The Predicted and Unexpected Consequences of Work: Four Products of Human Enterprise (Part- 1)
“If you find a work by which you serve God or His saints or yourself and not your neighbour, know such a work is not good”
Martin Luther
Introduction
Work is tough. Work is also a source of joy. Is it one or the other or both? The products of work destroy the environment, hurt people, and do violence to the worker. At the same time, they can develop the potential of creation and improve human life. Work can evoke soul-sapping sins. But work can also be a means of spiritual growth. How can we live with this tension? Is the best we can hope for in this life work that is mostly good rather than mostly bad? Some work lasts only a few minutes – a meal for example. Other work may last a generation. And some work may last for eternity. But what work lasts? And what makes work last?
In this essay I am defining work as energy expended purposefully manually or mentally or both whether or not it is remunerated. Some authors elaborate this by adding “which brings glory to God and serves one’s neighbour.” But that is good work, and not all work glorifies God or serves one’s neighbour. Some work harms the neighbour. And as Luther said above, if only the worker herself and God are served, that work may not be good.
Focusing on the products of work we will explore the following:
Outcomes for the neighbour
Outcomes for self
Outcomes for God (part two)
Outcomes for heaven (part two)
Outcomes for the Neighbour
All Is Vanity
Diane realized that the decision would be more difficult than she had first thought. The job offer was a lucrative one; a good salary and company car, plus benefits. Colleen, a former business associate, a woman Diane had worked with for years, was opening a business of her own and wanted Diane to run the company. On the surface it sounded like a great opportunity. But Diane’s conscience was not at ease.
Colleen was a successful hairdresser. She earned a six-figure income working independently. She was now preparing to open a full-service salon of her own. Diane and Colleen had worked together as employees in another day spa that Diane had managed, but Colleen had always wanted her own business. She had leased an expensive space in one of the city’s trendy neighbourhoods, located near the homes of her clients. Tenant improvements were under way. The professionally designed interior had the tastes of the wealthy patrons in mind; no expenses were spared.
Diane understood as few people did, what it meant to pander to personal vanity, whether male or female, young or old. Image and appearance were enormously important components of the identity and self-confidence of the elite she served. Beyond all reason, middle-aged women often expected to look beautiful, young, thin and perfectly groomed, despite the limits of their genetic endowments. The young wanted to look sophisticated and ‘chic’. Impatient and very demanding, it was a daily struggle simply to make satisfactory appointments for these clients. They rarely took ‘no’ for an answer, and were practiced in the art of manipulating staff members to get their way. The astronomical amounts they spent on services annually seemed completely unrealistic by any standard.
On the other side of the coin, Diane had to consider her long-term relationship with Colleen. They worked together very well, and Diane admired Colleen’s determination to fulfill a life-long dream that would profit not only Colleen, but would provide jobs and a stable income for fifteen to twenty employees as well. Colleen’s responsibility as a small business owner was an enormous weight to bear. Diane’s years of experience in the industry and common sense approach would be needed if Colleen expected to continue to work ‘behind the chair’ full time after the business opened.
It was also obvious that the salon staff provided more than just ‘beauty treatments’ for many of the clients. The caring, professional touch and sympathetic ear of the technician created an opportunity for friendships to grow. Time and again, the staff had walked through family crises, terminal illness, surgery, and death with their clients, as well as preparations for weddings, reunions, and gala events. The salon had its own role to play in the community.
As a Christian, Diane believed that consumerism and narcissism were empty pursuits with no redemptive value. Was it prudent to continue to pour her time and talent into an environment which seemed to embody Solomon’s lament that ‘all is vanity”?
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Looking at the specific industry of hair-styling and Diane’s dilemma we can ask the following questions. This is doing theology from the “bottom up” rather than the usual “top-down” way.
Is hair-dressing “good” work, work that would please God and benefit the neighbour?
Would this job mean merely catering to “vanity” or would it be a “body” ministry caring for the embodied soul of persons?
Does Scripture encourage the work of embellishment?
A focus group was enlisted to unpack the “All Is Vanity” case study. They listed various occupations which are not “good.” On the following “prohibited” occupations there was unanimity:
Slave trader
Loan shark/exploiting usury
Drug dealer/criminal activity
Mercenary – soldier for hire
Lottery industry/gambling industry
Cryogenics (freezing people)
Cloning – life is from God/control life
Executioner (Luther would have disagreed with this)
Promoter of other religions than Christianity (e.g. through an ad company)
Nuclear power station designer
Suicide bombers
But in the following there were some in favour and some opposed:
Politician
Prostitution
Weapons manufacturing
Tobacco industry
Alcohol industry
Abortion clinic
Entertainment that glorifies non-Christian life
And one person added, “No one should ever be a televangelist!”
But why are these bad works (if they are)? Because they are forbidden in Scripture? The Bible is very sparse on the subject. It prohibits extortion (usury) and witchcraft in the Old Testament and extortion (usury) and prostitution in the New Testament.
Or is the work “not good” because it is debasing to human life, to the worker herself, or to the environment? Is it “not good” because the neighbour is not served through it?
To explore the central question of whether hairstyling is good work we must ask whether God works, what kind of work God does, whether God values human work, and what human work God would value.
1. God’s good work.
First, as we open Scripture we discover a God who works. God separates and fills all creation, communicates, makes covenants, embellishes creation, and makes things beautiful as well as functional. Opus Dei, the work of God, is not merely prayer and worship as is alleged by monks and nuns. Opus Dei includes creative work, sustaining work (we could not breathe another breath if God did not sustain the universe), transforming work and consummating work. God does chores: cleaning, maintaining, and refurbishing. God fixes broken hearts, brings redemption and creates Sabbath rest. God is leading the story of creation and humankind to a wonderful conclusion.
Second, Some of God’s Work is Unique. God does work human beings cannot do, and God works when human beings are not working. This is the splendid message of God to the troubled and suffering Job in the Old Testament. As the ultimate answer to his suffering, Job was invited in chapters 38-39 to contemplate the work of God and God’s exquisite joy in working. Job learns that human work is a pale imitation of God’s own work, never as wild, never as awesome, never as worthy of contemplation. Job learns that human work is limited. We do not have absolute control over creation. And Job learns that everything is not for us, or simply for our development, improvement or self-indulgence. Everything does not need to be useful. Utility is not the only reason for human work. God waters “a land where no one lives” (Job 38:26). This should lead to humility in work and freedom from the domination of utility.
Job is healed not by being humiliated but by meditating on the character of God the worker. He is healed by the beauty of God in the wilderness. How do we get a biblical view of work? Job discovered how: by going on a canoe trip, hiking into the mountains, going on an African safari, or sailing on God’s wild ocean.
Third, The Way God Works Brings Satisfaction. This is most eloquently expressed in the early chapters of Genesis, where after each creative act God says “It is good” (Gen 1:31). More than an ethical statement – “good” in the sense that it will not harm anything or anyone – it is an aesthetic statement: “This is beautiful.” God who is beautiful makes beautiful things, enjoys doing it, and reflects with satisfaction on what God has made.
Should human beings made in God’s image find satisfaction in the work of their hands and minds, even though everything in this world has been blighted by sin? Does God say, “It is good” in response to human enterprise, or some of it? To that subject we must turn
2. God-like work is good
There are two ways in which biblical revelation indicates that human work, or at least some human work, matters to God. First, God mandates human beings to continue his own work of dominion, rule and caring for creation, thus becoming a motivator. Second, God the worker becomes a model for the way human beings should work.
First, God is the ultimate motivator of human work. God calls human beings to have dominion over creation (Gen 1:26,28), to fill it, (1:28) and to take care of (2:15). This means more than simply populating the planet, something which we have managed to do quite well. We are summoned to unpack the potential of creation giving meaning and beauty (form and function) to all that human beings make out of the raw material of God’s creation. We continue God’s work on earth in a very grand project. We are not only mandated but motivated by the Triune God.
Human beings are invited to participate in God’s work through inventing new things (computer programmes and better drugs), maintaining things (homemaking, systems and politics), transforming things (repairing broken machines, bringing health through medicine and direct pastoral care), and showing where things are going and the meaning of life (the media, films, reporting, parenting and educators-all of it consummating work). So human beings “fill the earth” (Gen 1:28) through agriculture, genetic engineering, homemaking, artistry, computer program designing, carpentry, auto mechanics, teaching, advocating, counselling, and doing medical research. In all these ways they are “doing the Lord’s work.” When someone says they are leaving business to go into the “Lord’s work” they should be challenged with what they were doing beforehand! But there to motivation.
The Parable of the Talents reveals that the Triune God inspires risk-taking and creativity, a matter noted by authors who have shown that while the Arabs invented the mathematical system we now use everywhere, it was not until that system entered the Jewish and Christian world that it was used to do risk analysis. In the Parable of the Talents the one talent person, who wrapped up his giftedness and kept it intact but not invested, was motivated essentially by fear – “You are a hard man harvesting where you have not sown....So I was afraid” (Matt 25:24-5). So even in this fallen and only partially redeemed situation we are inspired to be creative, entrepreneurial and risk-taking. We have a God who can redeem even mistakes and does not reject us for making them. God wants us to take risks for gain.
God-fearing and God-loving people should be the most decisive and creative people on earth. Why? Because God inspires entrepreneurship and creativity. This is in contrast with the famous though only partly-true thesis of Max Weber, namely that anxiety about our position before God – saved or damned - makes Calvinist (really post-Calvinist) people prove their election by investing passionately in human enterprise in the workplace. Now that the monastery door is closed to people by the Protestant Reformation there is no other place to prove that one is among the saved except in our worldly calling. Just the reverse is the God-inspired motivation. It is sheer gratitude and faith that God can correct our mistakes that makes God-fearing and God-loving people want to invent new things, seize new opportunities to create a new product or offer a new service. God is the ultimate motivator.
Second, God is the model for work. The image of God in humankind involves both relationality (“Male and female he made them in his image”) and regency (undertaking God’s care and development of creation on behalf of the monarch, the king).
God works relationally (within the social community of Father, Son and Spirit). So human work is best conducted in teams, work groups, and in a person-affirming organizational culture. Further, God works interdependently with each person of the Holy Trinity bringing uniqueness - Son, Spirit and Father each contributing uniquely to creation, redemption and consummation. But each is for the other but all are for the One. God is more one because of the Trinity rather than in spite of the Trinity.
So, on the last day, might not God say to Coleen, “You styled my hair” or “You created an affirming environment in my workplace” or simply “You did good work in the hair salon even with those demanding and difficult customers.” Maybe, not waiting for the End, she might hear “It is good” not only as she says this to herself but overhearing God say it as a divine affirmation in her own heart. Another hair stylist said: “I make people beautiful. And I do a lot of counselling.”
3. Work is intended to serve others.
We do this through offering a product or service, bringing order, developing a caring relationship or leading our neighbour into an edifying experience. This surely includes developing leisure activities, providing food, beverage, hospitality, protection, indeed all the seven corporal almsdeeds which Thomas Aquinas elaborated (feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the homeless, burying the dead, and so on), though not just as personal charitable actions but through enterprise: food and beverage industries, hospitality services, the military, funeral services and other ways we serve our neighbour.
Good work improves and embellishes human life. Work can result in building the human community through counselling, town-planning and organizational development. Good work results in spiritual growth through pastoral care, spiritual direction, journalism and through the media. Work serves the neighbour aesthetically by creating art, music, drama and crafts. It can do this materially by building houses, creating infrastructures, growing food, marketing products and doing financial planning for others. Good work provides justice through the legal system, police protection and the military. Providing better health, food, shelter, leisure, environments, communication, machines, are all ways of loving one’s neighbour even if, as is the case for researchers and lab technicians, the neighbour is not immediately in view.
One piece of bad advice given by John Calvin was that if one has a choice one should choose work that most directly loves the neighbour. That surely has pushed some people, gifted to be researchers and technicians into teaching, counselling and pastoral ministry, when these same people can better serve their neighbour, unseen by them, in the work they are gifted to do. But it is not only the neighbour that receives the benefit of human work.
But this is not without predicted and unexpected consequences, as the next case study suggests
Outcomes for Self
Holy Smoke
Sitting amongst the other bleary-eyed, early morning commuters Tom Campbell had still not found the peace of mind he had hoped for when he went to bed the night before. As the train made its way painfully slowly down the Northern Line of London’s Underground he allowed himself a slight smile as he reflected on how the dilemma facing him today was essentially the same one he had been presented with nine years ago when, as an idealistic, fresh-faced eighteen year-old, he had started out in the world of work. He couldn’t help thinking that perhaps God was giving him a second chance to make the right decision; the only dilemma was that now, nine years down the line, he was no clearer as to what the right decision.
Whilst still in high school Tom had been awarded a lucrative sponsorship from a highly respected firm of consulting engineers. The package was extremely generous: in return for a year’s work prior to going to university and an annual six-week summer internship during which time he would be earning a good salary not to mention gaining invaluable practical experience, he would secure a sponsorship worth £6000 (= $12000 USD) over the course of his four years undergraduate study. With no obligations to work for the company upon graduation, the offer had sounded too good to be true and Tom had not been slow in accepting it.
Tom could not remember much about his first day in the office; even at the time it had all seemed to be a bit of a blur. He had been introduced to various people and pieces of office hardware, there had been a presentation on the work the firm were currently doing and the world they hoped to be doing in the future, he had met the team to which he was to be attached for the year and, to his consternation, he had been introduced to the work that they were doing. The company was a large firm of consulting engineers and he, along with two other interns, had been placed in their ‘Industrial Projects’ division. The project group to which he had been attached was working on the renovation of a number of ex-Soviet factories in Uzbekistan, part of the former U.S.S.R. The factories, all in various states of disrepair, had been bought by an Anglo-American tobacco multinational who were planning to renovate them, put in their machine lines, and start producing cigarettes to sell to the local Uzbek population.
At the time it had only been four months since Tom’s grandfather had passed away. Although the doctors had said that they could not be sure, they had thought it highly likely that the lung cancer that had killed his grandfather was a direct result of the smoky atmospheres of the clubs in which he had worked in during his career as a band leader. Tom had recoiled from the idea that by working on these factory projects he might now, albeit in an indirect way, be contributing to the death of others’ loved ones – yet he saw no way out; he had signed a contract, he was sure that God had opened the door for him into the company and he knew that he over the coming years of undergraduate study he would desperately need the sponsorship money to avoid going into debt. At the time, seeing no other option open to him, he had accepted the situation, admittedly begrudgingly at first, and spent the year doing odd jobs for the various engineers on the team.
A lot of water had passed under the bridge since those days and Tom, having returned to the company as a graduate structural engineer, was now recently chartered and leading a small team of engineers in the same Industrial Projects division he had worked in nine years previously. Only last week he had been called into his director’s office be asked whether he would lead the company’s bid for a second phase of works the tobacco company were planning to do out in Uzbekistan. The project would involve the design of a new production plant allowing the tobacco firm triple their current output of cigarettes. Tom was aware that heading up such a project would provide a fantastic opportunity for him to demonstrate the leadership qualities he knew lay latent within him; if they were to win the competition it would provide much-needed work for the company who were currently experiencing something of a downturn and, out in Uzbekistan, it would directly create at least 150 jobs not to mention innumerable fringe benefits to the local economy.
Tom had spent the week wrestling with his thoughts. He knew that he could turn down his boss’s offer – there were plenty of other competent engineers who could lead the bid yet he felt that in some way he owed the company a debt of gratitude for the generous treatment he had received over the years. Although Tom was aware that the project would certainly benefit the fledging Uzbek economy he was also conscious of the hidden cost years down the line to people’s health. Having taken part in a number of ‘direct action’ protests against globalization during his time at university, Tom was no fan of multinationals – particularly those that sold a product which so obviously harmed the health of those who used it. Tom had tried to imagine ‘what would Jesus do’ in this situation but he had only ended up thinking to himself that perhaps Jesus had it rather easier living in first-century Palestine. The train was already at Camden Town, only three more stations before his stop. His boss David was expecting an answer this morning.
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Tom’s situation in the case study above is symptomatic of the complicated situation all workers face in the world today:
There is good work to be done in almost every job, occupation or profession, even in the manufacture of cigarettes, a job which has a bad product. One can question, however, whether there is “good work” to be done in any of the three jobs prohibited in Scripture: witchcraft, loan sharking (extortion) and prostitution. In Tom’s case using his leadership gifts to empower people is good work. But the good is often laced with soul-destroying sin or neighbour-hurting effects. Should we weight these out and conclude that work should be undertaken if the benefits outweigh the disadvantages? Maybe in this life there is only work that is mostly good.
Our motives are almost always complicated, and often deeply conflicted. Tom is grateful for the company’s past help, and excited about using his gifts, but pained at possible collusion with harming people. One thing we have learned about human motivation for the workplace is that the motivation switch is on the inside, not mainly the outside in pay and organizational incentives. People turn on the switch for themselves, even though an organization environment can be conducive to positive motivation, or, in contrast, inhibiting and soul-destroying when there is no recognition, or when workers are forced to work as was the case with Adoniram who was in charge of “forced labor” under king Solomon (1 Kgs 4:6, 12:18). Further, workplace environments can be miserable when human beings are treated as robots.
Work is an arena for personal and spiritual formation. Often people leave a job prematurely, because of negative experiences or possible negative consequences, when staying is exactly the recipe for growth. Spiritual consultants for the workplace argue that patience is one of the prime virtues gained in the workplace. For the monks, “stay with your cell; it will teach you everything” has its equivalent for people working in the world. Maybe the best we can hope for is to have an overwhelmingly positive motivation while recognizing the dark side in ourselves that needs to be healed.
Almost all work has global implications, especially today. Tom’s business affects people in a faraway place. Economic globalization is a reality whereby people exchange goods, services, and values globally, something to be explored in a further article.
1. Sin and the workplace.
As we progress through the biblical story we discover that humankind opted for autonomy at the “knowledge tree” in the Garden (Gen 3:6-7). Why God would test human beings and why was Jesus led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested at the beginning of his ministry. The answer is this: There can be no growth into maturity without testing.
The first test for human beings was in the workplace - harvesting fruit. Would Adam and Eve would see all of life in communion with God, as worship to God, or would they would opt for a separation of everyday life from communion. That tree represents provision (good for food), pleasure (a delight to the eyes) and power (desired to make one wise) seized for itself. If it is seized outside of relationship with God, life will either be religionized (with a separate sphere for the holy) or secularized (with all of life not lived with a transcendent reference). These are the two alternatives to whole-life spirituality.
Adam and Eve’s sin was not that they simply disobeyed God’s command; it was the separation of daily life from communion with God. Before they sinned there was no temple, no worship services, and no priests. They were priests of creation and all of life was worship. In reality, and what Adam and Eve experienced before the Fall, to trim the hedges of the garden or to pray were all one as pleasing God and doing “the Lord’s work.”
The result of their choice was devastating. Work became sweaty and toilsome. The workplace was cursed. The tragic separation of sacred and secular takes place (Gen 3:16). From this comes the dreadful hierarchy of occupations throughout the history of the church in which the missionary and pastor (or priest and nun) on the top (the most holy), people helpers midway down and trades, business and politics near the bottom, a descending order of religiosity and sacredness.
Tom’s dilemma shows that there is hardly any totally pure work left in the world, including even pastoral and missionary service which also is laced with compromise and resistance from “the powers.” All work has been affected by humankind’s fall into sin. Instead of working being worship and communion with God, alienation has set in (Gen 3:8-10). Instead of complete harmony between workers there is blaming, predatory competition, politicizing and shame (Gen 3:16). Instead of the workplace being a place of beauty and fruitfulness, an inspiration to creativity, there are thorns and thistles, prototype of all the death-dealing and initiative-inhibiting realities of the contemporary workplace.
2. Men and women experience the fall differently because work is gendered.
First, the curse is experienced by the man in frustration in his work, and with the woman, frustration in her relationship to the man. Men in their brokenness generally turn toward their work to find meaning, but find it cursed - “by the sweat of the brow you will eat your food”(Gen 3:19). Women turns to relationships, but find them politicized: “[Your husband] will rule over you…[but] your desire will be for your husband” (3:16 - not a positive desire but the same word as in Genesis 4:7 – the desire to overmaster). For the man it is thorns and thistles; for the women, oppression. But the effect of the curse, turned around, is an indication of what God originally intended.
Second, masculine spirituality is expressed mainly towards one’s work, and feminine spirituality is expressed mainly in relationships. Is this one reason why there are more women in the church than men, because the church appeals to feminine spirituality, to receptivity as male leaders inseminate the congregation sitting receptively in rows with the Word of God?
Third, Scripture strongly affirms co-humanity and the complementarily of male and female in work, life and spirituality. The woman was created for the man (Gen 2:18) as a “helper as his opposite” – not a subordinate but a complement. This means welcoming and depending upon the uniqueness of the other without requiring the other to become the same as oneself. In so doing we reflect the social unity of the image of God, we have a richer personal spirituality, a richer work life and a richer experience of church leadership. We also demonstrate to the world something beautiful for God, prophetically pointing towards the New Heaven and New Earth, and demonstrating redemptively the work of Christ in healing the war of the sexes.
So men and women need each other even in fallen and partially redeemed workplaces, including the church. Undoubtedly some of the failure in the world’s leadership, in the workplace as well as the home, is the failure to see Adam and Eve as complements.
3. Work is inevitably frustrating in this life.
This is one of the tragic consequences of sin. There is no perfectly fulfilling work this side of heaven. It should be joyful and full of beauty. The workplace should empower people to make decisions, to make a difference, as Adam was empowered to name the animals. If this were applied today the process of creation (having the idea), execution (developing it) and evaluating it (“It is good”) would all be undertaken by each worker. All these functions are representative of the three persons of the Holy Trinity: Father – initiation; Son – implementation; and Spirit – empowerment and evaluation. Instead, work is often fragmented (undertaking only part of the task) and the worker is separated from the results of her work, a matter which Karl Marx eloquently described in his revolutionary document. But before Marx there was an enigmatic character in the Bible.
The Professor in the Old Testament book of Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) explored the meaning of work “under the sun” - without reference to a supreme and transcendent God, as a pure secularist. He was doing theology from below – starting with concrete experiences in the workplace. He discovered that work is just plain hard, that one will be followed by a fool, that one leaves everything to someone who has not worked for it, and that work is so demanding that even at night one’s mind does not rest (Eccl 2:17-26). Qoheleth explained that work is an evangelist taking us to God who alone can fill the God-shaped vacuum of the soul. Even faith in God – at least for the time being – does not give us absolute satisfaction and joy in our work, as is sometimes deceptively proclaimed. But workers can find their deepest satisfaction in God in the context of their work. The term he uses for finding satisfaction in God through his work at the conclusion of his first-hand research is “the fear of the Lord” – affectionate reverence of God. In the New Testament the Lord’s gracious word, “Enter into the joy of your Master” (Matt 25:21, 23) is spoken to the two and five talent workers who invested rather than horded what was entrusted to them. But it is a word at the end of human history when Christ comes again. We can have limited joy in our work now, but not ultimate joy. This in itself, as C.S. Lewis once said, is a powerful signal built into the human condition that we were made for another life and another world.
4. There is substantial but not complete redemption of work now.
Final healing of work and workplace will take place at the End when Jesus comes again and the Kingdom of God is fully consummated, when heaven comes to earth. But in the meantime work can be meaningful and the worker can be motivated by love, love of the work, love of those served by it, love of the neighbour and love of God. There is substantial but not complete redemption now.
In the mean-time, that is, until the End comes, we are inspired by the Holy Spirit to be shrewd. In Luke chapter sixteen Jesus tells the extraordinary story of an employee about to be out-placed. That clever person goes to the boss’ creditors and systematically reduces their indebtedness, which endears them to the manager so that when he is fired they take him into their homes. Thus, says Jesus commending the dishonest steward for his shrewdness, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon so that when it fails – the money – your friends will take you into their eternal habitations (Luke 16:1-9). The one treasure we can take from this life to the next is the relationships we have made through Christ.
So, how does one function in a complex workplace or in the context of corruption and an unjust tax system? Jesus models shrewdness. There was corruption and an unjust tax system in Palestine. He removed Matthew the tax collector from the system. But in contrast Jesus encouraged Zacchaeus, another tax collector, to stay in the system but inspired him to function with justice and to repay those he had defrauded with interest. Then Jesus himself paid the tax to Caesar but insisted that we should render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. Withdrawal, transformation and discerning participation – all three seem to be options for our relation with a fallen system. How you decide requires shrewdness, sometime called “wisdom” in the Bible. Shrewdness means seizing an opportunity to advance the Kingdom of God in whatever way we can in the circumstances – doing the best we can in an imperfect situation.
4. Work is good for us spiritually.
Imagine being independently wealthy, being early retired or winning the lottery, so that work no longer becomes necessary. Would that be a good thing? Indeed, empirically, we observe over and again that it is debilitating. The reason is that work is good for us. It unleashes our gifts and talents; it keeps us from the sin of sloth; it gives us a concrete opportunity to love – whether we see our neighbour near, as in counselling, or serve our neighbour far away, as in research. In so doing work becomes an arena of spiritual formation.
While we work we get to know ourselves; the outer expression of our work reveals something of our soul. Work reveals our Achilles heel, which may be a need to be needed, a need for approval or a need to be in control. And in revealing this we are being invited to repent, to pray, to grow and to become more fully human.
The seven deadly sins – the church’s tradition of soul-sapping struggles that are parallel to the “works of the flesh” (Gal 5:19-21) – are revealed as we work. But so are the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, self-control, meekness, and so on, nurtured and given, not in the quietness of a retreat but in the thick of life and work (5:22-26). In contrast to the popular view that work is a hindrance to the spiritual life, a diversion from holiness, work is an incentive for real growth and maturity, partly because we are always being tested in the workplace. And testing is essential for growth, just as it was for Adam and Eve found in the Garden, and for Jesus, led by the Spirit to be tested in the wilderness. But not only are there consequences of work for the worker. But God experiences the results of human work.
IN PART TWO WE WILL CONSIDER OUTCOMES FOR GOD AND OUTCOMES FOR HEAVEN (available in three weeks)
