Ecclesiastes 2:16: “For [there is] no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool forever; seeing that which now [is] in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise [man]? as the fool.”
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” The Wasteland T.S. Eliot
When I was teaching literature in high school I often gave a homework assignment for my students to try and figure out just what T.S.Eliot meant when he said: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” It drove them crazy. High school teachers can really be sadistic at times. The truth is that no one is really sure what T.S. Eliot meant but when I interpret this from a Christian context I see something a little different than many of my literature professors saw. I saw that the Bible teaches that man is simply made from the dust of the ground. Dust is a reference to death and what I believe T.S. Eliot was saying was that man’s greatest fear is not dying but dying unremembered.
I was also a drama teacher in High School and we put on the play, Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens was also required reading in my literature classes. I tried to help my students understand the heart and soul of Charles Dickens, I tried to get them to look beyond the story of a man getting his head chopped off in Tale of Two Cities and understanding what Charles Darnay meant at the end of the book when he stood before the guillotine and said, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” As with any high school class, I had varying degrees of success. Hopefully I will be more successful with you.
You see, when you examine the life of Charles Dickens you find a close resemblance to Charles Darnay in fact Charles Darnay sounds an awful lot like Charles Dickens. Dickens related to Charles Darnay as he did with Scrooge. Do you ever wonder about the ending to a Christmas Carol?. An elderly man who will soon die just from old age, is reformed when he sees his grave stone and realizes he is going to die. There is a reoccurring theme all throughout the works of Charles Dickens and that is not the fear of death, but dying alone, having no one to weep for them when they die.
Man has this knowledge that he will one day die and knowing he cannot escape death he struggles to build a legacy so he will be remembered. At some point in our lives we wake up and realize that the hour glass is running out of sand, the train is pulling into the last stop and so we begin to evaluate our lives and wonder if our life here on earth had any real value at all. You can almost feel the desperation in President Obama and all the other past Presidents as they approached the end of their presidency, struggle and trying to maintain some legacy, something that history will show that they made a difference.
King Solomon faced the same struggle and yet he realized in Ecclesiastes 2:16 that both the wise and the fool will not be remembered. Odd, after almost 3,000 years we do remember Solomon. He has not been forgotten. There are many historical figures that are not forgotten. Taking a close look at this word remembrance reveals something very deep about Solomon. Something we all realize. The word for remembrance is zachar. This word does mean to remember, to call to mind. But Solomon says that there is no remembrance of a wise man, yet we remember him. To put this in a proper context we need to look at the Semitic root where this word is used for a recalling to mind for a present feeling or thought, a remembrance for a purpose. We remember events of history to learn from history so we do not repeat the mistakes of history. We remember a person, a loved one for a purpose, to bring us comfort or to call to mind things that they taught us. I don’t think Solomon was talking about people remembering him or us after we die, but that in eternity, whatever we accomplish in an earthly materialistic sense is not going to amount to a hill of beans in eternity. President Obama or other past presidents are just going to be another soul in heaven, they will have no special place, no special recognition, and whatever they accomplished here on earth will not matter. Leaders of industry, humanities, education, health, will one day pass from this world. Oh, they will be remembered, but it will not do them a lick of good wherever they end up.
Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot pointed us to one of the most misdirected motivations of mankind, wanting to be remembered after we die when in reality, it will no longer matter to that person after he is gone. He will not be able to sit at his own wake and listen to all the nice things people say about him. He will not be able to gaze upon the statute erected in his honor, he will be just another soul in eternity and he will realize that the billions of dollars he accumulated while on earth does not matter. The only thing that matters is how much time he spent on earth getting to know the One he would spend eternity with.
Lately I have been feeling stressed out because I am 64 years old and I have forty years of research and Biblical studies that I want to write down, that I want to publish, it is my legacy, it is my purpose in life that I want to go on after I have gone on to be with Jesus. Yet, I think I understand what Solomon was saying in the fact that there is no remembrance of the wise or the fool. When I am resting in the arms of the Jesus I have loved all my life the only thing I am going to remember are not the books I wrote, not the sermons I preached, not the reviews I got on my books, it is going to be only one thing I will remember and that are those times when Jesus and I just walked together, talked together, laughed together, cried together. Fifty years from now, no one will remember Chaim Bentorah. He may not even have enough visitors to his wake to warrant to a funeral director’s time. But fifty years from now I will be remembering
stories of God’s faithfulness and love with people who are in heaven because of something God used Chaim Bentorah to say or do, fifty years from now no one is going to ask about my books for in the presence of the God that I have been studying about and writing about, it will no longer matter all that matters is that I am resting eternally in his arms.
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