stranger brought near

Working in the now in light of the then

A danger that many Christians can fall into is that we see redemption as something that was only done for us and other individual souls and that the effects of that redemption is something that we will experience in the future. The truth is that God has redeemed the whole of creation through the blood of Christ and we have been redeemed by his death in order to present us, holy, blameless and above reproach. And being in Christ we are now new creations with new world views, new grids to which we view the world and a complete new basis for living, and through us God wants to renew creation. We are not just people waiting for or looking forward to a new destiny, but people with a calling and purpose in the midst of His story.
As Christians we need to see that our redemption in Christ has a significant effect on every aspect of life now which includes our work and our view of it.
An understanding of the original design for work and the significance of it in our humanity as image bearers of God, is increased as we see ourselves saved from the curse of the fall through the redemption of Christ and brought back to what it was meant to be, looking forward to the return of Christ when he will restore, confirm and establish us.
This should give us a new understanding and approach to our work whatever our job is, that as redeemed people we have purpose and a calling in bringing glory to God in doing work whatever the role.

So in conclusion we can make sense of the ’9 to 5′ and ‘business as usual’ by reminding ourselves that as believers we live and work in light of God’s coherent story, that in our working we display the image of the God that created us and that we are living out what God originally intended for work as redeemed people, showing that the work we do, not just the reward from it, has meaning and purpose.

Work isn’t part of the fall, sweat is!

I would guess that the words Joy, worship and blessing wouldn’t be amongst the words that would be used by most people in our churches when describing their jobs. I would expect amongst some positives, phrases like; hard, long hours, over worked, not enough money, wish I could retire would more commonly be used, both by unbelievers and people within our churches. The privilege, blessing and good intentions of work which we have highlighted have been overshadowed and tainted by the fall and as christians we need to understand this. Bob Thune says that it is important that we see both the goodness of work in God’s original creation and the struggle of work under the fall7. In light of that if we only have a understanding of Gods good intention of work in creation then we will be frustrated when things (and they inevitable do) go wrong, and in contrast if we only see work in light of the fall we will find it hard to see our work as a blessing, an act of worship and we will find it near on impossible to do our work to the glory of God.
My experience is that people find themselves (even if subconsciously) in the latter, so it is important that people are reminded that the ‘Sweat and toil’ is a result of the curse of the fall which effects our work and our view of it. An understanding of the fall further shapes the coherent story that we work in and gives us meaning as we work through the ‘day to day’. But an understanding of the fall, seeing that it has tainted the good and purpose of work in isolation will not ultimately help us. We need to see that God has redeemed all things by the blood of the cross and that includes work

Part 4 – Working in the now in light of the then.

We were created to work

We were created to work – a concept that many of us, don’t understand or at least don’t want to understand, but as we see in Genesis, we as human beings were made in the image of God and as a blessing we were instructed to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth and have dominion over every living thing. Genesis 2 describes for us how God lovingly created and formed us, how he created a home in the garden of Eden and that he instructed man to keep and work it. In light of this I want to highlight two things that we need to be reminding ourselves and each other;

We are made in the image of God
Work is part of Gods original design for us

We are made in the image of God

After a 15 week residential at the Police training centre I was assigned to work along side and learn from a more experienced police officer on the streets of Liverpool. The guy that I had been assigned to was well respected by all and it didn’t take long to see why, he was brilliant at his job. I remember after a week with him he asked me, what I wanted out of my time with him and I remember saying, “help me police like you”. Throughout my six years in the police force I performed my duties in the same way or at least from the foundations that I had been shown and taught during that training period with him, effectively I had been formed and trained to police like him. When I worked I displayed traits of policing that had come from him and in someways I was only ever able to police in such away because of him.

As Human beings, we haven’t just been trained by God or even just created and formed by God but we have been created in His image. In being human we display elements of his character and likeness. And as we read of God making sense and bringing order to an earth that was formless and void, we see him working for 6 days, separating things, creating things, instructing things, providing things. Being made in the image of God and being instructed to work and keep the Garden is to display the image of the God that created us, therefore to work is to be human.

Work is part of Gods original design for us

We need to see that we work not only because we are image bearers of God but also because it was part of Gods original design. We see clearly that God instructs Adam to keep the Garden and to work it, and that Adam and Eve are told to subdue the earth and multiply.
In his article ‘The Theology of Work’ Bob Thune says that God gave Adam and Eve a cultural mandate, that through their multiplying, filling and subdue of the earth, cities, language, culture, art, music, and philosophy would develop. He then goes onto say that (jumping forward in the story for a moment)
‘It is no accident that the ultimate biblical picture of redeemed humanity involves a city (Rev 21:2). A city reflects human culture in its most developed and complex form. God’s purpose for humanity started in a garden but it culminates in a great cultural centre’

When we work we are displaying the image of God, and to display the image of God is to be truly human. When we work we are living in light of Gods original design for us and within the story we see how our work displays Gods purpose that started in a garden and will culminate in a city.

As a church community we need to remind ourselves that in the ‘business as usual’ or the ‘day to day’ of work that we are fulfilling our purpose and calling as we work, that the story that we work in light of starts with a clear instruction and mandate from God to work which displays the very God that we have been created by and in whose image we have been created.
So why as believers are we able to affirm this but find it so hard to apply at 11:30 on a Monday morning? The reason is that we live as though work is as a result of the fall rather than seeing that the fall has affected our understanding and the original intent that God had for work.

Part 3 -Work isn’t part of the fall, sweat is!

Since leaving school at the age of 18 and starting work in 1997 (I didn’t go to university my two ‘U’ and two ‘N’ weren’t quite enough to get me a place!) I have had three major changes in my working life, I have moved from being a clerical assistant, to a police officer, to a manager within a Christian relief and development charity, to becoming a full time vocational church leader. During the past 15 years I have enjoyed doing my job and fulfilling the roles but there have been times when I have been frustrated and even hated it, usually this has been when I haven’t been able to see the point and when I felt that I was being wasted and my ‘full potential’ not being used. During both the positive and negative times of my working life I have found myself and I have heard other people say the following:

“It’s a means to an end”, “It pays the bills”, “Its gives me options”, “It pays for the holiday”, “I don’t live to work, I work to live” or in contrast; ‘I’ve finally found my purpose’, “ This is what I was made to do”, “I now feel like a somebody, like I’m making a contribution”.

These common phrases that we use and we have heard many people often use at times can be ‘throw away’ but often they incapsulate the attitude towards and the value that people put on work. Like in all things there is a spectrum, and I have experience from chatting with people both in and outside of the church community who, at one end of the spectrum are struggling to get out of bed in the morning because they have deep rooted hatred for what they have to do for a job, and those at the other end who love their work so much that it is the source of their identity, their complete joy, their justification, their God.
Despite knowing and discipling people at both ends of the spectrum most of my conversations are with people who are struggling to make sense of the ‘business as usual’, ‘day to day’, Monday to Friday, nine to five of their working lives.

In the introduction to his book, ‘A Journey worth taking’ Charles D. Drew observes that regardless of how we fill our time, whether we are paid, volunteers or whether or not our job is seen as ‘legitimate’ or not, we all struggle at times with the meaning of it.
Drew cites from Professor Allan Bloom’s, The Closing of an American Mind, who argues in his portrait of students in 1987 that, young people can be anything they want to be, but they have no particular reason to to be anything particular, because they are free to decide their place and free to decide what the story that they fit into looks like. In light of this Drew expounds and suggests that we enjoy unbridled freedom and seemingly unlimited options, but they exist in a social milieu that has no coherent story, we are free to be ourselves but we are not sure about how we fit in with what is going on around us.
This I suggest is the reason why so many believers within our church communities struggle with the ‘business as usual’ and the day to day of work; we don’t understand the coherent story that we are involved in so our choices of work and our reason for work become meaningless in and of themselves (apart from paying the bills). So in order to find meaning we start to move to one end of the attitude and value spectrum mentioned above and find our identity in the work, or we go to the other extreme and find it hard to work at all. Within the Church community that can also lead to a thinking that only ‘full time’ christian work has real meaning and purpose, and people start exploring work in those areas because, ‘that sort of work has real meaning and purpose’ and what they do doesn’t.
As a church community supporting each other at work, we need to understand the story which we are working/living in, and to see the purpose and meaning of work in the story. As we understand the coherent story (that story being the story of God) that we live and work in both as a church community and as individuals, the meaning of our work will become clearer and more meaningful
As the church we need to see and understand how we fit into His story and in this context specifically how that is applied as we work. As the church community and church leaders our primary role is to disciple people to think biblically and to help them understand God’s story, to see were they fit (as someone made in the image of God) and to teach a biblical theology of work that will show the meaning and purpose behind their jobs, as teachers, office managers, cleaners, doctors and retails managers.

Part 2 – We were created to work.