It was the last full day of summer camp for our youth group. The week had been an encouraging time for me personally, even as I dealt with the inevitable logistical headaches that accompany the youth pastor’s role at camp. Toward the end of each evening, after night chapel, our youth group would meet for an hour or so and discuss the day. I had been consistently moved by my students’ willingness to honestly engage with God and scripture.
By Friday, however, the “real world” was again impinging on my consciousness. I had left for camp weary of trying to make the various fragments of my life fit into some kind of coherent whole. I had let down my closest loved ones. I had not felt much cause for optimism. Now, at the end of camp week, the mantra of Ecclesiastes, that “all is vanity and a chasing after wind,” was again making an appearance on my mental stage.
But then something happened at the end of chapel that evening. The worship leader began telling the origin story of a song we had been singing all week. He had written it, as it turns out, during a years-long bout of depression so debilitating that he could not get out of bed for days. He had developed crippling social anxiety, making his work as a musician impossible for a time. Having finally sought help (“It’s okay to reach out to people who have made the study of the human brain their life’s work”), he could now function and work again even as he continued battling the darkness. There was not the slightest note of spiritual triumphalism anywhere in his story, only humble dependence on God and other people.
During group time, it quickly became apparent that I was far from the only one impacted by the worship leader’s testimony. The moment, in fact, seemed right to say something to my youth group that I wish someone had spoken to my 15-year-old self, a few words that I think might have helped me avoid a great deal of mental darkness in my life.
“You know,” I started, “that I’m all about taking personal responsibility for your own problems. For your own mistakes and your own sin. It’s pretty irritating to me when people blame all their problems on others or on society.” The silence was absolute. I cleared my throat.
“But, that said, I know that you guys are carrying burdens that I didn’t have to carry when I was in high school, and that wasn’t even very long ago. You are dealing with stressors and pressures that I never had to. You can’t even get away from it anymore. It’s everywhere. I think we as a society have let you down. And I’m sorry.”
“So, I want you to remember something for me going forward. I hope that what I’m about to say means nothing to you, and that it never does. But if you find yourself so sad and exhausted that you can barely do the simplest things; or if you can’t slow down all the thoughts racing around in your brain; or if you can’t concentrate on anything to save your life, please remember, none of this is your fault. You’re gonna feel like it is, but I want you to know now that it’s not your fault.”
My words of would-be absolution hung in the air as I paused a beat for dramatic impact before continuing. It was during that beat, and timed to absolute perfection, that someone released the most full-toned, most comprehensive, most inexorable fart that I have ever encountered in all my life. It was epoch-making. It was an instant classic. It will be referenced years from now.
An exuberant chaos filled the room. My little treatise on mental health was obviously in shambles, but such is life. Everything, after all, is vanity.
But something had shifted. After we had calmed down a bit, my students started talking, including and especially some of the most introverted. And for the next hour, they spoke of the love and safety and acceptance that they felt in our youth group. They confessed and repented of sin, spoke of the nearness of God, and of their longings to know him more. They reconciled with each other and even expressed gratitude and hope and joy. Only a small handful of times before have I been present for such a clear and present working of the Spirit.
In the moment, the fart felt like (an admittedly hilarious) repudiation of my speech, God and nature’s way of shushing someone who was bloviating to an audience who didn’t need his words. And maybe that is still the right interpretation. But more importantly, the entire evening helped me understand the maxim “All is vanity” as a liberating rather than as a nihilistic word.
Whether it be youth ministry or Sunday preachers, ours is merely to show up to the work of ministry and do it to the best of whatever ability God has given us that day. In an important sense this is, indeed, vanity. Even our finest words and best deeds will pass away eventually, and often they do so quickly with no visible effect whatsoever. But the inevitable vanity of our work frees us from the weight of realizing the eternal, which is in the purview of God alone. God uses our words, or he doesn’t — or, what I think is most common, he uses them in weird and unexpected ways.
“All is vanity” — but on the other side of the empty tomb this is an expression of irony rather than of cynicism. Indeed, it’s an irony that undermines both cynicism and triumphalism, and thereby makes real hope possible. It is the nature of things to go wrong: sometimes tragically and sometimes comically. But either way, God gets our attention so that he can pour out hope into our hearts through his Spirit, a hope that does not disappoint.
Ecclesiastes has a line “everything is vanity or meaningless.” But your story made me think immediately of a slightly more provocative translation of that text: “Stinking hot air! Utter Nonsense! It’s all just a big fart!” (Cal Seerveld, God Picks up the pieces: Ecclesiastes as a chorus of voices). Such a translation can give space to be honest about things we’ve been taught not to talk about and then also to recognize how God’s grace is especially there, too.