So you've left the ministry. How do you find job satisfaction? I mean, as a minister, you were SAVING SOULS - well, God was actually doing the saving, but it sure FELT like YOU were doing the saving, right? So you had this sense of job satisfaction. Or rather, you probably didn't do a whole lot of saving, and you probably got a lot of criticism and almost no encouragement...but you sure THOUGHT what you were doing was important and meaningful. And now that's gone. How can you ever feel important find meaning in your work in the...shudder...common realm?
The typical answer you'll get, and it's one I've heard from a thousand sources, is that you should pour your passions into your church and into your family, but your JOB is just a means to an end, a means to support the other two. Your job is just something that ENABLES the other two. This is very typical reformed wisdom.
I'm not comfortable with this. It just didn't sit well with me. Let's bring some scripture into it.
Col 3:22 Slaves, obey in everything those who are your masters according to the flesh, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, do it from the soul, as to the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are slaving for the Lord Christ.
I've made a few refinements to the ESV translation of these verses. I have to mention these.
Slaves: sorry, but it's slaves, not bondservants or some other less shocking word. A big pet peeve of mine is when people INSIST that Greco-Roman slavery was NOTHING AT ALL like slavery in America, when it was race based and very cruel. But the fact is, slavery in those days WAS race based. Everyone thought that people from their country or nation state was a higher life form than those outside the empire, the barbarians. Barbarian is an ancient Greek word for anyone who's not a Greek. And it was Aristotle who said that slaves were merely a tool, a possession. And if ancient slavery was a kinder, gentler slavery, why does Paul have to command people in the church to stop threatening their slaves in Eph 6:9? Let's just face it: the slavery that the Bible does not explicitly say should cease is exactly like the slavery of 19th century America. And every time we soften the biblical notion of slavery, we are trying to make the Bible say something it doesn't say.
Masters according to the flesh: you'll see translations say "earthly masters" here, but this is what the Greek says. I like the Greek phrasing, because it implies that you have a Master who is not of the flesh, which is to imply the Spirit.
Do it from the soul: this is the key phrase in this passage. I think perhaps a modern equivalent would be: "Whatever you do, pour your very soul into it as if you were working under direct orders from God himself, not mere men because you know that your reward from the Lord is your inheritance in the new heavens and new earth."
You are slaving for the Lord Christ: well, this is the verb it uses, the same root as the word slave. I just don't like trying to hide this word. It means Jesus OWNS us. Like Aristotle said of slaves: merely a tool, a possession. Jesus owns us just as much as I own this computer I'm typing on.
So for those who say that we should pour our passion into our family and our church, and that our vocation is MERELY a means to that end, I say, no, this is not biblical.
Col 3 says that our work should be done from the soul - that we should pour our very souls into it; not, obviously, to the exclusion of our church and family.
Col 3 also says that as we do, we testify to our hope of a reward in the age to come.
If Jesus was your boss, what kind of worker would you be? Would you render the minimum acceptable performance necessary to avoid getting fired? Would you demand that you always get your two 15 minute breaks and your hour long lunch hour? Would it be all about you? Would you say of work left undone, perhaps by someone else, "That's not my job!"? Would you be content to let the organization fail to accomplish its mission, so long as you can personally avoid blame? Would you spend half your day surfing the internet?
Or would you pour your heart and soul into your work, doing the very best job you can, maximizing your efforts, focusing on the task at hand and not letting yourself get distracted?
But Jesus IS your boss. He's the one who gives you your ultimate paycheck: eternal life, the universe, himself.
And how would you behave at work if he was always watching? He is.
No, it's not biblical to say that you shouldn't feel the need to pour your passions into your work. Now of course, we should be careful not to get so involved with work that we neglect family and church. We need to have these in balance to the extent possible.
Kuyper speaks of three spheres: family, church and state. Your work falls into the category of the state, assuming you work in the common realm rather than the redemptive realm.
If we accept this, then that means something more than that we should pour our passions into our work. It also means that our work serves the sphere of the state - or the community if you prefer; the common realm community that is. Our work in the common realm is for the common good. We are contributing to the realm of common grace, where the rain falls on the just and the unjust, and our work will benefit the just and the unjust alike.
Our work in the common realm will be more satisfying to us as it looks more like the work God intended. That is, it will be more satisfying the more it tends toward the common good of our fellow human beings in the realm of common grace.
God himself exists in community: "Let US create man in OUR image". And he did not create man alone in his image...
"So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them."
One man by himself cannot bear God's image. "It is not good for man to be alone." God created man in community. Male and female together are created in God's image. This short poem clarifies what it means for God to create man in his own image. It means he created him male AND female.
This does not mean, as the pagans say, that everyone has a male and female aspect to them. No, it means that we cannot bear God's image apart from how we interact with others who are different from ourselves. We cannot bear God's image apart from being part of a community, part of a family.
Gen 1:2 points out that there are three things about the creation that render it unserviceable to man. 1) it's dark, 2) it's formless and 3) it's empty. So on days 1-6, God goes about serving mankind by 1) creating light 2) giving the earth, heavens and seas forms and boundaries and limits and 3) filling these with creatures. Finally, when all is ready, God creates man in community.
God is satisfied with his work, and so on the 7th day he rests because his labor is complete. He has made the creation a perfect dwelling place for man. He is satisfied because he served man.
God himself exists in community. One God, three Persons: Father, Son, Spirit. He created us in community: male and female. His work satisfaction came in serving those in his community - because the whole point of creating was to enter into covenant with man and reveal himself to them. That was the whole point. That's the way the creation narrative is structured - with the creation of man being the high point.
So our job satisfaction will be greatest when what we do most clearly benefits others, and when this is most tangible and visible to we who are working. This is what it means to work to the glory of God, to most clearly bear his image: when your work serves others. When your work serves only yourself, this will be empty. When you cannot SEE that your work is benefitting others, you will not be as satisfied.
Many people today - as has always been the case throughout history - place a great deal of significance on politics. And politics has always been, and will always be, an arena of contest. Who gets to make the laws? This becomes a question that everyone thinks they have the "right" answer to. Being so persuaded that they are right, they work to ensure that their "team" gets to make the laws, because the laws they will make will lead to justice and equity.
Christians often become utter fools when they attempt to forcefully enter politics. Why? Because one or a small handful of issues often occupy the debate. And when we contend against the other side on a particular issue, we lose the focus on what really matters - justice - and get distracted by what doesn't: winning the contest. At some point justice ceases to matter, but only defeating the other guy. That's what happens in contests, in arguments, in debates, in fights. And then you up end losing the forest for the trees and become fools.
For example, let's take an issue that is near and dear to every Christian's heart: abortion. Though it shouldn't be the case, it seems to escape nearly everyone's notice that the right and the left are really talking past each other on this issue.
My next sentence will probably offend you immensely, whoever you are. Both sides in the debate are concerned about upholding justice as they understand it. However, both sides are only looking at one aspect of justice, to the detriment and neglect of others.
The right cares only that abortion is murder. A woman that has an abortion has sacrificed her child on the altar of convenience. She has performed a monstrous deed, and this deed should be illegal. This is perhaps the most basic building block of common realm, common grace justice: the state, from at least the time of Noah, is called to punish murder with the death penalty. God said to Noah, "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."
I can't help pointing out here that although Christians say they are on God's side because they are arguing against abortion, no one ever argues that abortion should be illegal AND that the penalty for breaking this law should be death. I don't see any right leaning activists in states where there is no death penalty protesting its lack. Already we see that Christians are picking and choosing which injustice they care about - but just wait - we have only just begun.
How does the right view the pro-abortion left? As unrepentant murderers, nothing more. While it's true that those who are in favor of abortion have fundamentally failed to uphold God's prohibition against murder, and in a seriously grievous way, this isn't the ENTIRE truth.
I don't believe I have EVER in my entire life heard a pro-abortion activist argue that it's ok to kill babies. In fact, pro-abortion activists tend to point to the plight of the single mother, who got knocked up by her boyfriend, who has now abandoned her to raise their child by herself.
So the right focuses on the injustice of the mother murdering her baby, and the left focuses on the injustice of the man abandoning his child and its mother. Neither one has a full-orbed understanding of the injustice of the situation.
Or for another example: gay marriage. Lots of Christians think they are nobly standing up to injustice by standing up for the sanctity of marriage by standing against gay marriage. And boy, they sure do shout loudly about it.
And yet, many of those people who are supposedly warriors for marriage are...ironically...divorced. Or maybe they're a pastor or an elder at a church where divorce isn't exactly approved, but they don't discipline the members who get divorced either. But if they really stood up for the sanctity of marriage, when someone in their congregation got divorced, they'd insist that they reconcile or else whoever refused to reconcile be excommunicated!
So instead of actually caring about the law of God, they like to APPEAR to care about the law of God by shouting loudly and making a big scene, just like the Pharisees, but they don't actually do anything to combat sin.
And if you care about the fact that the 2008 economic crisis was brought about in large part by the extreme greed of folks on Wall Street and predatory lenders, then most Christians will accuse you of being a socialist and a liberal, implying that you're actually secretly a communist (and thus an enemy of the United States) and soft on abortion and gay marriage. Because, as any modern American evangelical knows, Jesus was a capitalist, and the US Federal Republic is the only biblical form of government. After all, capitalism is the only way to ensure the state isn't stealing from anyone. Capitalism promotes justice in a way that no other system of government can. Right?
But while they're SO concerned with economic justice for those who "work hard" and "earn" all that money, they're NOT concerned with economic justice for those who are poor and exploited. They aren't really concerned about economic justice. They want to justify their greed.
Well, you say, that's quite the accusation. But have you any proof? Yes, I have.
It's a debatable point that Christians must give 10% of their income to the church. Many people argue that that's a law for Israel, and not the New Testament church. Obviously, some laws were unique to Israel, and those have ceased for the church in the new covenant. But 10% predates Israel. Abraham gave a tithe to Melchizadek. 10% may have been republished in the Mosaic covenant, but this is moral law, not ceremonial law.
But what if I can't afford 10%? Well, while the New Testament NEVER says you MUST give 10%, it actually encourages much more: selling all you have, giving ALL the money to the church, giving out of poverty and the like. There's no support for being stingy with the church in the New Testament.
But if you're truly poverty ridden, I hope you're speaking to your deacons and asking for help. Probably too proud to do that, huh? Does your church even HAVE deacons whose job is to collect money for the poor in the congregation?
So actually, you can argue that the Bible continues to command Christians to give at LEAST 10%, except perhaps in extreme situations in which that's not possible, in which case the Bible commands deacons to intervene and provide. And yet, all these Christians, who are so concerned about economic justice ignore these things.
There's much outrage about socialism and Obamacare and high taxes, but where's the outrage at the fact that almost all churches everywhere average 3% of their congregations' income collected in tithes and offerings? It's less than half of what churches are supposed to collect.
And where's the outrage at the pastor on food stamps? The recent seminary graduate with 100 GRAND in debt from going to seminary who nevertheless can't get a call to anything other than a tiny church plant with a salary of 30k a year because every church despises his youth, despite what Paul said to Timothy? Where's the outrage at the unemployed licentiate searching for a call who has to move into his parents' basement, filling pulpit for $100 a week?
You call that economic justice? You don't CARE about justice!
You know what you care about? I'll tell you what you care about. You care about LOOKING good. You care about LOOKING like you care about justice. The truth is, you couldn't care LESS about justice or the law of God. And you DON'T care about ANYONE other than yourself.
What you care about is justifying your smug, judgmental self righteousness by screaming loudly about the injustice du jour. You don't care about justice. You don't care about the law of God.
If you did, you would look in the mirror. If you did, you would stop screaming about everyone ELSE's sins and be more concerned with repenting of your OWN sins, of which there are many.
You are hypocrites, Christians! You are just like the Pharisees of Jesus' day, to whom he said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you give a tithe of mint and dill and cumin, but you have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! ...Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."
By your smug self righteousness, you shut the doors to the kingdom of heaven in peoples' faces. Yours is the GREATEST evil. YOU are why Jesus hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes - because these people are LESS SINFUL THAN YOU.
If there is one injustice that God cares about more than the others it is this: the hypocrisy of those who claim the name of Christ. It is upon the religious leaders of his day - upon the confessing church leaders - that Jesus pronounced his seven-fold woe in Matt 23, quoted in part above. This seven-fold woe culminates in him proclaiming them guilty of all the blood of all the martyred prophets throughout history. Jesus understood that their smug self righteousness was what would lead them to crucify the Son of God.
I don't envy you on judgment day, hypocritical Christian. FYI: the fact that you married someone of the opposite sex, lost your virginity on your wedding night and never had an abortion will not save you. Your abstaining from alcohol, tobacco and drugs will not save you. Your refusal to say certain four letter words or tell dirty jokes will not save you. Your righteousness is like used toilet paper to God. Worthless, disgusting, worthy only of being flushed down the toilet.
