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Book Review
Both Sides Now
Ecclesiastes and the human condition
Peter Barnes
The Banner of Truth Trust 2004 104p
Review by Ray Hoekzema
Barnes over-viewing life and using Ecclesiastes with its key word ‘vanity’; at the close of the first chapter asks: “Is it all vanity? Is that all there is to life? It is tough, rather pointless, and then we die. Can we say anything more than that?” It must be the question on everyone’s lips for in just those first few pages, Barnes strings together the quoted views of no less than 31 people.
Our starting point, says Barnes, for us to understand life, we must understand that we have eternity and madness in our hearts. Without God we lose our sense of decency, our capacity for reason, and our reason for living. Joni Mitchell sang that there was nothing to integrate life, to pull it all together, and to make sense of its many enigmas. But Barnes says that by grace we can go further than that. We cannot know everything but we can know life in Christ. But he then quotes Blaise Pascal as saying that it is not possible to know Christ without knowing God and our wretchedness alike. Jesus Christ is the object of all things, the centre towards which all things tend.
The author works his way through the major issues of Ecclesiastes, wisdom, pleasure, work, Utopia – the impossible dream, and if all fails, says Barnes, why not try religion?
Ecclesiastes, itself the Word of God; and Barnes obviously does not want to pontificate, and so he quotes just about anybody who is somebody. He offers a chapter in which he says that there are some consolations in life but they require a perspective that comes from the outside.
The book offers many positive perspectives and
is best summed up quoting Barnes’ own question: ‘How will you wake up
tomorrow morning?’ Will you ask: ‘What is the point in this rat race?’
Or will you say: ‘This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice
and be glad in it.’
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