Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.  As I said to someone last week, it’s a depressing book.  Ecclesiastes is where the line made famous by the King James Version comes from:  “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

Just to be clear, vanityin King James English is used differently than we often use it. It’s not about conceit or ostentation, it’s about futility.  The New Living Translation puts it this way:  “Everything is meaningless…, completely meaningless.”  Like I said, Ecclesiastes is a depressing book, and if all we had in the Bible was what Solomon (the wisest man of all time) wrote there, we’d be in deep trouble.

Ecclesiastes points us to one of the many paradoxes we find in the Bible—and in life.  What is a paradox?  A paradox is “a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement, even if actually well-founded (Oxford).”  Notice that it only seemscontradictory.  Put another way, a paradox points to the tension that often exists between two equally true or valid statements.

So, back to Ecclesiastes and meaninglessness.  What do we do with it in the broader context of the Bible, life and leadership?  The New Testament writer to the Hebrews has something different to say—that “Faith is the confidence that what we hopefor will actually happen; it gives us assuranceabout things we cannot see (11:1).”  Put hopeand assuranceopposite completely meaningless and there’s a tension—and it’s not just some “Old Testament-New Testament” thing.  It’s a real tension that runs throughout the Bible—and throughout life.  The hard truth is that there are times we can’t help but wonder if something is worth it, whether it’s at work or school, with a family relationship or friendship, or in some other area.  There are times when things seemhopeless.

When it comes to leadership specifically, someone has said that the first task is to “define reality.”  Someone else has said that leaders are “dealers in hope.”  Let’s face it, reality and hope don’t always seem to go together.  Reality is often much more dire than we either recognize or admit, and many leaders have failed by not being honest with themselves or those they lead.  I’ve been there myself.  We have to be honest about where things are at.

And yet, perhaps more often than we realize, we should listen carefully to what Sir Winston Churchill said:  “Never give up.”  Now it’s true that there are no guarantees that anything we do will change things. But it’s also true that doing nothing will probably guarantee that they will definitely not change.  If all we do is settle ourselves in the mud and muck of life—whether it’s professional or personal—we can pretty much be sure that we’ll stay there.

There are two things I’ve found to be true, even in the most dire circumstances. One is that doing our best—and doing what is right and proper—often leads to good outcomes we do not immediately see, either for ourselves or others (Back to Hebrews 11:1 and the assurance of things we cannot see).  Second, doing our best—and what is right and proper—gives us the assurance that we did all we could, and the ability to say that we sought to maintain our own integrity. And even if the final result is not what we would have wished, knowing those things is worth more than we probably realize.