Better To Be a Live Dog Than a Dead Lion
I often get greeted with the usual, “How are you doing?” and I confess, I still love to answer with that odd little line from Ecclesiastes 9:4: “It is better to be a live dog than a dead lion.” People usually stare at me as if I’ve just quoted a fortune cookie written by a crazy uncle, and then they move on to their real conversation. But now and then, a perceptive soul will pause, tilt their head, and ask, “What are you talking about?” That question opens a door—not just for a clever line, but for a deeply biblical view of life, death, and hope that Christian business owners desperately need in the trenches of the marketplace.
Solomon is brutally honest in Ecclesiastes 9. Under the sun, he says, the same end overtakes us all—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the wise and the foolish. Death is not a neutral, “circle of life” reality; it is an enemy, the wages of our cosmic treason against a holy God. You can take your vitamins, work out, avoid McDonald’s, and swear off Krispy Kreme, but your body will still give out one day. In that sense, Solomon could summarize life under the sun this way: we are all headed to the cemetery, and nothing in our portfolio, résumé, or brand can change that.
Against that dark backdrop, the strange proverb suddenly shines: “For whoever is joined with all the living, there is hope; surely a live dog is better than a dead lion.” In Solomon’s world, dogs were not pampered pets; they were mangy street scavengers, feared and despised, more like a subway rat than your grandchild’s English Labrador. Lions, on the other hand, symbolize nobility, power, and honor—the messianic imagery of kings and conquerors. Yet Solomon insists that the scrawny, despised, living dog still outranks the majestic, dead lion for one simple reason: the living know they will die, and so they still have the opportunity to respond to God, to repent, to rejoice, to reorder their lives around what matters most.
For Christian business leaders, that truth is more than a funeral text; it is a daily strategic directive. If you are breathing, there is hope: hope for your soul, your marriage, your company culture, your ethics, your people. Life may feel like drudgery—cash flow tight, relationships strained, decisions second-guessed—but if you are a live dog, God has left you in play on the field, and that means there is still meaningful work to do. Ecclesiastes 9 moves from hard realism about death to a series of imperatives: go, eat, drink, enjoy, do. In other words, receive your life and work as gifts from a sovereign God, and then engage them wholeheartedly for His glory, “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all you might.”
That includes your business. Enjoy the bread and wine, the ordinary provisions of God, without guilt, as a steward, not an owner. Dress for joy, not for perpetual mourning; carry into the office a quiet, resilient gladness that says, “My times are in His hand.” Love your spouse while you can, because no success at the office can redeem neglect at home. Invest your skills, your strategies, your contracts, and your capital with the sober knowledge that “time and chance happen to them all,” and you are not the master of your fate so much as a small fish who can be swept into the net in a single bad day. That realism should not paralyze you; it should purify your motives and sharpen your focus on faithfulness rather than outcomes.
I think of one of my favorite cinematic speeches: the scene in Braveheart where William Wallace confronts wobbly Scottish soldiers who want to run and live a little longer. Wallace tells them they may save their lives for a while by running, but one day, lying in their beds, they would gladly trade all those days for one chance to really live. Ecclesiastes 9 makes a similar appeal: every man dies; not every man truly lives. For the Christian business owner, the call is clear: you are going to die, but today you are still a living dog. So, empowered by the risen Christ who conquered death, refuse to waste the day. Make the phone call, reconcile with the partner, mentor that young employee, share the gospel with the colleague, build a business that points beyond itself to the King. When it all goes back in the box, you will not regret having traded dead-lion glory for live-dog faithfulness.
What kind of “live dog” step do you sense the Lord nudging you to take in your business today?
