Rebuilding Eden: Why We Can't Build Our Way Back to Childhood

If you visit my office, you'll notice something about me pretty quickly. I'm a bit nostalgic, and I'm a big nerd. Combine those two facts and it makes sense why I surround myself with toys and memorabilia from my favorite childhood fandoms: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, The Legend of Zelda, and more.

Many of us do something similar. For you it might not be sci-fi, fantasy, and video games. It might be reminders of the sports teams you grew up watching with your dad. It might be the dolls or stuffed animals you got every year for Christmas. Whatever the case, most of us hold onto little pieces of our childhood. Why? Because they remind us of a simpler time, an era before the hardships of life set in, a former life full of joy and innocence.

We all want to go back, in some way, and reclaim those happier, carefree days. In a very real sense, this is exactly what Qohelet tries to do in Ecclesiastes 2.

Scripture portrays the wonder and innocence of childhood in the opening pages of Genesis. God created his "very good" world, full of majestic trees, babbling rivers, flowering shrubs, mouth-watering fruit, and vibrant birds singing songs of praise. The crowning achievement was humanity, the first man and woman placed in a garden paradise. The text drives the point home in a line that makes many of us blush: "They were naked and knew no shame."

This is the picture of childhood innocence – a time before we knew clothing wasn't optional, when the world was big and beautiful and perfect, and nothing could ever go wrong.

But things did go wrong. Darkness, disease, and death crept into our world of sunshine and rainbows. Innocence and purity were lost, never to be regained. Paradise was closed off, and we realized we were on our own in a big, scary world that didn't care about us.

So we try to get back to the Garden. We try to hold onto something of our childhood to remind us of the days before the world grew dark. Some of us even try to recreate the Garden Paradise around ourselves.

Let's take a closer look at how the Teacher tried to do just that, and where it led him in the end.

The Creator

The maker of the original creation in Genesis 1-2 was God. In Genesis 1:26, God uses the royal "We," indicating a community within himself. God creates out of a loving social community and creates for loving social community.

In Ecclesiastes 2, the builder is the royal "I." The Teacher takes all the credit, though it's hardly realistic that he did any of the actual work. Others would have done the building for him, yet he's blind to their efforts. Everything "he" builds and does is "for myself," a phrase repeated five times in four verses.

The creation account in Genesis 1-2 is essentially relational in nature and gives the glory to God. The "secular Eden" of Ecclesiastes 2 is essentially individualistic and a form of self-serving aggrandizement.

When God creates, he enlists the aid of creation itself. The land is entrusted to produce vegetation. The sun, moon, and stars are placed in charge of keeping the times and seasons. The animals are blessed to be fruitful and multiply. Humanity is placed in a position of co-creators, God's ambassadors to the world, tasked to tame, work, and care for creation on his behalf. The whole process is collaborative and empowering.

The Teacher, on the other hand, "acquired" male and female slaves. More slaves were born in his house. Enslavement is not collaborative or empowering. He owned large herds of livestock, just for his own clout. He gathered entertainers for his own pleasure. He even kept a harem of concubines. If anything, the Teacher was stripping away the agency and autonomy of everyone around him to serve his own purposes. Even his parks and gardens existed for himself, his own enjoyment, not for the good of the people he ruled.

The Boundaries

When you were a kid, you probably couldn't wait to get out of your parents' house so you wouldn't have to follow their rules anymore. Only later did you realize those rules were there for a reason. The curfew, the chores, the restrictions on who you could hang out with: they were all for your own good, not because your parents were on a power trip.

When God created the Garden, he gave one rule: don't eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It isn't life-giving. It's not good for you. You aren't ready for that kind of responsibility. Only death and destruction will follow.

We might think a life without boundaries leads to freedom, but the reality is we humans need moral and ethical boundaries. Otherwise, it's pure chaos. We've tried it so many times. The book of Judges repeats a telling line: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever seemed right to him." When everyone sets the rules for himself, society falls apart and chaos follows.

The Teacher, like many of us, thought he'd be the exception. In his attempt to recreate Eden, he figured the flaw in the original construction was that one pesky tree they weren't allowed to eat from. So he got rid of the tree. He says in Ecclesiastes 2:10, "All that my eyes desired, I did not deny them. I did not refuse myself any pleasure, for I took pleasure in all my struggles."

One of the most damaging forms of parenting is the overly permissive kind. When children are never told "no," they don't learn to grow up. They become lazy, entitled, or downright mean. God knew we needed boundaries, clear guidelines, regulations, and rules in order to thrive.

The Teacher, it turns out, was not the exception. He concluded that even this pursuit of pleasure without limits was itself "futile and a pursuit of the wind. There was nothing to be gained under the sun."

The Results

In the creation story, the word "good" appears seven times, with the seventh repetition declaring all of creation "very good." Not perfect, but good. There's a difference. The Teacher tried to recreate Eden perfectly, and it all fell apart. It went so badly that he blames God: "God has given people this miserable task to keep them occupied." The Teacher declares it all hevel, futile, meaningless, smoke. A far cry from God's declaration of "very good."

On the seventh day, after God had finished creating, he rested. Sit with that for a second. God completed a massive project, then simply stopped working for a while. He rested. Many of us finish one project and immediately start the next without pausing to appreciate a job well done. We hit a milestone or reach a goal without ever reveling in the satisfaction of having achieved something good.

Most of us can relate to the Teacher here. Not only are we rarely satisfied with what we've accomplished, we don't even feel relief afterward. We can't relax. We're always "on." There's always one more item on the to-do list, or we replay all the things we could have said or done better. Qohelet puts it this way: "For what does a person get with all his work and all his efforts that he labors at under the sun? For all his days are filled with grief, and his occupation is sorrowful; even at night, his mind does not rest. This too is futile."

God completes his project, declares it "very good," and rests from his work.

The Teacher (along with you and me) reaches a stopping point, declares it meaningless, and then can't shut his brain off at night long enough to relax and enjoy some much-needed rest.

Life With God

Looking back on childhood, what we really want to return to is time with family and friends. Maybe it's those days on the lake fishing with your dad, or afternoons baking with your mom, or evenings watching movies with your friends, or nights arguing with your siblings.

It wasn't the toys or games that made your childhood special. It was the people around you. It was the family dinners and road trips. It was tears consoled by a mother's kiss. It was lessons learned in the garage.

What made the Garden of Eden special wasn't the all-you-can-eat buffet, including the Tree of Life. It wasn't the rivers, forests, and animals enjoyed without those pesky mosquitoes (sure, that's not in the text, but one can assume). It wasn't even the freedom the man and woman had to be fully themselves without shame or fear. What made the Garden special is that it's where we could be with God, where we could experience "the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze."

It was a life lived with God, known fully and fully known.

When the Teacher tried to capture some of Eden's magic on his own, without God, it was all empty. That's why his realization at the end of chapter two matters so much: "There is nothing better for a person than to eat, drink, and enjoy his work. I have seen that even this is from God's hand, because who can eat and who can enjoy life apart from him?" (Ecclesiastes 2:24-25)

We can still experience the reality of the Garden in our everyday lives by simply recognizing God with us. To quote one of my favorite hymns, "In the rustling grass I hear him pass / He speaks to me everywhere."

We can't go back to Eden. We were cut off from it, just like we can't go back to our own childhood. But we do eagerly await the day when God brings us home to be with him completely once more. It won't be a Garden, but it will be the Garden City, the New Jerusalem, complete with the Tree of Life at its center. More importantly, we'll experience the reality of Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 for all eternity: "Look, God's dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God" (Revelation 21:3).

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1. What's one "little Eden" you've tried to build for yourself, something you control completely, where nothing can go wrong?

2. Where in your life have you mistaken a boundary for a limitation, when really it was protecting you?

3. When's the last time you actually rested in something you accomplished, instead of moving straight to the next task?