 144:14—the precise sense is uncertain). The sated locust dragging itself away from the fields containing crops would not be a heartening sight to the observer (cf. 2 Chron. 7:13, where the locust [ḥagab, as here] devouring the land is a sign of divine judgment).
The third image, when the line is understood more literally than in the NIV, confirms that the symbolism here is of agricultural disaster: “the caper plant fails [Heb. prr, lit., ‘breaks (covenant), does not keep its promise to be fruitful’].” The NIV’s rendering arises from the fact that the fruits of the plant capparis spinosa (Heb. abiyyona; i.e., capers) were used in the ancient world not only to stimulate the appetite for food but also as an aphrodisiac (to stimulate sexual appetite). This being so, it must be the case that if the NIV’s understanding of the first line of our triplet is correct (“the almond tree blossoms,” taking Heb. yaneʾṣ as an incorrectly written form from Heb. nṣṣ),4 the blossoming can only be the brief and unfortunate precursor to the feeding of the locusts. A better option, however, is to take yaneʾṣ as an unusual form from nʾṣ, “to despise, spurn”: “The almond tree spurns” those who look to it for fruit.
Ecological disaster is very much a part of apocalyptic descriptions of the end times elsewhere in the Old Testament (e.g., Isa. 24:1–23). The choice of almond tree, locust, and caper plant (among many possible candidates) to represent the disaster here is no doubt significant. The almond tree blossoms in early spring, a time of youth, and its fruitlessness therefore speaks of youth that is past. The locust has devoured the years (as in Joel 2:25; note the ecological destruction throughout the book), so that there are none left. The absence of capers speaks powerfully of the absence of pleasure, whether in food or in sex (cf. Eccl. 12:1). Thus is apocalyptic language brought to bear on the realities, for many, of the individual aging process. These are dark days indeed.
The end times for the individual human being are here pictured, then, in terms of the end of the world: darkness, terror, cessation from normal activity, and an ecological nightmare. It is in this manner that a “man goes to his eternal home” in the grave, mourned by those who knew him. Verses 6–7, with their imagery associated with death and burial, drive the point home. The young man is to remember his Creator “before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken [better, ‘crushed’]; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken [better, ‘crushed’] at the well.” The middle two images communicate the complete destruction of a vessel containing liquid and the consequent escape of the liquid, correlating with the dissolution of the human body and the return of the human spirit to God, who gave it (v. 7b; cf. Gen. 2:7).
The Creator encompasses this whole section (vv. 1, 7), just as he encompasses the whole of life. That the bowl is golden and the cord from which it hangs is silver speaks of the preciousness of the life that is thus given by God and then in due course taken away.5 The word bor, “well,” is also used more generally of a pit, including the pit that is a person’s grave (e.g., Prov. 28:17; Isa. 14:19). Thus the mention of the well also carries with it connotations of burial—the grave is the site of the breaking of the “wheel.”
This reference to the “wheel” (galgal) is the only really puzzling element of the description, since “wheel” does not correlate with “bowl” and “pitcher” in terms of imagery (especially since well wheels are not well attested in ancient Palestine). In attempting to explain the appearance of galgal here, it is important to realize that both this word and Hebrew gulla (“bowl”) earlier in the verse are both derived from Heb. gll, “roll, roll away,” along with Heb. gulgolet (“skull, head”). In the older Semitic language of Akkadian, indeed, the word gulgullu can refer to “skull,” “water pitcher,” or “cooking pot.”
We may further note that the Hebrew rṣṣ, “to crush” (NIV “broken”), which appears twice in our verse in reference to both gulla and galgal, is the verb used in two other places in the Old Testament of the crushing of heads or skulls (Judg. 9:53, comparing wattariṣ ʾet-gulgalto with wetaruṣ gullat and wenaroṣ haggalgal in Eccl. 12:6; cf. Ps. 74:14). It is likely, then, that whatever precisely galgal means in Ecclesiastes 12:6, its presence along with gulla has as much to do with wordplay as with anything else.
Thus, Qohelet seems here to be playing on the idea of skulls, as well as bodies, being broken in death. Whether we are justified in suspecting that galgal itself does not mean “wheel” in 12:6, but uniquely here in the Old Testament refers to a container such as a cooking pot, is less certain. The shift in imagery to the broken wheel, which presumably refers to the breaking in the individual case of the ongoing patterns of life—the successive “times” of human experience (3:1–8)—may be deliberate, especially if Qohelet is seeking a word similar to gulla and connoting “skull.” Poets are not by any means required to conform themselves to audience expectations.
It is worth noting in this connection that 12:8, which brings our section to a conclusion, is virtually identical to 1:2 (see comments), thus bringing all the words of Qohelet to a conclusion as well. In fact, both 1:3–8 and 12:1–7, associated with these summary statements of Qohelet’s message, concern the circularity of things (which a “wheel” well symbolizes). The ongoing circularity of nature is the theme of 1:3–8; the circle of the individual life, however, is eventually broken (12:1–7), although in another sense there is the completion of a circle as the body is reabsorbed into the ground from which it came (12:7). It is, of course, the ephemeral nature of human life in contrast to the ongoing reality of the universe that makes the attempt to wrest extrinsic “profit” out of life a futile one (cf. 1:3 and throughout the book).
All of Qohelet’s words are to be understood in the context of this beginning in 1:2 and this end in 12:8. The context of the closing remarks makes it particularly clear, however, that “meaningless” is not a good translation for the Hebrew word hebel, for the whole thrust of 11:9–12:8 (and 11:7–8 before-hand) has been that life is a precious gift to be enjoyed, albeit that the days of life are brief (cf. hebel in 11:8). A better translation is this:
“Fleeting, fleeting,” says Qohelet, “everything is fleeting.”
Bridging Contexts
THE RESOLUTELY MALE focus of Ecclesiastes is particularly clear in this passage, addressed as it is to the “young man” (v. 9). Yet there is nothing in the passage that cannot also be taken seriously—and without any real need for “translation” with reference to the whole biblical context—by the young woman. Qohelet’s advice is good advice regardless of one’s gender.
The advice is premised once again on the idea of the goodness of creation as portrayed in Genesis 1–2. The good Creator God has made all things well and offers creation to human beings not only so that it may sustain them physically as they look after it but also so that they may enjoy it. It is a world of abundance, to which there is free access (Gen. 2:15–16)—a beautiful world as well as a functional one (2:9). Why should anyone not follow the lead of heart and eyes in experiencing this abundance and beauty and know joy in God’s presence as he or she does so (Eccl. 11:9)? Why is it that so many religious people’s lives are instead characterized by fear and defensiveness, by a joy-suppressing legalism that is more concerned “to do the right thing” than to revel in God’s blessings?
Qohelet is himself concerned that people “do the right thing,” but the first and foremost “right thing” is to revere God as God, and we do not do this by suggesting through the way we live our lives that God is a mean-spirited and harsh tyrant. We do not honor God by proclaiming (falsely) in our attitudes and actions that he is the kind of person to create a wonderful world and then systematically to forbid his creatures to enjoy it. All other “right things” have to proceed, rather, from the primary “right thing” of rightly relating to God as God truly is. It is when this is a reality that virtue flows out of love (for God and for neighbor), rather than out of fear, defensiveness, and legalism, for “perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment” (1 John 4:18), and “love is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom. 13:10).
The broader biblical context in which Qohelet’s advice must be heard, therefore, includes all those passages in the Gospels where Jesus assails the Pharisees and others for legalism and defensive living, which have entirely missed the point of the Old Testament, and those other New Testament passages that remind us that we are not to be bound by rules of behavior unrelated to the business of loving God and neighbor. This includes many types of Old Testament law (e.g., concerning clean and unclean food), which, it turns out, were temporary measures unreflective of God’s broader plans for his world. Colossians 2:13–16 and 1 Timothy 4:1–5 are particularly relevant:
God . . . forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
Everything God created is good! Yet from the beginning human beings have misperceived who God is and failed to appreciate the true freedom that worship of God brings with it, even as we revere and obey him. It is for this reason that Qohelet has also been misread, from ancient times and down to the present, as advocating hedonism in Ecclesiastes 11:9–10. Religious readers of the text have often not been able, in their religiosity, to understand how reverence for God and reveling in life are compatible.6 They have failed to realize that God is as interested in what we do with our lives as he is with what we refrain from doing. It is worth noting, in fact, that the latter part of 11:9 (“but know that for all these things . . .”), which may be thought in the NIV translation to imply that we should not be too extravagant in our “following,” can just as easily be understood as suggesting that God will hold us to account if we do not make it our business to enjoy what he has given us to enjoy.7
Throughout Ecclesiastes, of course, joyful living is also serious living: We live in remembrance of who God is and of who we are. The great reminder is death—the reality graphically expounded upon in this section as a spur to the young person to live life well. Death constantly breaks in on life in the Old Testament, in the form of illness and other threats to existence, and eventually and noticeably in the aging process. It is for this reason that many psalms speak of the person who is sick or under assault from other chaotic forces as already having one foot in Sheol, the world of the dead. Note, for example, Psalm 18:5–6:
The cords of the grave coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me.
In my distress I called to the LORD;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came before him, into his ears.
It is because death breaks in on life all too soon that Qohelet advises young people to make the most of their youth, when they have the strength and the vigor to do so. The apocalyptic language also reminds all readers, however, that there is not only an ending to each individual life but also an ending to all things. This more comprehensive ending is also a reason, biblically, to make the most of our lives while we still possess them:
Immediately after the distress of those days
“the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”
At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. . . .
So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. (Matt. 24:29–30, 44)
From the New Testament perspective there are eternal implications bound up with our present decisions. Qohelet does not know of these, even if 12:7 perhaps gives a hint that 3:20–21 is not his last word on the matter—for the human spirit is at least said here to return to God. His concern is, as ever, with the present implications of our decisions. These are not less important, however, than the eternal implications with which they are entirely bound up, for the life that is lived with God now is, for the New Testament, continuous with the life that is lived in eternity.
I had no idea there was a demand for such a thing, but since we suddenly seem to be in a world of don’t-trust-anyone-over-20, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. I don’t mind teenagers, really. But the idea of books for teens, written by teens—that gives me the horrors. I have this funny idea that teenagers might benefit from reading work by somebody with a world view a little less limited than their own.8
Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfilment.9
We all need the wisdom that derives from those who possess a worldview a little less limited than our own; but young people, who do not have the advantage of wide experience of life in the present, perhaps require this wisdom more than most. The question is: What should we tell them? We live in a time when there is a palpable crisis of confidence among many adults as to what to say to their children. Having lost hold on God, the culture has by degrees lost hold of any larger story that make sense of our individual and group stories and that provides us with shared codes of ethics and with role models who enact them.
This loss of narrative and direction makes life difficult enough for the adults who have experienced it and who no longer know where they are heading or why, but it makes the task of instructing those younger people who accompany us on the journey particularly difficult. There is a justifiable antipathy to the older, authoritarian “Do as I say, not as I do” approach to parenting, for which young people have little respect in any case; but this leads in practice simply to saying less and less—and having less and less conviction about it. Parenting becomes by degrees a matter of the blind leading the blind and is often simply delegated to those professionals who are thought to know something that we do not—schoolteachers, doctors, psychologists—or to those willing amateurs, like sports coaches, who seem to get on well with children. The delegation of parenting to the TV is not unknown, for the TV speaks with authority and has role models in abundance. “Who are we to tell our children how to live,” we cry, “when we have made such a mess of our world and our lives?” And in our lostness, we become more interested in their approval of us and their friendship with us than in being an adult-in-relation-to-a-child at all. We may even look to them for the wisdom that we lack, for they seem to know so much and to be so confident about it.
The biblical narrative—and all the texts that are bound up with it, reflect on it, and comment on it—provides us with the map we need both for our own journey through life and for helping others find the best path. The Bible tells us of the God who creates a good world and, despite all our tendencies to spoil it and to damage both ourselves and others, is for us in Christ (Rom. 8:31). It tells us both who we really are and what we are destined to be in this same Christ. It gives us our bearings, fixing our location and lighting the road ahead; it provides us with rules for the journey that will keep us from danger and with stories of others who have made it, so that we can be both warned and encouraged.
This divinely inspired map represents one of the most precious gifts that any adult can be given and that any adult can give a child. It provides us with wisdom beyond our own experience, as worthwhile and yet as flawed as that can be. It gives us a worldview a little less limited than our own.
Qohelet paints a corner of the map. He suggests to us that the young person needs to be told two things. (1) He or she needs to be told about the reality of decay and death and what this signifies about God and ourselves. This is important, because young people often think themselves indestructible and all-but-eternal, and youth culture often seems designed to establish this self-understanding. It is a culture of reality-avoidance—of image rather than substance. As we do not love people if we fail to warn them of the cliff toward which they are running, so we do not love people if we fail to speak to them of death and what it means.
Reality must be proclaimed, especially since many of our young people today, unlike most of their predecessors throughout history, gain little direct experience of death even through their family experience. They have little contact with the dead, even when it is a relative, and little experience of nursing the dying. It is all too easy, therefore, for mortality never to have stared them in the face and to have challenged them about their identity and value.
(2) The young person also needs to be told, however, about the goodness of God and to be encouraged to live responsively to that goodness. This involves virtue, of course, but it also involves joy. It is important to speak about both. We cannot as adults absolve ourselves of the responsibility to speak of right and wrong and of guiding younger people through example and loving discipline to a place where they know the difference and hopefully choose the better option. The first task of a parent is not to win a child’s approval or even friendship, but to be a parent.
It must be said at the same time, however, that Christian adults have sometimes been better at telling their children what they should do rather than explaining why they should do it, forgetting the important distinction drawn in this comment from the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke: “It is easier for a tutor to command than to teach.”10 The problem has been created in part because parents themselves have not known why various Christian rules should be kept. The point about God’s law, however (which is not necessarily the same thing as traditional Christian rules), is that it is good, not only in itself but in respect of its benefits for human life. It is not intended to be repressive but to bring joy. This is the reason why it is so often extolled in the Old Testament, as in Psalm 19:8:
The precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
God’s law is good, and it is attractive. It is the beauty of what is good that adults must above all communicate to children, so that they not only learn to do it but also to love it. The adults themselves must first be captivated by this beauty, however, for if they themselves are only burdened by the duty of it all, they will not be able to speak convincingly of the joy. Perhaps one reason why religious readers of Ecclesiastes 11:9–10 have not liked the passage very much, indeed, is because it makes them wonder whether they ever really needed, in their younger days, to trade joy for duty as much as they did. They rather resent the idea that young people now should be allowed the privilege of combining the two. Resentment and envy must be replaced by generosity if parenting is to be experienced as liberation as well as discipline. There must be an acceptance that true religion involves true humanness in all its dimensions.
The young person must be presented, in other words, with adults who, even though they presumably (though never certainly) stand nearer to death than the young and are prepared to speak frankly about its reality, do not insist that death should intrude into life too early. They do not refrain from proclaiming God’s life-affirming goodness to them nor refuse to enjoy the world in which they live. Young people need those who are prepared to say: “Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfilment.” Seek a life that, because it is lived seriously (as well as joyfully) before God and in reverence and awe of him, draws the sting of death as “the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7).
The counterexample, of the adult as he or she is sometimes encountered by the young, is provided by Victor Meldrew in the British TV series One Foot in the Grave—an uncharitable, irascible man possessing little joy and even less tolerance. If we do indeed stand with one foot in the grave (and we will be perceived by most youngsters as doing so if we are older than about twenty-five), we should at least do so graciously, lovingly, and encouragingly in relating to those who do not. There are too many Victor Meldrews in church and society and not nearly enough St. Augustines, who are prepared to say with that church father: “Love God and do what you like.”
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. . . .
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (Eph. 6:1, 4)
Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged. (Col. 3:20–21)