When Life Is/Is Not Worth Living

So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: 

• and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; 
• and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. 
• Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. 
• Yea, better is he than both they, which has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.  Ecclesiastes 4:1-3

In this chapter Solomon deals with injustice and tyranny; over-reaching and craftiness. 

• Verses 1–3 are a statement of things as they are. 
• The spell between birth and death is mine, and I along with other human beings make the kind of life I live. 
• I cannot make it independently of other wills, unless I happen to be a Napoleon or a Kaiser and bind my will on everything under my power.”

The oppression of tyranny means that I drive my will on other people, and if they do not do what I want, I break them. 

• It is an oppression in which one power crushes another. 
• “The tears of such as were oppressed”—nothing can heal them. 
• Think of the devastations and havoc throughout the world just now. 
• What is going to make up to the people who are broken? 
• To say that “every cloud has a silver lining” is a kind lie. 

Unless a man can get into a relationship with the God Whom the Bible reveals, life is not worth living. 

• Most of us are mercifully shielded, we are not sensitive enough to feel or to experience the terrific things that Solomon experienced and saw in his lifetime; 
• we see things through colored, or cynical, glasses, but the cynic’s standpoint is not a true one, it distorts things.
• In human life as it is, the oppression of tyranny has the biggest run. 
• Take the things we experience out of our own circle where they are balanced by domestic affections, into a setting where these things do not count, and see if Solomon is drawing a long bow. 
• Jesus Christ in His day submitted to the providential order of tyranny represented by Pilate (see John 18:36; 19:10–11); 
• He saw that tyranny was inevitable because the nation to which He belonged had fallen from the standard it should have lived up to.

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” 

• There will come one day a personal and direct touch from God when every tear and perplexity, every oppression and distress, every suffering and pain, and wrong and justice will have a complete and ample and overwhelming explanation. 
• The Christian faith is exhibited by the man who has the spiritual courage to say that that is the God he trusts in, 
• and it takes some moral backbone to do it. 
• It is easier to attempt to judge everything in the span between birth and death.

Adapted Excerpt From Shade of His Hand

Oswald Chambers