I used to teach homeschool classes in which the parents sat with their students. I taught English and Writing. Sometimes a student would ask, “Why do we have to know this?” And often, a sage parent would answer, “Because you’ll use it in college.”
I hated that answer. Was that our end goal of learning—to make it through college successfully?
Other parents said, “There are lots of jobs where you’ll have to write.”
I still hated the answer. It seemed shallow, hollow, incomplete. Again, it begs the question, is our end goal in life to succeed in the marketplace?
The right-thinking child will sense some questions still hang unanswered.
Is there something about our talents and craftmanship which is godly and holy and reflective of man’s design and purpose? When we cultivate excellence in our craft, is there intrinsic good in that?
Too often we think our work is something we must tolerate to get through life, but the only holy and godly things we do are sharing the gospel, having a godly attitude, and going to church on the weekends. We sometimes think work is that thing we must endure to get to real living—leisure time. This tragically misguided thinking is not built on scripture or good theology.
It’s also killing our nation.
Dorothy Sayers (friend to C. S. Lewis and an excellent author) wrote an essay called “Why Work?”[1] Her first major point is this:
The first [proposition], stated quite briefly, is that work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God.
God the Creator is, by definition, a creative Person! He makes things, builds things, starts things. He plans and executes, and He does His work with infinite wisdom in His craftmanship (Psalm 104.24–32). You and I are among His top creations, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2.10).
God intentionally created us in His image (Gen. 1.26–27); therefore, He intends for us to make things, build things, and start things just like Him. You know He created a world packed full of plants and animals everywhere, but He did not fill the world with men. Neither did He create the whole world an ordered garden, but He planted one Garden of Eden and tasked Adam (which means “man”) with guarding it and keeping it. He also told Adam and Eve to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth with men—fill the earth with God’s image bearers. He told us to fill this world full of little creators.
Do not think of your work as a necessary evil. It is a necessary good! Good work is what you and I were created for. We live to work, and we find our ultimate satisfaction in the work of our hands. That is God’s will for us.
Sayer’s second point is this:
My second proposition directly concerns Christian as such, and it is this. It is the business of the Church to recognize that the secular vocation, as such, is sacred. Christian people, and particularly perhaps the Christian clergy, must get it firmly into their heads that when a man or woman is called to a particular job of secular work, that is as true a vocation as though he or she were called to specifically religious work.
I agree we often teach badly about work, and we leave the impression sometimes that the most holy people do the “holy” work of teaching and preaching and baptizing, and the rest do the daily grind of “secular” work. I love this little quote of Sayer’s here:
The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.
Amen! Tax collectors asked John the Baptist what they should do to bear fruits of repentance, and he replied, “Quit your jobs and start preaching the gospel.” Wait. No, he didn’t say that. He said, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do” (Luke 3.13). He told soldiers, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages” (Luke 3.14). Continue in your vocation, my friend; only bring your vocation under the authority of the Lord.
The various areas of our lives in which we work are the ways in which we glorify God. When we faithfully clean our houses, we are keeping the garden God has given us. When we maintain our tools, cook supper, mow the lawn, write a paper for school, study the industry we are in, serve customers, fix broken things—all can be done with a spirit of excellence and an aim to faithfully apply our talents. In this way, what we sometimes think of as “secular” is nothing of the sort!
I dare say we should hold our preachers and teachers to this high standard, for they are our examples, are they not? If a preacher brings a shoddy lesson when he could do much better, he does not glorify God, no matter how many Bible verses he sprinkles over the top. If we would not accept a broken chair from a woodworker, why would we accept shoddy writing or preaching? And the preacher and teacher should find the same satisfaction in the quality of his work as the tax collector does in daily applying his talents.
Sayer’s third point is this:
This brings me to my third proposition; and this may sound to you the most revolutionary of all. It is this: the worker’s first duty is to serve the work. The popular catchphrase of today is that it is everybody’s duty to serve the community, but there is a catch in it.
She warns against making an idol out of “serving the community.”
There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work; the only way to serve the community is to forget the community and serve the work.
Perhaps there is some good in statistics, in polling, in customer feedback. But it can misdirect, dampen, or derail our efforts when we spend much time worrying about what other people think about our work instead of putting our best efforts into the work itself and doing our dead-level best. Stay focused. Apply yourself to your craft. Do the work.
Our work should serve God first and people second. Never get that out of order. If you do, you make people your idol.
I hope this encourages you today to see your daily work in a higher way, to feel a greater purpose and satisfaction in it, and to do it with even more energy and care. In this way, we will fulfill God’s mandate to us to guard and tend the garden He has given us, and if He finds us faithful when He returns, He will give us a great reward for the way we have conducted ourselves (Luke 19.11–27).
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Cor. 15.58)
[1] https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Why_Work_Dorothy_Sayers.pdf