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Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes QUOTES

Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes QUOTES

1 " The Wisdom Literature needs Ecclesiastes then, in order to keep us from entrusting ourselves to trite formulas under the sun. It is not that Proverbs ignores exceptions. It too makes plain that rules aren’t enough and that context matters for how we apply wisdom. "

― Zack Eswine , Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

2 " Ecclesiastes offers an exceptional voice to remind us who are like Job’s friends or Jesus’ disciples that we cannot walk out into our neighborhoods under the sun and hand out a “one size fits all” shirt. "

― Zack Eswine , Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

3 " We are selective with data. We like to reduce complexity, to simplify it. Some of us like to reduce disquiets, because we want everything to be happy. Others of us reduce delights because we are more familiar with sadness and hardship. The Preacher embodies a way of hearing that allows both to remain. We are created to enter mystery and contradiction with the fear of God and let it sit. "

― Zack Eswine , Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

4 " But the Preacher isn’t God. In fact, the Preacher, or his namesake, Solomon, did not live up to the wisdom he had learned and taught. “Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done” (1 Kings 11:6). With this, we are invited to consider one last truth in this vain life under the sun. Every human wise man has fallen short of his own true wisdom. The Preacher cannot save the oppressed and the oppressor whose plight he has so deftly and humanly entered. The Preacher cannot save himself. "

― Zack Eswine , Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

5 " Pride, anger, naivete, and nostalga are like Stalin's communists waiting to deliver Poland out of the hands of Hitler's Nazis. What looks like a rescue only recovers and repeats the oppression. When God's people walk out of God's house and respond to the folly they find under the sun by becoming foolish themselves, there is little wonder why it can seem that God is nowhere to be found in the news, our neighborhoods, or our daily toil. We become like firefighters who, upon entering a burning building, disdain the water hoses and instead turn confidently to blowtorches and try helplessly to douse what blazes. "

― Zack Eswine , Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes

6 " We learn a wisdom kind of outreach, an evangelism or testimony as those who are human beings wrestling with it all. It is as if the Preacher causes us to put off our religious persona and get honest about our being human in a fallen world. Likewise, "

― Zack Eswine , Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes