🐮 Proper 13

Readings: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-12; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21.

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The Elephant in the Room: On Ecclesiastes, Abel, and Moral Pain

First Formation – August 4, 2025
By Brother Logan Isaac

This morning’s reading—Ecclesiastes 1—starts with a familiar refrain: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” But in Hebrew, that word “vanity” is Habel—the same as Abel, the first human to be murdered in Scripture. All is Abel. All is fleeting. All is a life taken too soon.

That stark reality sets the tone for this week’s launch of the Grunt God Season Pass, where I revisit my book God Is a Grunt chapter by chapter with new interviews and reflections. Tomorrow’s episode drops with Rev. David Peters, a former Army chaplain and Marine who’s written extensively on moral injury. We talk about Cain—not just as a murderer, but as a mirror. What does it do to a person to snuff out the image of God in another?

Who Is the Preacher?

Ecclesiastes is attributed to “the Preacher,” or Qohelet—a word that means “the gatherer.” In Hebrew, it's grammatically feminine, just like Adam comes from Adamah, the feminine word for soil. These little clues matter. They remind us that our origins—our humanity—are complex, earthy, and often misunderstood.

Qohelet gathers us not to preach from a pulpit, but to remind us that our lives are short, and our illusions are many. The vanity is not just appearance—it’s forgetting that we’re dust, that we’re Abel, that death and violence haunt our stories from the very beginning.

How Long Did Paradise Last?

David Peters posed a haunting question:
How long do you think Adam and Eve lived in paradise before they ate the fruit?
Hours? Days? Years?

He said, “I might have lasted 20 minutes.”
Curiosity is powerful. So is the temptation to look beyond, to know more—even when it kills.

Seeing the Elephant

In the Civil War, soldiers who had seen combat said they had “seen the elephant.” That phrase means something profound: to witness something too big, too terrible, too real to unsee.

As a veteran, I’ve seen the elephant. Many of us have. But most Americans haven’t. In fact, 95% have no close connection to the military at all. That disconnect breeds assumptions:

• All military service is good.

• All war is bad.

• Killing is always wrong, or always justified.

But morality isn’t simple. And without a military hermeneutic, our theology remains half-blind.

Solomon Never Saw the Elephant

I don’t think Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes.

The real preacher never names themselves. Solomon, for all his wisdom, never saw the elephant. He built a palace twice the size of God’s temple. He lived in Entitlement.

Contrast that with Saul, undone by the elephant. Or David, who carried the weight and kept the kingdom together.

Solomon wanted wisdom. Abraham Heschel asked for wonder. Wonder includes curiosity. Wisdom is what you get after the wonder is complete.

Join the Conversation

This is why I created Grunt Works—to give voice to those who’ve seen the elephant and know what it costs. If that’s you, or if you want to understand us better, I invite you to:

• Listen to the First Formation episode with David Peters (launches tomorrow)

• Get the Grunt God Season Pass for just $13 before August 10

  • You'll receive:

    • The full ebook chapter

    • A transcript of the episode

    • The icon of Cain we created for this series

• Attend GruntCon on October 25, 2025, now in Albany, Oregon

Let’s talk about the elephant. It’s not safe.
But—as Aslan reminds us—it is good.