Just finished reading his Three Philosophies of Life, which examines Ecclesiastes--Life as Vanity, Job--Life as Suffering, and The Song of Songs--Life as Love.
100% recommended, I especially liked his take on the inclusion of Ecclesiastes in sacred scripture. "Ecclesiastes is the one book in the Bible that modern man needs most to read, for it is Lesson One, and the rest of the Bible is Lesson Two, and modernity does not heed Lesson Two because it does not heed Lesson One. Whenever I teach the Bible as a whole, I always begin with Ecclesiastes. In another age, we could begin with God's beginning, Genesis. But in this age, the Age of Man, we must begin where our patient is; we must begin with Ecclesiastes."
And then he goes on to say this:
Let me put the point in a single word. It is a word that I guarantee will shock and offend you, though it comes from Saint Paul. Paul used this word to describe his life without Christ, his life full of worldly successes, education, wealth, power, prestige, and privilege. Paul was "a Pharisee of the Pharisees", a Roman citizen, educated by Gamaliel, "the light of Israel". But before Christ put him into the post-Ecclesiastes relationship with God, what was his life? Shit. "Dung"--that was his word for it, not mine. Look up Phillippians 3:8 in the bold old King James version. Compared with the all-excelling knowledge of God in Christ Jesus, all of the greatest things in this world, according to Paul, are skubala--shit. Dung. Job's dung heap.That is the message of Ecclesiastes, for a Christian.
More tomorrow, on what he said when he wrote about Job.
