Book 2, Chapter 2
-Part 3 more and more-
As an observer of the ways in which people put together their faith in God, I have to say that most of us tend to overstate our importance to God’s kingdom.
Once we realize that we belong with God and with His people, we will naturally want to find out what our role is as a new creature in Christ. This is referred to as our calling, our ministry or our apostolate. As we are wont to do, we will figure that our place among the saints is very close to the axis of everything.
For some reason there is immense pressure on the new believer to find some way to immediately start becoming a career Christian. The search begins by listing the kinds of jobs that are fostered by the faith. For example: Pastor, Pastor’s Wife, Missionary, Christian College Professor, Religious Education Specialist, Christian School Administrator, Teacher, Christian Author, Christian Recording Artist, Evangelist, Monk, Nun, Music Minister, Missionary Pilot, Military Chaplain, Christian Entertainer, Christian Bookstore Manager, etc.
In my experience, this pressure retains its felt presence throughout life. This pressure, not the faith careers themselves, has created a great deal of distortion about our theology of work, our notions about God’s will, and it makes harmful inroads into our ideas about a meaningful, purposeful life. When we allow misshapen views about work, about God’s will and about our sense of purpose, we have really messed up a massive portion of our lives.
We have a mindset problem when it comes to work and vocation. If we do not find some clarity and some simplicity here, we will soon find ourselves Christians adrift – living perhaps comfortably, but inaccurately.
As I write this, Apple founder Steve Jobs has just died of pancreatic cancer (technically, respiratory failure) on October 5, 2011. He was a beloved world-changer, innovator and, for a time, America’s Decent Guy.
Among the many televised tributes to Steve, there were included several of his statements made in his commencement address at Stanford University in June of 2005. I am going to disagree with some of the things Steve said about work – not to attack Steve, and certainly not to parse his words, but to demonstrate how favorable an erroneous view of work has become in our culture.
Steve: “I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
My dad, for one, would not have dared look in the mirror and say such a thing. On the majority of his days, he went to work at a job he didn’t particularly care for. He didn’t go because he loved his work, or because the work he did was especially meaningful to him or to others. He had a sense of duty and responsibility to earn money to help support his family. His job was not personally fulfilling, but it met his duty and responsibility.
Day in and day out my father, and my grandfathers, and my great-grandfathers went to work, earned some money, and left absolutely no identifiable dent on their workplace.
Many are the guys my age who will remember their dads “going to work every day to a job they hated.”
Steve: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
It was my generation that first brought a noticeable change in work to the table. We wanted our actual jobs to be important, significant and meaningful. We were not the generation that would do anything for a good paycheck. We were looking for jobs that would make an impact. Work itself wasn’t good enough. The kind of work suddenly made a difference too.
I can’t help but imagine how quiet the world would be on the day that everyone who did not love what they did for a living elected to stay home. Job satisfaction polls are difficult to collate, but one poll suggests that 1 in 5 Americans “feels passionately about their job.” I would surmise that 4 in 5 would look in Steve’s mirror and stay home. In another survey, a full 60 percent of the American workforce said they “plan to change jobs as soon as the economy gets better.”
I have always enjoyed this comment from comedian George Carlin: “Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar.”
Somehow, we are forced to conclude that if we do not absolutely adore our jobs, we have failed significantly. We certainly didn’t lose our way because of Steve. We lost our way when the Christian world view lost its inertia in culture.
Work, from a Christian perspective, is intrinsically honorable and valuable. It is not made more so by how much we love it, how much we earn, or its impact on society. Our work is a manifestation of what Caussade has repeatedly referred to as our “state of life.” In this particular section, he refers to our role or status with regard to work and vocation as “His design” (Page 60.)
Over the years I have had jobs that were invigorating and challenging, and jobs that made my stomach hurt each morning. I have been made to feel like my contribution at work was significant and appreciated, and I have been poorly treated, threatened, degraded and demoralized. Once I even had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t bring myself to leave the house to go to my job. I got halfway to the front door at home and was suddenly stricken with an attack of anxiety. Such has been my stormy romance with work. Sometimes it is a dance, sometimes a dirge.
I could go on with bad example after bad example of how the current mindset about work and vocation is unrealistic and uncharacteristic of the Christian world view.
Instead, let me state that the proper Christian view perceives work as a natural and vital extension of our walk with God. As Creator, God worked. As Redeemer, He revitalizes. As Guide, He directs and illumines. Work – any work – is as much a part of our spiritual life as is prayer. In fact, The Rule of St. Benedict, which has been used in Western monasticism for more than 1,500 years, refers to daily prayer, seven times per day, as “the work of God.”
Up to this point I may have only demonstrated how cloudy the issue of work and vocation can be according to Modern Man with his secularized and striated perception. Next we will try to right the ship on the subject.
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