I. Introduction
Last week we introduced the Koheleth, the teacher, who doesn’t instruct us but asks us questions to push us to the logical conclusion of our views, much like a philosophy professor. And he’s conducting a thought experiment, “What is to be gained by all of this labor in which we toil under the sun?” Life under the sun is an expression that means this life is all there is. In chapter 2, Koheleth experiments with pleasure and luxury from great wealth to see if he can find meaning under the sun.
2:1:
“test” – This word means “to conduct an experiment.” Note, he didn’t test pleasure. He tested himself using pleasure.
Who hasn’t experimented with hedonism? We turn on Netflix to watch one episode, then go to bed after binging an entire season. We eat three bites, then inhale the whole bag. We pour one glass, then polish off the bottle.
2:2-3
“Laughter…pleasure” – This word “laughter” means a kind of orgiastic drinking party. Pleasure has bit more refinement. The first is red faced, full-throated, partying. The other is more sophisticated. The one is get smashed. The other one is buying art. But they are the same. There’s the Short North and University District kind of hedonism.
“I tried cheering myself” Since there is no objective meaning “under the sun,” we try to manufacture subjective meaning. But this is complex. By and large, modern people are not just going after pleasure. Mice go after pleasure. Mice have sex and it’s just about procreation. But when we have sex, it’s not just the physical experience. Something else starts to happen. You start to say, “I am loved. I am valued.”
In a society that has no objective meaning, there’s going to be a frenetic-ness about pleasure. I’m not sure we can ever say there was a society that has the kind of metabolism for entertainment, sexual activity, and material luxuries that we do. That’s because we’re searching for more than just pleasure. We’re searching for meaning. Koheleth pursued a wide range of pleasure.
2:7-8a
Solomon made 300 gold shields that were 7.5lbs of gold each and 200 smaller gold shields made of 3.75lbs each (1 Kings 10:17-18).
That’s a total of 3000 lbs of gold! You don’t make weapons out of gold. Gold is a soft metal. He brought these shields into his palace as a decoration.
1 Kings 10:21, 23-24: All King Solomon’s goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace…were pure gold. Nothing was made of silver, because silver was considered of little value in Solomon’s days…King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. The whole world sought audience with Solomon.
2:8b: Solomon didn’t have a state-of-the-art sound system in his palace to play the music he enjoyed. He paid the artists who created the music to perform at his palace.
Yet despite his incalculable wealth, near the end of his life, Solomon came to the same conclusion as so many others: it’s never enough.
Ecclesiastes 5:10: Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless. It’s amazing to read Solomon’s words and recognize that, nearly three thousand years later, we’re feeling the exact same thing. We may not be drinking our coffee from golden mugs, but…
Americans have accumulated a shocking amount of stuff. Our houses are bigger than ever before. In 1950, the average square footage of an average American house was 1000 sq ft. In 1970 it was 1500 sq ft. In 2020, it was 2,200 sq ft. In an effort to pay for it, we work thirty days more each year than our grandparents did. We have so much stuff that the storage business is one of our fastest-growing industries. If having more money and more stuff leads to extra-ordinary happiness, then why are we the world leader in antidepressants, making up two thirds of the global market?
In exploring the ancient issue of greed, Dennis Okholm writes, “We have strong desires for products before we have them, but once acquired, they mean very little to us.” He cites research showing how “[people focused on material wealth] are less content than others with their lot in life and tend to be more anxious, depressed, distressed, not as well adjusted, and experiencing lower levels of well-being.” We accumulate so much stuff that it fills our houses, but not our hearts. No matter how much we have, it’s never enough. There’s always something better. John D. Rockefeller, the first billionaire, was asked how much would be enough, he famously said, “A little bit more.”
“How much money would really need to be happy?” People who are currently earning $30,000 a year say they need $50,000 to be happy. But do people who earn $50,000 say they need that much to be happy? Not really. People earning $100,000, twice that much, say they would need $250,000 to be happy.
Two Nobel Prize winning scientists, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, tested how annual income affects three measures of well-being. The published their findings in the peer reviewed academic journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). What did they find? It turns out that income does affect well-being –for people at lower salary levels. If you’re making $10,000-20,000 a year, earning more will affect your well-being. But, it quickly levels off.
According to their estimate, it’s a lot better to earn $70,000 versus $40,000. Once you earn an annual income of $75,000, earning more doesn’t really help. You don’t get less stressed or happier, your well-being just flatlines. That’s what the data suggests, but that’s definitely not what we believe. When you go from earning $15,000 a year as a full-time barista to earning $40,000, you feel an improvement in your overall well-being. When you get to $75-$80,000, you’re able to meet the basic needs of your family. So, up to this point you’ve learned that making more money improves your overall well-being. But when you start earning more than $75,000, you notice that your well-being isn’t increasing at the same rate. Anything beyond this, you start to feel the law of diminishing returns. Not to mention, the rich aren’t the happiest.
The Plight of the Rich: As one poet put it, “Mo Money Mo Problems.” In March 2011 TIME magazine cover story focused on “10 Ideas That Are Changing Your Life.” Idea number seven, “High-Status Stress,” began like this: “What if the good life isn’t really all that good? What if the very things so many of us strive for—a high-paying, powerful job; a beautiful house; a wardrobe of nice clothes in desirably small sizes; and a fancy education for our children to prep them for carrying on this way of life—turn out to be more trouble than they’re worth?” The article continued by showing how all the benefits we thought we’d get from wealth actually disappear. “Once you get affluent enough, the mental and physical health benefits associated with greater affluence fade away. In fact research indicates that as you near the top, life stress increases so dramatically that its toxic effects essentially cancel out many positive aspects of succeeding.” As Koheleth says, “The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep. (Ecclesiastes 5:12)
The biggest problem rich people fall into is guilt. Rich people also believe that money brings happiness. The cognitive dissonance of being so rich and yet so sad can throw them into emotional turmoil. “My life isn’t perfect, but it should be. I shouldn’t complain. I shouldn’t see therapy to help me deal with my problems because I shouldn’t have them.”
The rich often struggle in their close relationships. It’s hard for them to trust because they’ve been burned a lot, particularly in romantic relationships. The rich worry that people are attracted to them for their wealth. They even struggle in their friendships. They’re not called the 1% for nothing. There’s a lot of isolation. “Are you being my friend because of my bank account?” “If we go out to lunch is it just expected for me to pick up the bill?” The teacher understood this more than anyone: He says, in 5:11 The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. So what good is wealth—except perhaps to watch it slip through your fingers!
The rich feel trapped (“golden handcuffs”). For most problems we encounter in life, there are painful, but culturally acceptable solutions. If you’re in a bad relationship, you can pack your bags and leave. If you hate your job, then quit. But if you’re loaded and miserable, you’re not going to give it away. You’re too attached to it. It gives too much freedom. So you’re trapped. Some experts call this “golden handcuffs.”
Be careful what you wish for. Almost all of us believe that we would be happy if we can only get what we want and that the only impediment to happiness is not getting what we want. Turns out when people get exactly what they want, they aren’t always happy. A writer in The Wall Street Journal called money “an article which may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except heaven, and as a universal provider of everything except happiness.”
2:8c:
Solomon experience sexual pleasure beyond anyone’s imagination. The author of Kings tells us, “King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter…They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had "seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines” (1 Kings 11:1-3 says). Solomon was like the ancient Barry White, he just had so much love to give. Show pic.
Any woman he wanted. He had the ancient version of Tinder, where Solomon on any night of the week, could swipe right and sleep with one of the thousand beautiful women who were part of his harem.
The Neuro-Cocktail of of Sexual Pleasure – This is the typical progression of chemicals released into your system when you have sex or watch pornography.
First, dopamine is released into your brain. Dopamine supplies a great sense of pleasure. When you get an “itch” for sexual pleasure, small packets of dopamine are released in the brain telling you: “Remember where you got your fix last time. Go there to get it.”
Epinephrine is also released, creating alertness and focus. It is the brain’s version of adrenaline. It tells the brain, “Something is about to happen, and we need to get ready for it.”
Sex and pornography also trigger the release of oxytocin (for women) and vasopressin (for men). These hormones help to lay down the long-term memories for the cells. They “bind” a person’s memories to the object that gave him or her the sexual pleasure.
The body releases endorphins, which are natural opiates that create a “high,” a wave of pleasure over the whole body.
After sexual release serotonin levels also change, which brings a sense of calm and relaxation.
Many crave sexual release because they feel stressed. Why is it that we feel strong sexual urges during stressful times in our lives, like when we are under pressure to meet a deadline at work or when we are studying for finals. We’re looking for the serotonin that brings that sense of calm and relaxation.
Others seek it because they are looking for human connection. We often turn to sexual experiences because we feel lonely or because we feel empty. Some people call oxytocin the “attachment hormone.” Nancy Pearcy in her book Love Thy Body says, “Scientists first learned about oxytocin because of its role in childbirth and breastfeeding. The chemical is released when a mother nurses her baby, and it stimulates an instinct for caring and nurturing. It is often called the attachment hormone. Imagine the surprise when scientists discovered that oxytocin is also released during sexual intercourse…Consequently, the desire to attach to the other person when we have sex is not only an emotion but also part of our chemistry.” These tell us that we’re looking for more than pleasure. We’re looking for relief from our anxiety and worry or for human connection when we’re lonely.
4:9-10a:
“I denied myself nothing my eyes desired” – Can you imagine being able to say that? “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired!” Anything I want, I could have immediately.
(Example of Floyd Mayweather flaunting money)
1 Kings 4:22-23: The daily food requirements for Solomon’s palace were [5.5 tons] of choice flour and [11 tons] of meal; also 10 oxen from the fattening pens, 20 pasture-fed cattle, 100 sheep or goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roe deer, and choice poultry. If you just take the grain and the oxen and cattle, that’s over 2lbs of grain and over 1lb of meat for 14,000 people. This was at a time when eating meat was a luxury. That’s staggering. Can you imagine having even one dinner on this scale? Who is coming for dinner? Who isn’t coming for dinner?
99.999% of people can’t say “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired.” We deny ourselves all sorts of things that our eyes desire, mainly because we don’t have the money or the power to take them.
Because of that, most of us are going down this path. Pleasure is our path. Because we cannot say, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired,” instead of saying there’s something wrong with the path, we tell ourselves we haven’t gone far enough. “If I could only afford that nice car I want.” “If I could only have financial security and not worry about money anymore.” And when you get these things and you still feel empty, you tell yourself, “It’s because I need more.”
Koheleth was the 0.001% wealthiest and most powerful. He could do anything he wanted to satisfy any desire. And look at what he concluded. Look at the lives of the 0.001%. Read their biographies. Read their interviews. You’ll find exactly what Koheleth concluded. The reason they are so unhappy is that they aren’t living in the veil of illusion we are. They got to the end of the road and it was a dead end.
It’s a powerful argument that living for pleasure ultimately fails us. Not that it fails to deliver the orgasm. Not that it fails to deliver the buzz. Not that it fails to deliver the feeling of comfort. It fails to deliver worthwhileness. It fails to give you what you are truly looking for, substance.
C.S. Lewis perfectly depicts our inability to fully be present and enjoy pleasurable things in life because of the subconscious realization that there is nothing to be gained from “life under the sun.” "The universe is a universe of nonsense, but since you are here, grab what you can. Unfortunately, however, there is, on these terms, so very little left to grab — only the coarsest sensual pleasures. You can’t except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behaviour of your genes."
You can’t go on getting any very serious pleasure from music if you know and remember that its air of significance is pure illusion, that you like it only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like it.
You may still, in the lowest sense, have a “good time”; but just in so far as it becomes very good, just in so far as it ever threatens to push you on from cold sensuality into real warmth and joy [for then] you will be forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between your own emotions and the universe in which you really live. Yet he concludes this from his experiment:
2:11 – It takes very little imagination to see the king in his splendid banquet hall, eating choice food, drinking the very best wine, and watching the most gifted entertainers. But when the party was over and King Solomon examined his heart, it was still dissatisfied and empty.
You would think that people who live for pleasure and experiences are happy people, but often they’re running from something or searching for something.
They’re either looking for a diversion from their problems. You see, this philosophy says that the only way to enjoy the day to day is to forcibly keep yourself from thinking. It’s the ostrich’s approach to the world. It buries its head in the sand says, “I’m safe.” But for those who’ve pursued pleasure as a purpose in life will tell you that it leads to misery and despair. Or they are looking for some meaning in pleasure. But as the Koheleth says, it’s
“a chasing after the wind” – Pleasure is both ever-present and ever-fleeting. It seems like the very moment you have it in your grip, it’s slipping through your fingers. When I fall in love, then I’ll be content. When I purchase that, then I’ll be gratified.
A recent study published in the illustrious scientific journal, Nature, sought to understand what happens to the brain during moments before a drug addict succumbs to the urge for a fix.
To that end, researchers developed a technique for assessing dopamine levels in the brains of cocaine-addicted rats. Question: How did they get these rats hooked on cocaine? Either way, this allowed them to observe instantaneous spikes in the chemical when the rats were given visual cues that the drug was available.
The researchers surgically outfitted rats with brain electrodes that recorded dopamine levels 10 times a second. They then trained the animals to associate the pressing of a tiny lever with the pleasure of a hit of cocaine. The team found that brain dopamine surged as the drug-addicted rats turned to walk over to the lever. The dopamine levels fell as the rats approached the lever but then spiked as they pressed the level for a hit. Because the spike occurred before the cocaine could have reached the brain, the scientists believed the spike was anticipatory.
To test that theory, researchers shut off the cocaine pump but continued to place the addicted rats in the same cage. Even though no reward followed when the animals pressed the lever, their dopamine levels shot up when they hit the lever.
You see we’re addicted to the feeling we get from anticipating the thing we want or desire. It’s the endless cycle of what the New Testament calls pleonexia, “the continual thirst for more.”
Whether our appetite is for food, sex, money or some other thrill, we actually become hungrier when we indulge. We stretch our stomachs, creating even more space to fill.
II. Without God who can eat or find enjoyment?
In his concluding remarks in chapter 2, Koheleth says…
2:24a: Koheleth resigns that there is nothing better in this life than to eat, drink and find satisfaction in work, even though subconsciously he knows that they are meaningless. Yet, it seems as if he snaps out of this. The light breaks in. He gets a glimpse of life above the sun.
2:24b-25: He realized that if there is life above the sun, then we can truly enjoy things in life because we don’t have to hang everything on these experiences.
I remember comforting a friend who just went through a messy break up. He was infatuated with this girl. You know how it is when you are in love. It can be so consuming, almost to a maddening degree. Well, an older brother said something to him that always stuck with me. “As wonderful as this girl is, she was never meant to bear the full weight of your significance and meaning.” Nothing. No one. Can bear the weight of your significance and meaning. Only God can. That’s why,
Our malfunctioning pleasure center is a gift. It’s a sensor that we can never be filled apart from God. If the pleasures of life and material possessions satisfied us, would we ever look to God?
Peter Greer says, “No amount of wealth, success or pleasure will truly fulfill us. At one point, Koheleth says that God has placed eternity in our hearts, a universe-sized expanse that would swallow the whole world if it could—and still be hungry.” The deep inner hunger you may feel can only be filled by God.
God wants you to enjoy pleasurable experiences, but not as an end in themselves. God created your nerve endings. He created your sex organs. God wants you to experience pleasure, but in it’s proper place. That’s why Paul says, “[Tell those who] put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain…to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17).