Controlled by Work

Officially , the discussion over at The High Calling on Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work finished Monday. But for me, the last section of the book had so much to consider that I’m not quite willing to let go.

The last section of the book, “The Gospel and Work,” includes four chapters. My post on Monday, Stories and Worldviews, addressed only one of the four. Keller packs so much into each chapter that I could likely blog for a month on each one.

One section I can’t leave alone, because I can’t let go of it. In the final chapter, “New Power for Work,” Keller briefly recounts the story in Luke 5 when Jesus calls his first disciples. They had been fishing all day without catching anything, and he tells them to go back out and let down their nets. They protest; they were ready to pack it in and wait for another day. But he persists, and they go. And the catch is huge. It was at this moment that Jesus that he tells them that from this point on they would fish for people.

“Notice,” Keller says, “that when Jesus called them to follow him, it was at the very moment of great financial success – the huge catch of fish. But they could, and they did, leave their nets behind. In Jesus’s presence, they were no longer controlled by their work” (emphasis added by me).

How many of us can say that we are truly not controlled by our work? How many of us can admit that we have not made work an idol?

I saw something else in this passage. Jesus called the disciples in the context of their work. He didn’t say leave work behind; he said I have different work in mind for you – but it will still be work.

He had different work in mind for Paul, too – but Paul still relied on tent making from time to time to provide needed income. Prisca and Aquila remained in the tent making business, yet they were called to faith.

How many of us can say we live our faith in our work? That we do our work so capably and so well that our employers want to hire people just like us? Can we do our work with a “free heart,” as Keller suggests?

“You can work with passion and rest,” he says, “knowing ultimately that deepest desires of your heart…will be fulfilled when you reach your true country, the new heavens and the new earth. So in any time you can work with joy, satisfaction, and no regrets.”

We can work with a free heart because we have the hope within us.

It’s downright revolutionary. And downright liberating.

You can see the various posts, comments, discussion, and links to other posts by visiting The High Calling.

Stories and Worldviews

One of my responsibilities at work is to manage our company’s social media accounts, including Twitter. If you’re familiar with it, you know that most people use their real names in the Twitter “handle” or in their profile. Many don’t. Twitter allows you to participate without revealing your identity.

We get our share of profanity, invective, outright lies and distortions, and even the occasional threat via Twitter. One day, a tweet popped up with an accusation that was so blatantly untrue and provocative that we decided it had to be answered. We were polite, and cited a third party link disproving what was being claimed. The person tweeting responded with a loud wail. “Well, it should be true because you’re so evil.”

Welcome to the subject of worldviews.

In Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, Tim Keller discusses the importance of stories and worldviews. A story is a narrative, and narratives, he says, “are actually so foundational to how we think that they determine how we understand and live life itself.” Our narratives form and structure our worldview, from the German word Weltanschauung, meaning “the comprehensive perspective from which we interpret all reality.”

A worldview, Keller says, is a master narrative, a fundamental story about what life should be like, what has knocked it off balance, and what can be done to make it right.

If you think worldviews don’t matter, look at Washington, D.C., and the war of worldviews over spending, the budget, and the size of government. Our worldviews are growing more extreme, but that’s another story.

As Christians, we, too, have a worldview, the Christian worldview. We know there is wrong in all of us – and it’s called sin. (If you are uncomfortable with the word “sin,” and many Christians are – another worldview at play here – you can substitute “brokenness.”) We know there is wrong among all of us – and it’s called sin. And we know what can be done to make it right, or move it in a right direction – and that’s called faith in Christ.

Perhaps less obviously and spectacularly than politics, this plays itself out at work, too. A worldview exists at all organizations. It may be capitalist, for example. A strong component of the worldview at my company is technology. Other workplaces have worldviews that are outward-focused, inward- focused, utilitarian, benevolent, patriarchal and more.

As a Christina in a largely secular workplace, am I expected to conform and share the prevailing worldview?

In a word, no.

I see the sin and brokenness play itself out each and every day. And I have to decide how to act and respond, each and every day.

It’s not easy.

I’ve talked with enough Christians who work in Christian workplaces to know it’s not easy there, either. The secular workplace doesn’t have a monopoly on sin and brokenness.

A few weeks ago, I made a decision to start each day tell myself three things.

God’s creation is good.

The world is fallen.

That nasty person who knifes me in the back is just as much loved by God as I am; that person, too, is made in God’s image.

It’s not so much changing my worldview and fully embracing it.

Over at The High Calling, we’ve been discussing Every Good Endeavor. We complete the discussion today, and this section had a lot of material to cover, which I might write on another time. Please visit The High Calling to see more of what’s being thought about and said.

Work: Fruitless, Pointless, Selfish, Idolatrous

Imagine you’re working for an organization that is trying to decide a course of action. It could be any action – a new product, an executive change, announcement of a partnership, filing of litigation, or anything else that organizations today find a normal part of doing business.

Head around the table are nodding as the champion presents the plan and what will be achieved. People are speaking in favor, supporting the idea (especially if it’s championed by someone higher up in the organization).

You sit there, uncertainty gnawing at you. As soon as you saw the PowerPoint slides begin, you see the flaw, or flaws. You see what’s being overlooked or glossed over. You see the errors in judgment. You’re getting this acidic stomach because you know where this plan is headed.

And you also know what will happen if your voice your opinion or raise the smallest question about it. Not a team player. Always negative. Afraid to take a risk. Doesn’t see the big picture.

This time you choose to speak out. The speaker gets red in the face and tries to stay calm. The more he tries to explain, the deeper he gets into the mire. Others around the table see the same problems, and say nothing; they will tell you later that they were glad you spoke up.

Despite your objections, the plan goes forward. And blows up in everyone’s faces. All the people who nodded and approved are suddenly nowhere to be found. And the champion gets angry with you because you were right. A considerable amount of work and resources turns out to be for naught. And you’re likely not to be invited back to the next meeting on the next plan.

I would like to say this is confined to the business workplace. But having worked for a public school district, churches as an elder or deacon, a newspaper, a university, several political campaigns, and Fortune 500 companies, I can say that it is unfortunately all too common across all kinds of workplaces.

I’m reading Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work with The High Calling book discussion group, and Keller speaks to the problems of work.

When it becomes fruitless, with more and more work producing a smaller and smaller result.

When it becomes pointless, and it doesn’t matter what you do or how well (or poorly) you do it.

When it becomes selfish, with people sacrificing the common good of the enterprise to achieve their own personal or team goals (a particular problem today because we’re all led to believe that we should be “self-actualized” and “fulfilled” by work).

When it becomes idolatrous, and we worship the work (meaning the fruit of our hands) instead of the Creator.

And problems happen because we are all sinful people. Work, designed by God as something good and for our benefit, is full of broken people and broken, imperfect systems. No management system, no new human resources initiative, no new vision and mission statement will ever change that.

What can change the problems in the workplace starts in the human heart. No workplace will ever be perfect, not in this lifetime, anyway, but change can happen and work be done in such a way that honors God and honors people.

Led by Laura Boggess, we’re reading Every Good Endeavor over at The High Calling. To see what others are saying and participate in the discussion, pleasevisit the site.

Related:

Books on Work: Every Good Endeavor

God’s Plan for Work

A colleague and I were talking about the value of work—why we perceive some work as more important or “worthy” than other work, and how that spills over to the perception that some people are more valuable than others.

“We all share the same inherent value,” I said. “Whether we’re the CEO or the janitor, we each have the same inherent value.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that,” my colleague said. “Some people are clearly more valuable than others.”

“To be sure, we have different skills and levels of skills and talents,” I said. “But we share the same inherent value. Don’t confuse the talent and skill with the worth of the person.”

She still disagreed. The notion was too strong an assault on what she had been taught in school and by her own experience.

To continue reading, please see my post today on Tim Keller's Every Good Endeavor at The High Calling.