Working out work

For most people, work is tough. I write this in the United Arab Emirates, where the great majority of labourers from the subcontinent work 10 hours a day, in 40 degree heat, to earn just enough to service their needs and remit a small surplus back to their families at home. They are not slaves, they don’t have to be here, so the obvious question arises: if they choose to work under these conditions, then how limited are their options back home? There are hundreds of millions of people on this planet working at survival levels in the slums of the megacities or out in the fields, scratching to make a living in the face of war, drought, and flood.

Even in the developed economies of the world, the majority of people don’t find much fun in commuting on crowded buses and trains, performing mind-numbing jobs in factories or bureaucracies or labouring in the cold or heat, and then returning home each night exhausted.

If you have a job that is interesting, fulfilling, and reasonably well-paid, then pause to thank God, because you are in the top 5% of people on this planet. Also, you probably need to thank your parents or other benefactors, who sacrificed money and comfort to put you through school to give you the opportunities you have had. Even in these top jobs, work typically involves daily frustrations, disappointments, relationship problems, blows to our pride and challenges to our strength, wisdom, and patience.

Okay, this is a fairly negative picture. On the positive side, work provides opportunities for creativity, innovation, and the satisfaction that comes from a job well done, whether constructing a building, designing software, teaching children or decorating a home. Work also provides us with opportunities to build lasting friendships as we work alongside others and share triumphs and disappointments with them.

The gospel at work

For the Christian, work provides the daily challenge and opportunity to honour God through what we do, the way we do it, and through the way we interact with people. Work is a crucial part of our worship of God (honouring him) and our witnessing to the reality of God and to the good news of Jesus Christ.

The Christian gospel changes people’s lives. When we come to faith in Christ, our attitude to life itself changes. We learn that our lives are not our own, we are “bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:20). We are no longer the masters of our lives. We belong to the Christ who redeemed us. Every minute of every waking hour is to be lived for God.

If the gospel changes our lives, then it must change our attitude to work, because most of us spend the great majority of our waking hours working in one way or another. (By work I mean not just paid employment but all effort directed to an end, whether study, work in the home, voluntary work, running a business, or working for an organization.) For the Christian, work is no longer just a way of earning money, a necessary evil or a path to personal fulfilment and achievement. Our work is to be done for God. He has a purpose for our lives.

The question then arises: how does my faith impact on my work? It is an important question. In a 75-year life span, we might typically spend 25 years asleep (what a thought!) and another 20 years shopping, eating, playing sport or relaxing, which leaves us at least 25-30 years for working. It’s therefore hard to say you are living a Christian life if your faith does not impact on over half your waking hours!

The Westminster Shorter Catechism has this wonderfully direct statement: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever”. If the purpose of our life is to glorify God and to enjoy our relationship with him, then we need to ask ourselves how we do that in and through our daily work.

In a recent essay, Mark Greene, Executive Director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, highlighted the ‘Sacred Secular Divide’ (SSD) as “the biggest challenge facing the Christian church in the 21^st century”.¹ As one who has spent half a lifetime seeking to apply my Christian faith to my life and work, I can certainly relate to that. Indeed, I would venture to add that it is also the biggest challenge facing every Christian, every day. As Mark Greene observes, referring to the SSD, “It is the malignant foe of fruitful mission and joyful Christian living. There is a better way.”² There certainly is.

Some biblical principles

The Bible has a lot to say about work. According to Scripture, work is good. God himself is a worker. He put in effort. He made the world and then rested. We are made in his image, and he has put in us both the desire to create and the ability to find satisfaction in what we achieve. Jesus was a worker, and not just in the sense that he grew up earning a living as a carpenter. When he left home to spend three years as an itinerant teacher and healer, it was hard, exhausting work, as the Gospels make clear.

Secondly, the Bible lays down the obvious principle that work is needed to eat, and therefore to live. We who live in towns and cities get used to buying our food at the local supermarket or corner store, where we exchange credit or cash for food which has been harvested, processed, and packaged by others. We are far removed from primary production. It’s often a shock when we first go out to work to earn wages to calculate how many hours we have to put in to earn enough to exchange for even the basic necessities of life. Our lot in this life, if we are of sound mind and body, is to work in order to survive, and to support those who through infirmity, age or lack of opportunity cannot work. Laziness is condemned: “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich” (Prov 10:4). The New Testament reinforces the truth that idleness is dishonoring to God (see 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15). The apostle Paul set an example of working long and hard, supporting himself in his missionary work through working in his trade as a tentmaker. His hard work was a part of his witness to others. He wrote to the Christians at Thessalonica, “For you remember, brothers, our labour and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God” (1 Thess 2:9).

Thirdly, work can often be tiring and frustrating. It’s one of the results of the fall. Way back at the beginning, for the first humans getting food was simply a matter of walking round the garden and picking what they wanted. After Adam’s sin, God said to him and Eve:

Cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life…
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground. (Gen 3:17, 19)

So it has been ever since. It may be unpleasant working long hours out in the fields in the hot sun, or in a factory, or teaching delinquent children, or ironing clothes, or dealing with unhappy customers, or stressing over work and study deadlines. Work often involves sacrifice, effort, and difficulty.

Fourthly, work can sometimes seem pointless. The book of Ecclesiastes asks the question in 1:3: “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” Like Sisyphus in the Greek myth, condemned to endlessly roll a heavy stone up a hill, only to see it roll down again, it may be hard for us to find much meaning in our daily task. This does not just apply to boring, repetitive, or low-paid work. The writer of Ecclesiastes paints a picture of a very successful businessman, with great possessions. After a career of great achievements, this man sadly concludes, “I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Eccl 2:11).

Even the most successful, creative work can seem to lack meaning if it is done without reference to God. Most of us ask ourselves at one time or another during our working lives, “Why am I doing this?” or “Surely there must be more to life than this?” Sadly, we can change jobs, or even move to another country, but still take our core problem with us: if we are trying to find meaning in life without reference to our Creator, then we will be disappointed.

Without God, even our most treasured achievements may seem ultimately pointless when we face death in old age. The chief executive of a world-famous bank retired recently. He was asked in a television interview what he would most like to be remembered for. His candid reply took the interviewer by surprise. He said, “I want to be remembered with affection by my children; in this business I’ll be forgotten in a week”. He may have been overly modest, but he knew how hard, and often cynically ruthless, the world of finance and business is, where even the great leaders are quickly forgotten as the corporate machine rolls on.

Fifthly, work is not meant to dominate our lives to the extent that we have no time left for God and for relationships. If we are in danger of work taking over our lives to the exclusion of all else, or of working longer and harder just to acquire more possessions, then let’s heed the warning in Jesus’ story in Luke 12 about the rich fool and the uncertainties of life. Let’s also heed the challenge of Isaiah 55:2: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?” Have we got our priorities right? Are we making time for what is important as well as what is urgent? Isaiah goes on in the next verse to remind us that ultimately only God can satisfy our deepest needs: “Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live”. This reverberates again in the words of Jesus that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt 4:4).

We often speak of the importance of maintaining a work-life balance for our physical health, and of making time to enjoy relationships with friends and family. The Bible underlines the even greater importance of setting aside time to honour God (the Sabbath principle) so that we do not fall into the trap of spending all our mental, physical, and emotional energy on work. It also emphasizes the principle of honouring God in and through our daily work, not just as an activity outside of our working week.

Finding meaning and fulfilment

So, how can work be redeemed, changed from being a boring, pointless, necessary evil—something we have to do—into an activity that has purpose and meaning? The Bible gives a number of answers to this question. First and foremost, we need to see work, like life itself, as a gift from God.

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? (Eccl 2:24-25, cf. 3:9-13)

It is good to put in a hard day at work and to feel we have accomplished something, to experience a taste of how God must have felt after resting from his work of creation and reflecting that it was good. In most jobs, there is usually something in the daily grind that gives us a sense of satisfaction. But what if our work is very repetitive and routine? How then can we find meaning in our work and honour God through it?

This leads us to a second part of the answer to our question. The degree of fulfilment we find in our work depends ultimately on our attitude to it. We are called to do our daily tasks as if we were working for the Lord himself. This is a life-changing and liberating principle. Paul gave this instruction to slaves in the first century AD. It is hard to think of a less fulfilling job than slavery, where your best is not valued, where you have little or no freedom to express creativity, where the hours are long and the bosses often difficult or cruel. Paul explains what this entails in his letters to the Ephesians. We are to work “with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man” (Eph 6:5-7).

Those two concepts, sincerity and good will, describe the attitude which will allow us to find meaning and fulfilment in our daily work. In any sports team, you may find those who play for themselves (the selfish), those who play for the crowd (the flashy), and those who play for the team and the coach. Many sports clubs give awards at the end of a season to reward most valuable players, and most-improved. Some also have a special coach’s award for the best team players. Similarly, at work we can be selfish, spending a lot of effort trying to manipulate people and situations to show ourselves in the best possible light in front of our bosses. We can try to grab the credit and the limelight in times of success, or we can be a team player, quietly getting on with the job, applying our best for the good of others, because we are working for the Lord, to please him.

This approach to work is also a way to freedom from drudgery. If our work is difficult, tiring or repetitive, then we transform the workplace by seeing work as part of our daily worship and therefore doing our best, because we are doing it for the Lord. This is particularly liberating if you have a difficult or frustrating boss. A recent survey of international firms found that the major reason why employees leave a firm is not pay and conditions, but a problem with their immediate supervisor.³ When you are working for the Lord, work is redeemed to become an act of worship, and thereby also an act of witness to the existence and character of God. This is what is famously known as the Puritan (or Protestant) work ethic, because it was the much-maligned Puritans in the 16th and 17th century who argued against the common belief that some work (that of priests and ministers) was more holy and special to God than others. They opposed the distinction between the sacred and the secular. This verse by the 17^th century English poet, George Herbert, illustrates this approach to making work an act of worship:

Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything,
To do it as for Thee…
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws
Makes that and th’ action fine.

This work ethic was much ridiculed by 20th century Marxism as a tool used by capitalist bosses to exploit workers to increase productivity. But this criticism simply ignores that the Bible has strong things to say to bosses as well as workers. A supervisor who does his or her work as to the Lord will then treat those in their charge with respect and fairness, with due care and concern for their safety and welfare, and will compensate them with fair wages.

It’s not an easy road for anyone. We live in a world where we naturally focus on our rights and others’ responsibilities. Disturbingly, the Bible turns this around and calls us to concentrate on the rights of others and our responsibilities. Working for the Lord is a way to finding freedom and fulfilment in work, and involves an attitudinal change in our lives. Let’s remember again that if we spend more than half our waking hours working, and if we do so for the Lord, then we are well on the way to living the Christian life as it is meant to be.

This is an extract from Graham Hooper’s forthcoming book The Gap (working titile) to be published by IVP.