| Working for Christ between 9 and 5 |
Well, I don't know about you, but I could certainly stand to repeat last week's exercises (see "Soli Deo Gloria") again. It's amazing how easy it is NOT to take even a few seconds before starting something and devote it to God -- I get wrapped up in my activities so easily, wanting to make sure everything gets done, that I simply forget to take it to God first! Now, I hope in two weeks to write about some simple exercises that will help us bring our work routines to the feet of the Father. And next week, I intend to look at the other major chunk of our day: our time asleep. But this week, I want to look further into the nature of our daily work. One of Martin Luther's favorite devotional guides, the Theologia Germanica, provides a helpful image for our lives: we are to walk with one eye turned inward, to God, and one eye turned outward, toward the world. Ideally, there will be no separation between our faith and our daily activities. Rather, they will meet within us: We are the place where God chooses to encounter the world, and where the world looks to see if God is real. This image reminds me of Jesus' words, that he did only that which he saw the Father doing. How can we develop that skill and so learn to imitate Christ? Let us look first at the issue of work. This week, as I pondered my own inability to keep Christ in the forefront of my work, I was reminded of Paul's words to the church in Thessalonika. At the end of his first letter, Paul exhorts the Thessalonians: make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you; so that you may behave properly towards outsiders and not be in any need (4.11-12). Here we have Paul's take on both the goal and the attitude of work. Now, I am not one of those who believes that all work is prayer: I concur with Jacques Ellul that work is one of the results of the fall. But I do believe we can actively use our work as a means to prayer, and I intend to write more on this in the next few weeks. For now, let us consider how Paul views work.
First, note the lack of worldly ambition in his view. We are to lead a quiet life, attending to our own business. Remembering what we discussed last week, that God alone is our provider, we can see that Paul encourages us to reject the notion that our success in the world depends upon our own efforts. Whereas everyone around us tells us we have to be ambitious and slavishly devoted to promoting ourselves in the world, Paul urges us to seek the opposite: the uneventful, even-keeled life. Our spiritual ambition is to do our work and trust God to provide the rest.
Now, if we turn back to chapter 2 of this letter, we see that this was the same ambition Paul exhibited when he visited them. Paul mentions in verse 6 that as an apostle, he could have asserted his authority over the Thessalonians. But he didn't! He chose not to be a burden to them, so that the Gospel might have more power in their lives. Whereas the world says to use our authority whenever we get a chance, Paul chose to lay aside his authority, just as Christ also laid his aside in order to do God's will.
Not that this is easy: in order not to be a burden, Paul had to work "night and day" (2.9). In his second letter to the Thessalonians, he elaborates on his conduct among them:
nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with labor and hardship we kept working night and day... For even when we were with you, we used to give this order: if anyone will not work, neither let him eat (3.8, 10).
Again, Paul makes the comment that he had the right to ask the church to support him, but didn't exercise it, in order to be a model for them (3.9). He rejected the wisdom of the world, trusting that God alone would provide, in order that the Thessalonians might see both God's faithfulness and God's gentleness.
With this in mind, let us look again at 1 Thess. 4.12: here we see the purpose of this command. Our work is simply to allow us 1) not to be in need, i.e. not to be a burden on others, and 2) to help us behave properly toward outsiders, i.e., I believe, to be able to show hospitality to others. There is nothing in here about success or prosperity, about making a name for ourselves or about earning enough to guard against future troubles. What we see instead is that our work is both a means for us not to be a burden on others, and a means for us to help out those who might be in need. In this way, our work is a means to the spreading of the gospel.
So, by making it our ambition to lead quiet lives, attending to our own business, we can trust that God is using us to reveal the power of the gospel to those around us. By choosing not to burden others, we allow them to see that our sole motivation in reaching out to them is our love for them. This is the eye turned inwards. By choosing to work in order to help others, we allow God to meet the world at the place of its need--the eye turned outwards. And by rejecting the myths that the world tells us, about how it's all "up to us", we serve as a witness to the world that God is faithful to provide. After all, since God himself is our inheritance, what do we have left to gain? We've won it all already!
My goal for this week is to improve on my ability to take my daily activities before the Father and to devote them to him. In addition, I will make it my ambition to lead the quiet life, in order not to be a burden on my fellow believers, and in order that I may help whomever God sends my way. Once again, my prayer at all times will be: Soli Deo Gloria! To God alone be the glory!
in Christ,
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