Work

A Vocational Blind Spot

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Blind spot test

Blind spot test

At the conference I am attending on the academic vocation, we talked today about a blind spot that occurs in many faith communities. In many of these we look at vocation only in terms of religious vocations or applying to those involved in spiritual ministries.

What is striking is that many of the academics I know see their work as a spiritual calling but often fail to hear any affirmation of this either in their institutions or in their faith communities. And it is not just academics. I’ve know people in the world of business, law, medicine and other fields who see their work as integral to being faithful to a spiritual calling. Sometimes they have been highly successful and impactful in this work. Sadly, in many cases the only affirmation they receive in faith communities is for how much money they contribute, but not for the work they do.

It’s not limited to academics and professionals. I’ve know plumbers and carpenters and electricians and many others who view their work as being “for God.” They seek to do quality work, deal honestly, and serve their customers.

One of our speakers asked the question of what it would mean if we wouldn’t simply feature the people in ministries or religious vocations or trumpet the big donors, but also celebrate the engineers and plumbers, lawyers and electricians, and all the others who are conscientiously offering the gifts of their work to God.

The apostle Paul wrote an early group of Christians saying, “And whatever you do,whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). My sense is that “whatever” encompasses anything not specifically prohibited by the scriptures.

What would it mean if we broadened our sense of calling to encompass “whatever”? What if we honored the intrinsic value of the work people do, and not just what it is “good for”? What if we started affirming the 40 or more hours a week people spent in their workplaces as mattering to God, and not just the few hours they gave to church activity?

What if?

On Liminal Space

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One of the ways to impress friends (and maybe gain some sympathy if they understand you) is to say that you are in a “liminal space” in your life right now. I’ve come across this idea more and more in the past few years and particularly this week at the conference I am attending. A liminal space is the undefined boundary between two clearly defined spaces. The threshold to my house (the front stoop and entryway) is a liminal space between outdoors and the indoor living areas of my house.

In many instances, this term is used to describe a life transition. Pregnancy is a liminal space between just being a couple and being parents–between something that was familiar and something that will be totally new. It can be the space between losing a job and getting another one. It can be things like “mid-life”, that odd period somewhere in your forties where you realize you are no longer “young”, where you see changes in your body, and you are asking questions again of what’s it all about?

This is actually a good term for something my wife and I have been experiencing. This is the year we enter our seventh decade, complete with Golden Buckeye cards, courtesy of the State of Ohio. A number of our high school and college friends have already retired. While I’m not there yet, we’ve noticed some interesting changes and new questions we are asking.

For one thing, we are becoming far more ruthless in deaccumulating. I was cleaning out a desk we are preparing to sell and discovered old notebooks from seminary and college that I haven’t looked at in 30 to 40 years. And for the first time, I had the courage to say–I don’t need to keep this. I also recently got rid of several boxes of books I realized I either would never read or never look at again. And I feel like we are just getting started.

In my work I’ve found myself moving from simply thinking about my own goals and career development to nurturing these in younger colleagues. While I still have challenging assignments and great ministry opportunities among the students and faculty with whom I work I am thinking more and more about encouraging and empowering others and handing off to a new generation of people in our organization. I’m really not intimidated by that–I want what we are doing to outlast my working years. I find myself thinking more about not simply ending work at some point but wanting to finish well–something older workers don’t always do. In particular, I don’t want to be the old crank!

I’ve found we’ve begun pursuing more avidly interests we just couldn’t consider during the peak years of work and being parents. And so we go painting, take photographs, write blogs and sing music. We’ve learned you can audit courses for free at Ohio public universities when you are sixty and are thinking about this. Health permitting, we expect to have a life after work and it is interesting to begin cultivating what that might be and asking what that will look like.

One thing about liminal spaces is that one is going from high def to low def. I really don’t know what life after work entirely will be like. One of the things we learned today is that it is very tempting to rush the answers to these questions rather than to spend some time lingering with the questions, which often leads to greater self-understanding and better answers. Low def is uncomfortable yet it can be a place for growth.

One would think we’d have life figured out by this point. Wrong! We’ve never been to this part of life before, other than watching parents and older friends go through it. In my faith, we talk about growing in Christ-likeness, or as I like to speak of it, growing into our “size Jesus” clothes (thank you for that image, Andrea!). I’m so glad I still have opportunities to learn and grow, even if it means new questions and uncertainties. It seems to me the only alternative is stagnation, and to me that would be to die before I’m dead! Liminal space seem far better.

 

 

God at Play?

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“Work that’s unrelated to want.” That’s how our pastor defined “play” in a message on “the Christian at play.” This sparked some thinking about what it was that God was doing in the “work” of creation. If this definition is accurate, God was in fact at play, because there was no want or necessity in God’s creation. God didn’t create because God “had to.” All this was done simply for God’s pleasure. In the old King James Version, Revelation 4:11 says, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

One gets a sense of God at play in making the creation. He says, “let’s do so and so” and it springs into existence, and then at the end of each day, he looks at this and says, “that was goo-ood!” (Bob’s paraphrase!). When he creates fish, he creates a bazillion different kinds. He doesn’t just make green, but an infinite variety of greens. And he gives human beings eyes that can distinguish those shades.

Was God at work or play in creation? Genesis 2:2 says, “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.” It sounds like God is in fact working, But then I notice the rest part. Was God wiped out from doing all this stuff? I don’t think so. Genesis says he “had finished”. One senses that God is admiring and delighting in what God had done–savoring the delight of making and the things made. Was God at work or play in creation? I think the answer is “yes”.

Rich’s definition explores the paradox that often play involves this intense investment of energy that we might be tempted to call work. Likewise, aren’t there times when the work we do that is related to want ceases to be labor and seems to be play? I often describe the joy I have in setting foot on the campus where I work as “feeling like a kid in a candy shop who just received his allowance”!

Sometimes, people think that work was “the curse” or part of the curse of the fall of Adam and Eve. I’ve often taught that work existed prior to the fall (see Genesis 2:15) and that work simply became toilsome and a necessity in consequence of the fall (see Genesis 3:17-19). What the message makes me think about is that there was a connection between work and play that was damaged along with the connections between God, people, and the creation. Work becomes this survival necessity that is often laborious but sometimes still has glimmers of play. Play gets relegated to a “carve out” in our days, or something we live for on the weekends. Sometimes it becomes an obsession and we literally work at our play.

Perhaps then, “playing together”, which is something Rich suggests should be part of the life of our community, is a way of celebrating “the new creation”, the ways Jesus is restoring all the connections severed in the garden. Playing together isn’t just a bonding, fellowship activity (nice churchy words!). It looks forward to the fulfillment of new creation–the new heaven and earth that exceeds our wildest dreams of all that is good and true and beautiful. Maybe Euchre Tournaments really are a taste of heaven!

This blog also appears at our church’s blog page: Going Deeper.

Review: Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work

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Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work
Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work by Timothy Keller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What do you think might happen if you could persuade those who follow Christ to give 40 to 60 hours of their best time to the advance of God’s purposes in the world? That is what Timothy Keller wants to do in his book Every Good Endeavor. The subtitle of his book is “Connecting Your Work to God’s Work” and what he wants to do is help us understand how work is integral to what it means to be made in the image of God. Work is not “the curse”, although human rebellion against God manifests itself in work that can be difficult, conflictual or even futile. Yet the work of Christ is to bring “new creation” even into our work. That, in a nutshell, is the outline of the book.

What makes this such a helpful book is the combination of theology carefully developed from the biblical text interlaced with wonderful illustrations of these truths from both the worlds of literature and the arts (I loved his examples of Tolkien’s “Leaf by Niggle” and of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme),and from the business and professional world.

Among the chapters in this book, I found several I particularly appreciated. His exploration of “work as cultivation” explored the idea of work’s intrinsic value as a culture-making activity. So often, I’ve been in circles that treat work as an evil necessity that must be gotten out of the way to get to more “spiritual” pursuits. Keller demonstrates how this is a Greek, rather than Christian ideal. He also explores how work reveals our idols, whether we come from traditional, modern, or post-modern settings. Finally, I found his chapter “A New Power for Work” to be encouraging both for it recognition of the work of God’s Spirit empowering our work and igniting our passion, and the important place of rest or sabbath, in our life rhythms of work and rest.

The book is co-authored with Katherine Leary Alsdorf, director of Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New York’s Center for Faith and Work. The book concludes with a description of this center’s work in the field of marketplace discipleship that could be a model for other churches committed to releasing the energies and gifting of their people in the area of life to which they probably give more of their waking hours than any other, their work.

View all my reviews

Related posts:

A Love Supreme

Unfinished Work

 

A Love Supreme

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There is a small difference between making work our God and loving God through our work. So says Tim Keller in his book Every Good Endeavor. In the former, work becomes a cruel taskmaster. In the other, our work can be one more expression of love. One of Keller’s illustrations of the latter is John Coltrane’s groundbreaking album, A Love Supreme, released in 1964.

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Coltrane, in the liner notes to this album, writes:

During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD. 

As time and events moved on, a period of irresolution did prevail. I entered into a phase which was contradictory to the pledge and away from the esteemed path; but thankfully, now and again through the unerring and merciful hand of God, I do perceive and have been duly re-informed of His OMNIPOTENCE, and of our need for, and dependence on Him. At this time I would like to tell you that NO MATTER WHAT … IT IS WITH GOD. HE IS GRACIOUS AND MERCIFUL. HIS WAY IS IN LOVE, THROUGH WHICH WE ALL ARE. IT IS TRULY – A LOVE SUPREME – .

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I was inspired by Keller to pick up a copy (found one second hand at Half Price Books!) and was delighted to discover this jazz classic written as an act of worship, but also a consummate piece of music in which Coltrane is joined by McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums.

One of the delightful things about this work is that this act of worship is also a work of excellence. This seems fitting, that works of love are works that delight and works of excellence. It seems we often look for work that we love and struggle when it is frustrating. What if instead work were something done to express our love, as was Coltrane’s work? How might that make a difference?

 

 

Unfinished Work

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I hate not finishing things! I rarely leave a book unfinished. I don’t like to leave food on the plate. And I like to finish a job that I start. Yet one of the things I’ve become increasingly conscious of as I get older is that some of the things I’ve dreamed of–whether my dreams for campus work, for our organization, or for the impact of Christian thought in the part of the world where I live–I will likely live to see only glimmers of the things I’ve dreamed of. Until the end of history and the return of Jesus, the day comes for each of us where we lay down our work, and ultimately our life in this world–always with things undone, always with more that we know could be done.

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I think of great “unfinished” works of music. There are Schubert’s Eighth Symphony, Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, and Edward Elgar’s Third. What must it have been like for those composers to have music in mind that was never realized on a score?

I’ve just begun reading Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor. In one of the early chapters he recounts the little story J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, Leaf by Niggle that tells the story of an artist, Niggle, who has a vision of a scene with a beautiful tree in the center. Try as he might, Niggle can never capture the whole tree, only one very perfect leaf. Then Niggle goes on the long journey of death until he comes to a place where he sees the tree of his vision and realizes that his creation was part of a much larger Creation of a greater Creator. Keller notes that this story was written at a time when Tolkien doubted that he would ever complete Lord of the Rings, and that Tolkien was in fact Niggle!

J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien

Keller draws from this the idea that for the Christian, in the words of 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (NIV) Paul’s hope was not that our work would be complete in this life, but that there would be a resurrection to a new creation, where somehow our creations would carry over into the final Creation.

What that says to me is that the prospect of unfinished work need not be a cause for despair. Our work will matter and somehow we will see the realization in some purified form of our deepest hopes and dreams. And so I can keep giving myself to pressing toward those goals, to pursuing the good, the beautiful, and the true. I don’t need to finish because my trust is in the one who said, “It is finished.”