Enjoy Life, Enjoy God

A CYNIC SPEAKS

March 20, 2009

To be jaded, cynical, critical and undercutting everything...it's become the modern way. But what is the role of cynicism in the Christ-follower's life?

What does anyone gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun?
- Ecclesiastes 1:3,9 TNIV

The The preacher, also known as Ecclesiastes. speaks. The Book of Ecclesiastes is criticized as jaded, words of a hardened skeptic, even a cynic, but maybe one misunderstood. Instead, maybe the preacher, Ecclesiastes, brings us the Word of God. The preacher invites us to reconsider how we live.

Nearly five hundred years before Christ, Socrates spoke at his trial, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Such thoughts ring similar to Ecclesiastes' sermon. Otherwise we are at risk of merely putting in time, enduring the daily grind, and we just put in time. Ecclesiastes invites us to examine our lives.
Joyfully,

Dale Patterson