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The desacralization of work
The funniest paragraph we read on the road was in USA Today’s lead story on June 11, “Diversity grows as majority dwindles,” by Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg. USA Today, it seems, has a diversity index that measures how racially and ethnically diverse the U.S. population is. Here’s the immortal prose: “The 2009 national index is 52, up from 47 in 2000. This means that the chance of two randomly selected people being different is slightly more than half. In 1980, the index was 34, a 1-in-3 chance.”
Susan and I found during our travels that the chance of two WORLD readers being different is 100 percent. That goes for people generally. The chance was also 100 percent in 1980, and it will continue at 100 percent at least until the clone wars begin. Even then two clones who have had different experiences will not be the same: We are more than the sum of our DNA.
Susan and I started out on the New Jersey turnpike quoting Simon and Garfunkel: “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.”
I know one reason—or I think I do. The desacralization of work. The sense that the activity on which we spend the most time in life, next to sleeping, is meaningless. The desacralization of work means that its purpose is gone. It means thinking of work without consideration of calling. Other reasons for aching emptiness are also evident, but if we don’t get work right everything else gets distorted.
The desacralization of work is not a new phenomenon. The elder brother in the prodigal son parable desacralized work by seeing it as tedious obligation. The younger brother did the same by running off and avoiding work until necessity forced him into a terrible pig-feeding job. But now that we tend to think of man as the sum of his material parts, it’s easy to start thinking of work as something we merely do to oil the machinery.
That’s an error. Each of us is unique. Each of us has a unique calling. As George Will put it in his book title, baseball is all about “Men at Work.” I’ll write about this more in the magazine, but it was fun to sit with WORLD readers who are also men and woman at work (although not at that moment), uniquely carving out their callings. Some are still looking, but they all seem to understand the need to find God’s purpose for their lives and to pursue it.
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ow that I am retired, maybe I can find my calling. My wife says that I have a sour look most of the time. I was never sure that I was doing a very good job at work. I rarely got any compliments about the job I was doing. My evaluations were pretty weak.
i never looked forward to going to work. Rarely was it fun. I was a dud!
My wife was a star at the same job. When I compared myself to her I came off looking pretty crummy.
I have always had trouble with the idea that I was doing God’s will. If I was, I got little satisfaction from it. I still wonder just what my “calling” is…
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The foundation of this bogus thinking is in the church with it’s clergy – laity split where the clergy trumpet that they are in full time ministry doing sacred things, thus insinuating the rest of us are in some 2nd fiddle ministry one day a week. They have given their lives to the service of the Lord – meaning the rest of us are doing secular stuff 9 – 5. The institutionalized form of church has completely nullified the huge significance of Col. 3: 23, 24
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart,
as working for the Lord, not for men,
since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.
It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
It could not be more clear. It’s all meaning less when a Pastor boasts about “being called to the ministry…” I remember back in my pew sitting days, the pastor gave his testimony about being “set apart for the gospel of God” from Romans 1:1. Being a good Berean who “examines the scriptures daily to see if what was said was true”, I looked it up to check if “set apart” was some spiritual elevation or distancing from something less so. The word for holy or sanctified carries these meanings but the word used here does not. It’s meaning is of locational movement, such as a baby being set apart form it’s mothers womb. Paul was leaving town to go to the gentiles. The context makes that very clear. Paul was not stopping his work of making tents to ONLY do church things. In Acts 20 he told the Ephesian elders he met his own needs and the needs of his companions. In 1 Cor. 9 he told the Corinthian saints he would rather die than give up the boast that he ministered free of charge. In 2 Thes. 3 he told these saints to “follow his example” of meeting his own needs. Every scripture, written by the same guy Paul that talks about the right to be paid to preach the gospel must be interpreted in light of his teaching and example of refusing the right to be paid. That’s right – an intentional refusal of the right to be paid while helping people know the gospel and grow spiritually. My pastors testimony of his “call to not work a job” was based on bogus use of the Word. I know it’s all considered holy and normal, but it’s false none-the-less.
This is the main basis for the desacralization of work. Sacred work is only for the clergy. I went to college with a “calling to THE ministry”. I am so thankful that God helped me be “more noble” in my faith (Acts 17:11) and figure out that all those emotions were a calling from traditions of men, not the Lord himself. There is no basis in the Word for anyone to say God is calling them to never work a job in the market place.
The household of faith has sooooo many bogus habits and traditions that nullify God’s very specific commands because of the clergy -laity tradition. I know this is very hard for lay people to swallow who love their preacher and feel like they are doing exactly what God says. I know it’s hard for the pastor who has “felt” this call in his heart and has sacrificed and put up with so much junk for the Lord. Bible scholars who can parse every Hebrew jot or Greek verb are all on board with the traditional thing. That does not make it any truer. It’s all clear in plain english. You can see the scripture twisting if your heart is open to see outside that box of institutionalism.
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Excellent article. And the point about the ‘desacralization’ of work really hits home. I have rarely functioned well for long if I haven’t been able to view my work as directly linked to what God wants me to be doing. And that has held true whether or not my work has been inside the church or outside it. What we spend our time doing should reflect those good works that God has prepared for each of us to do, whether we are an ordained minister or deacon or elder or layperson, or whether we are father or mother, husband or wife, young or old, or whether we’re in business or labor…or government.
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Even nonbelievers are better off seeing their work as something useful and fulfilling, rather than something they must do or something to avoid.
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Kyle A,
Your use of the word “Even” in #4 Strikes me as a bit odd. If I where to say “Even Christians should be nice to other people” you would be right to think I have no expectation of Christians being nice to others. Similarly your use of “even” implies that unbelievers are for some reason less likely to value useful and fulfilling work than believers.
Your comment is absurd, and little more than a thinly veiled insult of non-believers.
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KW, methinks you may be a bit overly sensitive here. After all the original premise (as I understand it) is that too many (most??) folks do not connect a secular occupation with a “CALLING FROM GOD”, ergo, seeing a “job” as nothing more than a necessary evil.
KA’s point, again as I understand it, is that even those who do not adhere to the scriptural command to “DO ALL AS UNTO GOD” still find meaning in obedience to the spirit of that command – even though they may see the end as nothing more than “SATISFACTION IN A JOB WELL DONE”.
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KW, Freedom Nut has it right. I was not trying to be condescending. I was only trying to say that one does not have to work “for God” in order to find meaning and purpose in one’s work.
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I don’t think there is much in the bible about finding value in work. Perhaps others can enlighten me.
Servants and slaves are repeatedly encouraged to obey their masters, but that’s it.
Eph 6:5 Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; is a good example of many similar exhortations.
Today’s large employers largely regard their employees as completely fungible, but strive mightily to convince them that they are really important parts of some worthy larger effort, i.e. “The Wal-Mart family”, (which even has its own morning incantations and hymn) or one of thousands of other “corporate cultures”.
I think that most of us know that there are internal rewards for hard work, but telling us to sell our souls to our employers is almost never the solution.
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