Ecclesiastes is the testimony of Qohelet, "the Preacher," written in the wisdom tradition associated with Solomon and preserved for Israelites who had to live ordinary lives in a world that did not always make moral sense. For eleven and a half chapters, the Preacher has stared at vapor — pleasure, work, wealth, wisdom — and named it all hevel. Then, at the last, the editor steps in. After every honest complaint has been logged, the book lands on two verbs and a coming court. This is wisdom literature's last word to a people tempted to despair or to drift.

From the writers we read together

Nancy Pearcey

Christian philosopher, author of Total Truth and Love Thy Body

Pearcey's lifelong project has been to refuse the modern split between a private "upper story" of faith and values and a public "lower story" of facts and work. She argues that this two-story house is the chief idol of our age — we keep God in the attic and run the rest of life on borrowed assumptions. Ecclesiastes 12:14 takes a sledgehammer to the floor between the stories. Every deed, including every secret thing, will be brought into judgment. There is no lower story where God does not look.

That should land on a Christian as both threat and relief. Threat, because the parts of our lives we have walled off — the browser tab, the resentment, the way we speak when no one important is listening — are not walled off from God. Relief, because the parts of our lives we thought were too small to matter — the diapers, the spreadsheet, the kindness no one saw — are not too small for him either. Pearcey's point and Qohelet's point converge: a whole life lived before a whole God.