Ellul does a brilliant job delineating the contradictions that permeates the writing of Ecclesiastes. He notes that contradictions are "an essential principle of Ecclesiastes " and that truth in life and about life can not be found without realizing that life itself is contradictory. For Ellul Ecclesiastes affirms the true character of human existence, which itself is essentially contradictory. He states, "Qohelet, the teacher, is a skilled surgeon who opens wounds, including the one wound that dominates human life, and reveals the incredible confusion in our beliefs and assertions, our absolutes and our occupations. Unresolvable contractions forms one of the guidelines of this book." For example, regarding happiness, Ecclesiastes calls it worthless, yet he maintains that the only thing that a person can expect in this life is to take joy and pleasure and live as happily as possible - a contraction.

The two predominant and overriding strengths of Jacques Ellul's work are his topical treatment of the key issues that the Qohelet brings up and how he show that Qohelet's words are for us today contemporary and cosmopolitan. Ellul underlines how today "there is nothing new under the sun" regarding the nature of humankind. We still face a crisis of morality and philosophy, of human customs and grandeur, of the foundations of our collective life - a political crisis. He and Qohelet see a crisis of both the individual and society, a crisis of both the immediate and the chronic. The topical treatment that Ellul uses to illuminate the mind of the Q is refreshingly alive with current day application. He integrates the disorder and contractions inherent in our society today, into the word's and wisdom of the Q's day - over 2000 years ago.

His concluding chapter "God" removes Ellul from the radical harbinger that he is and places him back into the fold of orthodox Christianity. He fails to indite God, as Ecclesiastes did, for breach of covenant, but he does leave evil and injustice at the feet of God when he says "everything is made by God, but you can in no way explain or understand it.... God does everything including all the things that we just criticized." He retains a monotheistic "Christ Only" theology, whereby Christ is the "only one" person that God incarnated.

Without reservation I would recommend Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes for any student of the Old Testament. This book stands out as one of the most probing writings on the Qohelet today. What sets it apart from other commentaries on Ecclesiastes is the contemporary application to today's society that Jacques Ellul brings.

The most terrible revelation he offers is when he points out that the most informed individuals (in the sense of consuming the most media) are the most propagandized (but unaware of being so). This is why this book doesn't get more play -- it would put the Massive Media and the "public relations" (aka, propaganda industry) out of business if people understood their real social role.

The book is bleak, and leaves you reeling. But it does provide intellectual ammunition -- namely, critical thinking -- as a hopeful vaccination from propaganda, except for Ellul's statement that people who think propaganda doesn't affect them tend to be propagandized....

I guess the safest thing you can do is assume you are a victim of propaganda, and then deal with it by sorting out what opinions are genuinely yours, and what are the result of "conventional wisdom" and "common sense". The alternative is to pretend you're somehow immune.

His idea has special signifigance within today's western world where communication (in one form or another) is always hapening; mostly with conviction and purpose to stimulate or manipulate the communicatee.

That said, this book is not a conspiracy novel, but rather a theory exemplified by one of the great western minds of this type of philosophical genre.

Rodin's "Thinker" is really a guy who sat down to read this book, the dude is still sitting there pondering ....

Hopefully it will keep you thinking too

And this is as it should be. After all, the propagandist is operating in full force right now, as he was in the 1960's when the book was written, and he is not using controlled labs to do it. He is doing it on a mass scale in real society and achieving results. Therefore a serious attempt to understand propaganda "in its actual place" and "as it is used" is valuable and enlightening. Ellul is not interested in "building" a technique for propaganda from the ground up, or in "proving" that it is possible. This much has already been done as evidenced by plain facts!! He is acknowledging what has already been achieved and is looking at these systems from many angles to determine their nature and tease out an understanding so we can know more what we are facing.

You will find many less than intuitive but fascinating notions in the book.

For instance: Education increases the ingestion of propaganda. In fact it is a prerequisite. It is no wonder Saddam Hussein worked to increase literacy in Iraq -- all the better to try to propagandize the people with words and mold them into a cohesive whole. Another idea: Democracies like the U.S. are very vulnerable to propaganda. In fact, this form of government makes propaganda all the more necessary, since you must work on people's minds more than their bodies (it is not a dictatorship.) People in democracies should expect to be heavily and relentlessly propagandized.

These are just a few samples of the many fascinating (and horrifying) ideas and insights in this volume.

One thing to note: Jacques Ellul is also a theologian and Christian, and he doesn't make much of a secret of that in his book or his other writings. I am not a Christian myself (I'm an atheist), but I frankly think Ellul's Christianity not only DOESN'T cloud Ellul's sharp powers of logic and observation, but it does him a bit of service in his examination of propaganda and its harmful effects on the human being. He makes few bones about the idea that propaganda has a tendency to separate man from himself and his true spirituality and/or personality. This he relates among the other harmful effects on the world at large in the form of exploitation and war.

All I can say is read this book: You'll never look at things the same way afterwards.