Ecclesiastes 4:4
Again, I saw that for all
toil and every skillful work, a man is envied by his neighbor. This also is
vanity and grasping for the wind.
If you go back to the origin of
civilization, you find it was founded by a murderer. Among the good things, the
shielding and protecting things, that are the outcome of civilization, what
Solomon mentions is always to be found -- the crushing of someone in order to
get gain. It may be done kindly or brutally, but the basis of success must be
the crushing of something or someone. There is a rivalry between men, and we
have made it a good thing; we have made ambition and competition the very
essence of civilized life. No wonder there is no room for Jesus Christ and no
room for the Bible. We are all so scientifically orthodox nowadays, so
materialistic and certain that rationalism is the basis of things, that we make
the Bible out to be the most revolutionary, unorthodox and heretical of books.
Jesus Christ echoes Solomon’s attitude: “For one’s life does not consist in the
abundance of the things which he possesses.”
At the basis of trade and civilized
life lie oppression and tyranny. Whether you are king or subject, says Solomon,
you cannot find joy in any system of civilized life -- or in trade or commerce
--for underneath, there is a rivalry that stings and bites, and the kindest man
will put his heel on his greatest friend. These are not the blind statements of
a disappointed man, but statements of facts discerned by the wisest man that
ever lived.
Excerpts from Oswald Chambers
Daily Devotional Bible, Reading 240
(8/28)
From Shade of His Hand
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