Ecc 12:2, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?”
That’s nice and affirming. Greatness, love of self—these are vanities? The WTF Puritan Scolds think so. To them, everything is vanity, everything is stupid, everything is a striving after wind. Chasing gain is bougie, and bougie is evil, so don’t chase gain. Even greatness—what Keith Hill, pastor emeritus of my church, St. Giles, writes about—is suspect to them. Greatness feels bougie, and bougie feels oppressive, so better to be self‑effacing and confess your privilege again. Meanwhile Pamela Anderson preaches the gospel of self‑love, and Jim Palmer preaches the gospel of self‑sufficiency, both insisting you do it yourself because relying on a higher power is just another vanity and striving after wind.
Anderson writes in “Love of Self“, “In the face of everything… no matter what life has in store… The good, the bad, and the ugly… I mean that with everything I have… because I know what it feels like to be on the verge of collapse…to be so tired, humiliated… so lost in the noise of everything life throws at you—that the idea of your own becoming feels like too much to hold….”
To love onesself is heresy for the Puritan Scolds. Because self-worth implies value and capability, two attributes that feel bougie and bougie is evil. So not awesome. Rather, self-loathing gets praise from the Puritan Scolds. How long has it been since you acknowedged that you live on stolen land? Whatever. It’s been too long. Do it again.
Last one, before moving on, Jim Palmer evangelizes from his own temple on Facebook the idea that God is just human potential with a halo filter. It’s the same old move: downgrade the divine, upgrade the self, call it awakening. In the end, it’s just another way of saying we’re on our own.
Nothing New, Ever
The answer, then, is that greatness is suspect, love of self is gospel, and we’re all on our own. Awesome. Excuse me while I go confess my privilege over a bowl of Macaronade de Haute Crème aux Fromages du Terroir.
That Mac N Cheese — the real kind, the kind a French wife and mother makes — would use the rind left from yesterday’s cheese, fresh pasta from the open market, and a splash of the cream her husband saves for his morning coffee. The truth is quieter and more hopeful: ordinary people caring for each other is enough.
Palmer would rather not need God. It’s tidier if God is just a character in a D&D campaign — a narrative device, not a presence. If that’s true, then yes, it’s all up to us. That conclusion is irrefutable in a world that denies mystery, miracles, or anything that can’t be graphed or therapized.
But I don’t live in that world. My world has Cheshire cats and gumdrops, wrong‑turn serendipities, and the kind of grace that shows up uninvited and refuses to explain itself. Things happen that Palmer’s framework can’t reconcile because they aren’t supposed to happen and yet do.
No, Not Like That
Palmer never says “God is dead,” but he treats the church as God, and the church is dead to him. So we end up in the same place as Nietzsche: God is dead and we killed Him. Human beings can become good if we scrape off the damage religion did. Because religion hurt him and he won’t forgive it.
As for Anderson — apologies to her, because the post is behind a paywall and I’m an old, broke cab driver LARPing as a blogger. I’m riffing on the phrase Love of Self. We can’t love ourselves into a better world. Self‑love collapses into self‑attachment and detachment from God. Creation becomes a hall of mirrors where the only truth is what we can see in front of our noses. Of what I can gather about Anderson she seems to have moved toward Christ, so there is that.
Keith says greatness isn’t flashy. Hollywood’s version — the bacchanal of fame Ms. Anderson once lived — is the explosion, not the foundation. Her beauty sold magazines. Baywatch existed to put her in a bathing suit. And yes, not everyone could have done what she did. Nothing against her achievements.
The greatness I admire is quieter. It’s the candy maker on YouTube who makes mastery look like anyone could do it. Or Anderson’s quiet years raising two sons. An old man with a cigar‑box guitar in front of a general store singing the blues like the world hasn’t ended yet. My heroes weren’t nobody.
Ain’t Nobody
Keith again: “Turn just a single page past Babel in Genesis, and the contrasting picture of greatness begins. It features an old couple, Abraham and Sarah, who fought doubts about their own aging bodies to hold on to God’s unlikely promise of an heir. Flip to the next Old Testament book, and you’ll find a middle‑aged under‑achiever named Moses, who even with much self‑doubt took up God’s calling to lead his people to freedom.”
Ascendant success like Ms. Anderson’s isn’t bestowed. It’s the end product of hard work and fortune. And it’s not what the Puritan Scolds want it to be — a fate delivered because she was born into privilege. The luck of who our parents are doesn’t assure us of much. Hunter Biden, anybody?
We are responsible for a few things: figure out our gifts, acquire the knowledge and skills to use them, and then do the work. No fairy godmother poofed into Ms. Anderson’s life and handed her a prince. My inner voice says, “no shit.”
Jesus weren’t nobody. His ancestor David was a shepherd nobody thought could be king. Christ’s parents, Mary and Joseph, weren’t nobody. Joseph, on learning Mary was pregnant, planned to break off the engagement. Then an angel told him the child was the Son of God — the first instance of this is either nuts or true. I say it was true. Some still say it’s absurd.
Ten Thousand
The greatness I admire comes from long practice, thousands of hours of failure and rejection, until the iterations build and it ceases to be concious technique. Mastery happens when it goes beyond something we do and becomes something we are. The good news is that mastery from long practice is possible for all of us. No special gifting is needed. Just pick something to pursue and keep at it. Yes, find a teacher and train diligently. The fantasy of instant mastery is just that, a fantasy. No one escapes the work. The other fantasy, that talent needs no striving, that the best work is the least trained work, is another vanity, another striving after wind.
And most of the time, most people who pursue greatness, run into a wall of indifference. Nobody cares. The Son of God is born and how is he received? With anger and suspicion. Fury so great that the rabbis wanted him crucified. Roman desperation to contain uprising that when God’s people demanded that Jesus be crucified they did it. More current, our attention span for the latest gone viral TikToker is fleeting.
Ecc 5:10-12, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them, and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes? Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep.”
Do This
We spend a lot of time examining our toxic navel lint and proscribing what we shan’t do. If only we would not do the wrong things, then life would be so much better. But that’s the trap: the more declarative the rule, the bigger the cloud of argument around what it actually means. Take the simplest one — “Treat people the way you wish to be treated.” Nice. Clean. Feels like it should fit on a bumper sticker. First question: how do you wish to be treated? I’ll wait.
And if it’s all a striving after wind — if everything is vanity of vanities — then what’s the point? Why bother? Nobody cares, right? The pursuit of greatness is stupid. It’s bougie, and bougie is oppressive. You don’t want to be oppressive, do you. DO YOU!?
Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, tells us to do two things: fear God and enjoy life. That’s it. Not “hate yourself” or “confess your privilege every morning like brushing your teeth” or “strive for greatness until you collapse.” Fear God. Enjoy life. Job done.
God is Alive
Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus give us God’s law — the declarative rules. They tell us repeatedly that we have a choice: follow the law or eat the punishment. Following the law seems wise. But the law is millennia old, and we are still arguing over what doing so means. The rules are clear; the interpretations are a fog bank.
Enjoy life sounds like a plan. I live in one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations in history. What we define as poor is stupid rich for most of the world. Where I live saving to buy a house would take 274 years for much of the world. Even on my SSA pittance I can afford things that are unobtainable to much of the world Lucky me.
Enjoy life, though, is tricky. There is enjoyment that has my Calvinist Puritan ancestors spinning in their grave from outrage. These times and the place I live in is an amazing cornucopia of very heretical joys. So sure, “enjoy life”. And here we are again, “what do you mean by that?”
Some is Not Vanity
Ecc 2:24-26, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.”
Ecc 3:12-13, “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.
What isn’t vanity is to fear God and to enjoy his creation. Enjoy the purpose we find for ourselves once we are grown. Most of us will never achieve the attention of Anderson or Palmer. We may not look back at a career as a pastor for a prominent Presbyterian church. If we sing folk songs in front of a General Store because we like music. Beyond that? Maybe not. But it’s enough. And some of the WTF Purtan Scolds might hear us and start tapping their feet.