Although ours is a modern world, it is enjoyable to see what the ancients can teach us about life. Readers of biographies and listeners to podcasts well know that most of our modern dilemmas were already being discussed, disputed, and in some cases solved well over 2000 years ago. If history teaches us anything it is that there is truth to the claim that there is nothing new under the sun.

Yet as we peer through the mists of time how do we separate fact from fiction? Was Odysseus, for example, a real person? Obviously a good many of the ordeals he faced after leaving Troy were fanciful, but when Heinrich Schliemann’s mid 1800’s excavations lent weight to the idea of a historical Troy, scholars started to think that Homer might have been talking about real events.

Dip a toe into religious writings however, and the waters can get even choppier. Sometimes what people want to believe seems to be at odds with other historical records and the average reader has difficulty untangling it all. Even today in the United States there are vigorous, to put it very mildly, disputes over interpretations of the Bible.

I will leave scriptural scholarship to the experts, but just out of curiosity I was wondering if the Old Testament had anything to say about being average. I thought that since antiquarian thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Chinese court officials seemed to comment on many aspects of the human condition, that something as thunderous as the Old Testament would surely weigh in about average folk.

My findings were slim, however. Now granted I have friends who put forth such figures as Moses, Gideon, and Saul as being men of solid average stock who made good—at least temporarily in Gideon’s and Saul’s case, but I am not yet sure if I accept their reasoning as certainly there was something about them that bespoke leadership, judgeship, and even Kingship qualities. Looking further, we find books like Proverbs that are chock full of admonishments on good character and an honorable life, but talk about average guys and gals seems to be in short supply… with one exception: The biblical book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes? Now if you know anything about this text you are probably demanding that I put up a big sign with words in large font and red color:

Warning: Possible Buzzkill

 You see, no one would consider Ecclesiastes a bucketful of sunshine and roses. It certainly is not the basis for that motivational speech before the big game. In fact, it can be downright depressing. Why? Because to a casual reader, Ecclesiastes paints a pretty grim description of the futility of our life on earth. The ashes to ashes and dust to dust kind of thing. Here is a good review should you wish: Ecclesiastes

Before getting to Ecclesiastes though, I did make some other stops earlier in the Bible—including all the way back to Genesis. Many say that Cain, for example, was a pretty average gent. He had taken up work as a proto-farmer of sorts by tilling and working the land—definitely a hard-scrabble existence in those days before air-conditioned GPS guided tractors and safe pesticides. Able, his brother, was a shepherd and by the standards of the day apparently had the better gig. Either way, Cain hedged a pretty big grievance about it all.

This came to the surface when God preferred Able’s sacrifice to Cain’s. Just as an aside, I have always wondered why in the Old Testament one individual or one group had to always be chosen over another as if it were a sporting event, but it was a tough neighborhood in those days and I was not consulted. So tough were the streets in fact that when Cain’s sacrifice was found less than adequate, he set aside all his training from his anger management classes and murdered Able. Now let me say that while we at Just Average Inc. champion the average person, this was definitely not the best way to resolve the situation.

With Cain having lost the plot, I turn your gaze back to Ecclesiastes. Although the thoughts and musings in the text can seem to be hopeless, there are a couple of reassuring nuggets in there for us average folk. Not just reassuring, but even enjoyable; for where else can you read of approaching old age described in in such terms as the grinders ceasing (teeth going bad) and the windows darkened (failing eyesight)?

Although Ecclesiastes is stone-cold sober, in an odd way it does fight the corner of the common man. It does this by punching very hard against those of elevated stature in life.

For example:

“As he came forth from his mother’s womb, naked shall he go again as he came, and shall take nothing for his labor, which he may carry away in his hand.” -5:15; American Standard Version

“I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” -1:16-18; King James Version

Or this:

“I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both. Then I thought in my heart, “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?” I said in my heart, “This too is meaningless.” For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die!”
-2:13-16; NIV

Woah! Were these passages not accepted to be in the canon of Holy Writ, I would wonder if a little more conciliatory tone against the great and the good of this world would be more fitting. After all, at Just Average Inc. we indeed like to poke at our betters but we always do it in the spirit of good fun and not as a reminder that one day they will be dead!

But look closely and you will see that the author of Ecclesiastes can also put on the soft gloves. Here he consoles us with advice that we should follow the rhythms of life:

“There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.”  -2:24; KJV

Knowing that we are not on this earth forever, we as the average can nonetheless take great consolation and even enjoyment in those rhythms of life—of eating, drinking, and laboring. For even in the grimness of Ecclesiastes there is an appreciation of that deep current of beauty that runs through all of our lives—no matter who or what we are.

Sure there is always someone we could envy, but it is rather meaningless is it not? Not to sound trite, but they are human just like us after all and the good news is that as one gets older the any pangs of envy almost completely disappear. Now I know that some would say that my thinking here is just a cop-out for my being average, but I disagree. Satisfaction in life is an intensely personal thing and if we can’t find beauty in eating, drinking, and laboring, then how will we ever find it in anything else? That, I have to say, is a very nice side of that cold sober reality that Ecclesiastes is so famous for.

In the meantime, stay average!