Ditches, Cores, Moralities

Dave Ramsey gives an example illustrating the importance of purpose in our work. A study was done where they hired men to to work without knowing the overall goal of what was to be accomplished. (Mainly because there was none.) When they came to work in the morning, they would spend their time just digging a ditch. After lunch they spent the rest of the day filling the ditch back in.

All they were told at the end of the day was they if they showed up for work the next day, their wages would be double. About 40% of the workers did not show.

He uses this as an example to find work with meaning, that accomplishes something. I would like to take this template of his illustration and apply it to the top level over view of our lives.

How many people are just spending their time with meaninglessness?

Saul Bellow once wrote:

“The intelligent public is waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, and social theory and what it cannot hear from pure science: a broader, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are, and what this life is for. If writers do not come into the center, it will not be because the center is pre-empted; it is not.”

Dr. Ravi Zacharias expands on this point:

“The pursuit of knowledge without knowing who we are or why we exist, combined with a war on our imaginations by our entertainment industry, leaves us at the mercy of power with no morality.”

Without a solid morality as a core, there is no purpose to anything other than to pursue our own selfish desires regardless of who we hurt. Including ourselves. I would like someone to prove me wrong on this issue.

Without a moral standard at the very core of human existence, we’ve lost the binding that holds together all aspects of our lives. We poses no light by which to interpret all the particulars of our life with.

We’ve reduced our morality to mere feelings, and worse still, our feelings have let us down.

So I’ll ask. What is the purpose of life? Why does any of this matter? With no central purpose, with no morality, why does anything matter?