ECCLESIASTES 4.7-8

7 Then I returned and saw vanity under the sun.

8 There is one that is alone, and he has not a second; yes, he has neither son nor brother; yet is there no end of all his labour, neither is his eye satisfied with riches: so that he never asks:'For whom then do I labour, and bereave my soul of pleasure?' This also is vanity, yes, it is a grievous business.

Part of the enlightenment offered by Solomon is a readiness to ask more searching questions -- to think more deeply and analytically, to identify assumptions and challenge convention, then make necessary changes as a result.

But do we think? Are we in conscious and deliberate control of our thinking and our actions – or do we robotically follow the programming of human nature, our culture and upbringing, and the default misdirection of the spirit of envy?

Once again Solomon urges us to examine our priorities, and warns against making work and wealth for their own sake the central focus of our existence. How strange it is that, like the man he describes, intelligent and capable people can live such unthinking lives.

The obsessive over-achiever, however, works robotically towards his goals. Although he is clearly worldly wise and materially successful and already has more than he needs and has no dependents to provide for, he is relentlessly driven on by a burning desire for even greater wealth and success -- because what he has achieved so far, apparently, has failed to satisfy a hunger deep inside him, causing him to think that the solution to his problem must be to work even harder and acquire and accumulate even more. We see that physical hunger is a metaphor for its spiritual equivalent.

Such a man, a typical figure in the parables of Jesus, is simply too consumed by work and its worries to stop and question the fundamental purpose of life, to ponder his destiny and the implications of his own mortality. He never asks, says Solomon. Perhaps he is afraid to ask. Are we?