You Will Never Be Satisfied
A book review on Everything Is Never Enough, by Bobby Jamieson
Do you ever struggle with feelings of unhappiness? Do you ever experience a looming or lingering sense of dissatisfaction and discontentment? My presumption would be that your answer is yes. But what do you do when you face such feelings? How do you find greater happiness and joy? Bobby Jaimieson, in his book Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness, opens the book by saying:
“Shouldn’t you be happier? If you’re reading this book, you can read. Just two hundred years ago, only 12 percent of people in the world could read. If you’re reading this book, you have enough time to spare from prolonging your own and others’ survival to do something as biologically unessential as scanning your eyes over thousands of little marks on paper.
If you’re reading this book, you or someone you know had enough disposable income to buy this book— or maybe a library let you walk away with it for free, for a time. That you hold this book in your hands is a modest sign of wealth, whether your own or your community’s. If you kept counting, I’m sure you could tally many more, and more significant, blessings, privileges, pleasures, and possibilities. Seen in light of the circumstances of many around the world, and certainly in light of history, you have it pretty good…. And yet. Given all that you have, all that you know, all that you can do, and all the options you can choose from, do you feel like these advantages should do more for your well-being than they do? Does it feel like you should be happy, you want to be happy, and you try to be happy, but somehow can’t?”
I first heard of this book while listening to a podcast episode, and upon hearing its title, “Everything Is Never Enough”, it immediately piqued my interest. Everything Is Never Enough was first a sermon series that Bobby Jamieson preached during his time as an associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. (Interestingly, when it was announced that Bobby was to begin a series on Ecclesiastes at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, a member quipped to the senior pastor Mark Dever, “Pastor, a series on Ecclesiastes is the last thing I need.” So much for an encouraging beginning!). Beneficial to anyone who experiences consistent or oscillating feelings of unhappiness, joylessness, discontentment, and/or dissatisfaction, in this book, Jaimieson aims to wrestle with the truths of Ecclesiastes while drawing from the works of several critics and sociologists on modernity.
As the title indicates, the main burden and pulse throughout this book, and arguably throughout Ecclesiastes, is the idea that everything is never enough. Many of you have probably heard the quip, “if I just had this, then I would have enough.” Many of us think and suppose that if we just had that job we’d be happy. Or if we just had that girl as our girlfriend or that boy as our boyfriend then, most definitely then we’d have enough. Or maybe if we were just cancer-free, or finally married, or for once financially stable, or at last restored with our family, then we’d have enough. The words that could fill the blank space in the statement, “if I had _____ then I’d have enough” are simply endless. But could it be that we are seeking ultimate fulfillment from things that lack the capacity to give us the ultimate and holistic purposefulness we seek from them? Could our search for pleasure be likened to sailing to the end of a horizon? Or walking to the end of a treadmill? Because, “one way to be unhappy is to lack what you most want. Another is to get all you could possibly want and discover that everything is never enough.”
As briefly mentioned in the subtitle, Everything is Enough walks “Ecclesiastes’ surprising path to resilient happiness.” The book of Ecclesiastes “tells the story of someone who saw it all, got it all, experienced it all, and in the end found fault with it all.” It tells the story of someone who, upon receiving all he could imagine, ask for, and think of, comes to the scary, frustrating, and despairing realization that everything is never enough.
Personally, I have always found the book of Ecclesiastes particularly confusing and provocative, yet simultaneously fascinating and insightful. “Arguably the Bible’s only work of philosophy”, Ecclesiastes is authored by Qohelet, more commonly known as “The Preacher”. And Qohelet, in the book of Ecclesiastes, as Jamieson notes, “is the ultimate buzzkill. His questions and provocations and pronouncements are like a five-thousand-degree furnace that turns all superficial solutions to ash.” Ecclesiastes also has an unfamiliar “literary structure [which] defies tidy analysis” and confronts us to ask some of life’s biggest questions. It is a book that, as just mentioned, has often left me confused, frustrated, and yet interested.
Now, after reading Everything Is Never Enough, I can confidently say that my understanding of the book of Ecclesiastes and its life-altering implications have happily increased. I have seen that though Ecclesiastes understandably gives much cause for consternation and confusion, it is also a book with universally relevant and applicable insights that arguably also most clearly, accurately, and resonantly speak to our current cultural moment and age. It is a book with fruits that deserve to be picked and eaten, and Bobby Jamieson wonderfully helps us to do so.
And let me give you a brief warning as well. Because, “what is true of Ecclesiastes is true of this book too: You have to let it hurt you before it will heal you, and let it demolish before it can rebuild.” However, don’t let this discourage you from reading this title. After all,
“If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?.... We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply…. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
- Franz Kafka (quoted in Everything Is Never Enough)
This book truly was an axe that helped to crack open parts of my heart that I didn’t even know were icily frozen. This book teaches us not to turn God’s good gifts into ultimate saviors and enables and equips us to more effectively enjoy the fleeting time we’ve been allotted on this earth.
So if you yearn for greater joy and happiness, I eagerly commend this book to you. Filled with helpful insights, provoking and yet necessary statements, and most importantly the truth of God’s Word, Everything is Never Enough will undoubtedly help to deepen your happiness and increase your satisfaction in the God that you serve. It will help you to realize that “happiness comes not from trying to make this world satisfy all your desires but from realizing that it never will.” It will bid you recognize that “happiness begins to glimpse new dimensions when you begin to discover that everything is never enough.”
Order and read Everything is Never Enough here!