Ecclesiastes In an Ant Farm
We got one of our sons an ant farm for Christmas. They are fascinating little insects to watch and are great examples of what a lot of small creatures steadily working together can accomplish. There was a little excitement when I chose to disregard the label warning that these ants will bite and that you should cool them down to slow them down before adding them into the ‘farm.’ This resulted in my kids all kneeling around the table, blowing to keep the loose ants on top of the table while I coaxed them into biting a stick so I could lift them into their new habitat. It all worked out in the end.
Things took a slightly depressing turn for me, however, but not because the ant farm was defective. No, the system was working as it was supposed to; I was just cynical about the system. Think about it: you have a group of ants industriously working around the clock for what? They don’t have a queen, so they can’t reproduce. They will just work until they die out. Add to that the fact that they live in a thin plastic box half-filled with sand and are continuously tunneling in circles and into complete dead ends. I turned on the light early one morning and thought, Oh look, they found three brand new ways to end up at the same place that leads to nowhere. Educational opportunities for the children aside, there is a question of whether they are living meaningful lives.
My wife, who tries to help me have a more balanced approach to some of my ponderings, pointed out that anthropomorphically injecting an existential crisis into the mind of an insect was an interesting way to start the day. She also pointed out that ants don’t experience, as far we know, any dread about meaninglessness, and that there isn’t a situation or an environment that you can put an ant in where they suddenly do feel like they do have meaningful lives. Okay, fair point, but to tell the truth, I knew that and it wasn’t my real problem.
My real problem is that we live in a society of humans, many of whom feel that they are working industriously around the clock, tunneling in circles, finding new dead ends and do so as meaning-seeking creatures. It is the simultaneous weight of repeated work combined with the mental load of trying to figure out what it all means that leads to despair or delight depending on whether you can properly understand yourself and the system you inhabit.
This isn’t a new quandary. The book of Ecclesiastes is perhaps one of the best known wrestlings with this topic. My grandpa cautions that Ecclesiastes mostly contains, “thoughts passing through the mind of a man trying to make sense of life, not necessarily truths to live by.” Seeing it as a wrestling and not as a list of syllogisms is exactly where it has its most value. The toiling-creature-seeking-meaning motif is common to all of us.
The good news is that the author of Ecclesiastes, and those of us who follow Christ, do suggest a solution to the tension. The existential weight is lifted when you realize a few simple truths: A) The ant farm is much bigger than you think B) There is an interactive farmer; an organizer, a planner, a creator and re-creator, and he isn’t an ant C) This Farmer invites us to know him and to participate in his plan D) the delight of a meaningful life flows from the delight of doing what we were created to do; to worship with all that we are, including our work, and to find freedom in fulfilling our assigned role stacking our grains of sand in our little pocket of our Father’s world.
We often find in hindsight that many of our seemingly small tasks and movements were far more significant in the long run than we ever imagined. Knowing this helps me lean into my tasks each day with joy in the work, though at this point we see as though in a mirror dimly. This perspective also kindles a curiosity and hope about someday looking back and reveling in the goodness of the thing being built through good work that seemed so grueling at the time. I can live and work with confidence, enjoying my part and letting God handle his part. If Christ’s testimony about God’s plan is true, then we know there is a big picture even when we can’t see it and we know enough to dig with pleasure. Tunnel on.