What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. | Ecclesiastes 3:9–13
Whenever you come into contact with another human being, you are coming into contact with a complicated web of priorities. When I say priorities, I mean a system of values that not only deems what is important and what is not, but also a means to engage every decision and statement of fact. Our priorities not only determine what we choose to make time for, but also what truth statements we deem worthy of our time.
We see this playing out on a national level right now in regard to vaccines, mandates, and everything COVID-related. The issue is not just about what the science says or who knows how to read the statistics, it is about what concerns you prioritize. People weigh all of the issues involved and make choices as to which concerns hold the most value to them. There are a number of driving forces behind which priorities hold the most weight:
1. FEAR: concern and worry can give an issue extreme power. Our desire to avoid an outcome can cause us to give an issue a great deal of power.
2. LOVE: on the flipside, when we love something, we react very strongly to anything that threatens it. We want to see what we love thriving and so we organize our priorities to make that happen.
3. IDENTITY: often we prioritize based on what we want to believe about ourselves rather than what we actually are. This causes us to defensively create narratives and place value to redefine our image.
4. FOCUS: sometimes a cultural moment or movement will put a temporary spotlight on an issue, giving it greater value. If it is someone that you don’t like putting the focus on, this focus may cause you to reject it with greater force than you otherwise would. The cultural intensity makes it feel like issues have a greater importance to our existence than they actually do.
There are many more forces that form our priorities, but even in these four, we can see how leaning a bit more toward one or the other would cause someone to interpret data and life situations quite differently. The first takeaway from this is to approach people with humility, recognizing that you may be approaching the world through a completely different rubric. When we look at another person’s conclusion, we can’t assume that they took the same path that we would to get there. Their decisions are usually based on a completely different ordering of priorities. We shouldn’t imagine another person’s motives.
There is another side to this I want to think about: as Christians, we have been gifted God’s eternal priorities that He designed into Creation. All of the variables that I mentioned above, and the many others that affect how we live and think, must be held together by some constant. Everyone has one truth, an absolute and immovable fact, that all other priorities submit to. Getting this ‘higher power’ right is going to inform whether or not the rest of your priorities are in proper balance. The issue for many people is not just that they have chosen the wrong ultimate, but that their higher power is continually changing. Nothing that they believe in or trust actually has the power to hold everything else together; they bounce from one absolute to another. When what is supposed to be a constant is another variable, it gives life a sense of purposeless wandering. Nothing has eternal value and so life is just a bunch of variables that you shift around until you die.
The book of Ecclesiastes points this out to us when it calls life under the sun: vanity and a striving after wind (1:14). The author is pointing to the fact that without an organizing purpose and ultimate truth, all that is done on this earth becomes vain efforts. Continually shifting priorities is done in an attempt to catch the wind.
God gives us the eternal constant in Himself. In this, He places eternity in our hearts, giving life a purpose and meaning that it lacks without Him. This allows His people to live life under the sun that is about far more than trying to create our own sense of meaning. He has invited us into the truth that already exists. He opens our eyes to a world that proclaims His beauty and goodness and allows us to partake. The author of Ecclesiastes says it this way:
I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.
While life does not always go well and we have to fight for joy, God’s gift to us is that if we are pursuing Him, none of our efforts are fruitless. In Him, we are invited into a life that will end in joy and fullness. We can look forward to this, even when we don’t experience it now. Our priorities are shaped by faith – trusting that our constant will fulfill His promises. Our purpose becomes about getting our priorities aligned with God (and He gives us plenty of guidance in His Word). It also allows us to live with confidence and lightness, knowing that His eternal plan is sure. In a world of shifting priorities, we need to be reminded:
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. | 1 Corinthians 15:58