The Purposeless Dog

THE GREATEST example of purposelessness in the world is a dog. If you really want to see purposeless living, just watch a dog. If you really want to understand going through the motions, or just passing time, pay close attention to a dog. First of all, a dog barks.

Their bark can disturb and a dog will bark at just about anything. And you can’t figure out what a dog is saying because all it’s really doing is just making noise, desperately desiring to be noticed. One of the indications of purposeless living is a life that creates a lot of noise but doesn’t really make a clear statement about anything.

Another thing a dog does is run in circles. It’s not particularly going anywhere, but it’s moving constantly.

The ultimate purposelessness of a dog is when it’s chasing its own tail, going around and around in a circle, and when it is finished moving, it’s in the same place it started. Many of us are looking for purpose in activities. We’ve got our cell phones, PDAs, televisions, computers, and e-mail, stuff to distract us and keep us busy, but at the end of the day we’re no further ahead with a sense of purpose than when we started.

Dogs function on the level of the external. They love to be petted and rubbed. They enjoy that good, momentary feeling. It’s just a good feeling for the moment on a nice external coat.

There are a whole bunch of folks today who get up and daily “put on the dog,” hoping that someone will notice, and in some way make them feel valuable and significant. Finally, dogs are consumers.

Dogs don’t only eat when they are hungry, they eat because food is there. Dogs live for the fun of life, not for its meaning. At the end of the day, living life in this way results in hollowness in your soul. God’s design and desire is to release you from that, but only on His terms.