In my last 15 minutes, and I'd like to give you those 4~5 fairly practical ways that the theology of the Bible shapes the way you do work. Here they go.
◑1. Faith gives you an inner ballast.
Now we are going to get real practical and personal right away. Faith gives you an inner ballast without which work could destroy.
Doctor Martin Lloyd-Jones, was a physician who became a pastor and preachers. He was very aware that some professions in particular, he thought that medicine was one of them. But honestly, it's true that a lot of professions now, is probably true, "the business world" surely and others too.
He says, he thought that there's an awful lot of medical men he knew were men. Llyod-Jones said that most the medical men he knew when they die you probably could stick it, on their gravestone, you could put this, "Born a man, died a doctor." And what he meant is, it becomes theirr identity.
You can't imagine yourself not being a doctor and therefore, your whole identity is based on you being a doctor, not being a christian. Your self-worth, your self-importance, your sense of, you know competence, is wrapped up in your work. Now, I could make if I had the time, I could make a case that in more traditional cultures. If you come from a traditional culture, say you come from Asia, in the past, which is a traditional culture.
The way in which you got your self-worth was by fulfilling the role in the family that you were signed. So, for example, it was being a good father, a good mother, a good son, a good daughter, that's if you were good at that role, then you could look yourself in the mirror and say, "I'm a good person." So where does work fit in that view of the world? (In Asian culture) Work is a means to an end. The reason I want to be successful is for my family and as long as I have a good family and I'm being good to my family, then I'm, you know, I'm a good person.
So work is a means to an end. Now, there are problems with that culture too, but I want to talk about Western culture. In Western culture, work is an end in itself, because we're an individualistic culture and that means we're told in a hundred million different ways from the time we're little, "You can be anything you want to be." "You have to decide who you want to be and be it." And so, we get ourself-worth through our work. It's our work, I'm success with this, I'm an artist, I'm a business person, I make money, I've written a great American novel. That becomes our identity and as result you really get enslaved.
Success in work, if work is your identity, if you're success goes to your head. If you're a failure, it goes to your heart. If you're sick, if work is your identity and you get successful, it destroys you because it makes you full of yourself. It makes you think, you know what, it's just true. If you're a good doctor, and you're very successful at that, or you're a good business woman or a business man, you make a lot of money because of the soft justifying nature the human heart, you think because I'm good in one thing, I'm smart about everything. And you think you're smart about who choose to marry and you're not. You're stupid as everybody else. You think, because I did really good in this business deal, I'm the kind of person that has enough insight, I'll be great if the next business deal, and you won't be. You'll be overconfident.
If work is the meaning, if work is your identity, if your self-worth is based on your identity, then even if you're successful, it destroys you by puffing you up. But, if you're not successful, it destroys you by this, it goes to your heart.
I was reading about a man. He's not a christian but he was written in the New York Times not too long ago. He wrote an article about how bad it is if you're a writer, he's writer. And he says, "I realize that being a good writer was everything to me, that's who I was. My whole worth was bound up in my writing and he thought 'I began to realize that I had lost all perspective. I couldn't look at something I'd written, and really look at it honestly because I needed for it to be great.
So your whole life gets distorted, you have to have a deep identity. A deep certainty of you worth. You have to have the a sense of your value grounded in something not your performance and not in your work." It's got to be impressed.
And so that whole area said to me, the whole area redemption, what it means to be redeemed in Christ has profound impact on how you do your work.
◑2. Faith, also gives you a concept to the dignity and worth of all work, even simple work.
Without which, work could bore you. Now remember what the first point was? The first point is faith gives you an inner ballast without which were it could destroy you.
But secondly, faith gives you a concept to the dignity and worth of all work, even simple work without which work it bore you.
Now, listen carefully, Martin Luther is the one who help here, very helpful. Martin Luther looks a lot of places in the Bible that says God feeds every living thing. God loves everything He's made, God feeds everything.
There's other places in the Bible where it says it is God who strengthens the bars of your gates which of course is the way saying, who keeps your city, your society strong and secure and then he says OK. God's taking credit for that. God thinks-I feed you. I keep your city safe but it is actually think about how is God doing that? How's God feeding you? He's feeding you through the farmers. He's feeding you through the simplest farm girl who milks the cow. He's feeding you through the humblest, a truck driver who drives, the milk to the dairy and then to the store. He says in other words, "The people who do the simple kinds of work are actually the fingers of God." Luther says, "We're the masks of God." God is loving you and doing things to you and He has chosen to do it through the work of other people and therefore all work, all work, is actually God's work. It's God's way of caring for His creation.
Now unless you have a theology, I hope you see that, especially in our particular culture, in our culture we value. If you go to college, you value work that saves people's lives, "I want to make a new technology which make people's lives better," "I want to give a lot of money away so I can help the starving in Africa." "I want to have status," "I want to be the best at what I want to do." But you, when you look at somebody, who is just a doorman or a janitor. You say, "Oh my goodness."
But if your Biblical theology should show you, that all work is good work, all work is done well that helps somebody else's good work, it's God's work. Of course, obviously, not producing pornography, you understand what I'm talking about, but all work, and I do see, especially reformed type Christians who tend to be white collar people, participating in this sneering attitude, that the culture now has the people who do that, they live in, they work in the service industry. They don't make a lot of money, they push a broom. You realize that unless somebody cleans your house, you're gonna die. You realize that. That sweeping your house and cleaning off the table tops is your very life. You're gonna die if you don't do it or somebody does it. You call that simple work, but it's God's way making, strengthening the bars of your gates and unless you see this, this is one aspect alright, I'll get to another aspect, the reform people I can talk about.
But Luther was willing to bring out was, what that means is, the way to do work is a Christian, is to do well, because see overs if God is feeding the world through you as a farmer, then what does it mean to be a Christian farmer? It needs to produce great food for a great price or, you know, to put more fine point on it, if you are a Christian airline pilot, what does it mean to be a truly Christian airline pilot? Land the plane, smoothly. Your passengers don't need, you know, if you can talk to your passengers about Jesus when you're up there, that's great, that's fine, but that is kind of icing on the cake.
You need to land the plane and Lutheran. Listen, there's a man named William Deal, he was a Lutheran lay person. He was an executive for them for years. He wrote a lot of books on the integration of faith and work. And because he was a Lutheran, because he had his understanding, which is absolutely right, it's a good, it's work as God's way of caring for His creations so that all work, all legitimate work, even the simplest kind of work, is God's work. So that no matter if you don't have a job that's really exciting. Even though it you might tend to be bored with it, you got the right theology and you know what I'm doing matters. When you see other people, you don't look down at anybody's work.
William Deal actually, developed something he called the <ministry of competence> and he pointed out that a lot of Christians kind of over-think. Well let me be a christian, this or a Christian that in my work, and he says that ministry of competence is, be the best, be the best at what you do. That's one way to be a Christian at where you work.
So faith gives you the ballast without which work can, inner ballast about which were can kill you and destroy. Faith gives you a concept of the dignity and worth it even simple work without which work could bore you.
◑3. Faith gives you a moral compass(standard) without which work can corrupt you.
There is a lot of pressure. There's no doubt about it because of the global economy. There is so much pressure for profitability, there's so many companies that years, over the years just need to make enough profit, you know, pay, keep the lights on in pay employees and give your investors a bit return.
Now, there's so much need for squeezing every bit of profitability and there's a tremendous amount of a pressure to cut corners out of.. and to do whatever it takes to turn a profit and one other things it so awful right now in this world is, when you go to college, you're going to be told that morality is relative. It's relative, that it's person specific and its culture relative and nobody's to say what is right or wrong and then you get out into the world and you're gonna have all kinds of temptation is to cut corners to do things there that are dishonest, lack integrity, lack of transparency and then if you get caught, they're going to slam you there, They're going to take you to the cleaners are going to take you to the newspapers.
And you're going to say, "Hey, I was told everything is relative but then it's just because I did this and this and that." That's where we are today. Unless you've got a strong inner moral compass that comes from being a Christian, you are going to have a lot of trouble. You are going to have a lot of trouble saying, "No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not. I'm going to tell the investors what it's really worth. I'm not going to sin by omission, just leave that out." "I'm going to be more transparent with my costumers." "I'm going to do it and you might lose your job." But in the long run, it's a whole lot better to have that moral compass.
I know a man who's at the top, one of big banks in the Britain, he's a Christian. He told me recently by the bank has been a news like so many, the banks for also moral issues in, you know, scandal, ect., and he said there was a kind of off the record, little clandestine meeting at the top, at the top, at the top, and they said what we going to do to put. We got to get values back in this organization. Years ago, even 20 years ago, this is Britain now. If there's all sorts of things. It wasn't illegal, but you just didn't treat costumers like that, you just didn't take that much money out for yourself. He just didn't do these things. It just wasn't done. It wasn't the decent thing to do and last 15-20 years all that's gone away, and we do everything that's legal in then some, and is that what we are going to do. They said, one person said, "We're going to get values back in the company?" And you know what everybody else said to him? "Whose values?" (Moral relativism)
How do you define morality? We don't know how to define morality anymore. You can't get the genie back in the bottle culturally right now. But you're Christian, you have that moral compass. Otherwise, you can really corrupted.
◑4. <all work is God's work> and <all work, if you do it well, is work for God>
The Christian faith does give you world much you that shapes the character view. work without which work good master and use you.
What I mean by that is now this is what you or more probably expecting me to say earlier. If you're the reform type when you get around with these kinds of conversations. It is true that what does it mean to be a good airline? A Christian airline pilot to land the plane. What does it mean to be a Christian ditch digger, big ditch? What does it mean to be a Christian elementary school teacher? What does it mean to be a Christian playwriter?
See, that depends on what you to be Christian elementary school teacher really depends on what you think a human being should be and what you think will lead to human flourishing and what are you trying to produce. You try to produce a particular kind of human being where you suddenly realize, without a worldview, you're going to not really know what a human being should be.
If you're a playwriter, you have to ask yourself questions. What is right and wrong and where we should be going as a society. What kind of stories I want to tell. And, so the fact is when it gets right down to it, you do need a worldwide view. You do need to take your christian values and ask yourself questions about what kind of plays should I write because we're kind of what kind of things, what kind of stories the people need. So Christians must think out how his or her faith will distinctively shape their work. Notice I'm kind of creating and walking out a line between the approach that says <all work is God's work> and <all work, if you do it well, is work for God>. That usually goes along with the Luther's with Luther's view.
I also want to say, but frankly, there aren't, especially certain kinds, of jobs in which you have to actually think out what are the implications of Christian values and the typical teachings for the way in which I do work out here in the world. You know, if among people with the believers are not, so I think that's all very important.
You work for years and get "one leaf" out. But Christianity gives you "hope"..
Here is one last thing. In the book, every good and ever. There's a great story. It's a story by J. R. Tolkein, it's a short story about a painter who has this vision of a tree that he's been trying to paint and his whole life, you can never get much of it done. In fact, just before he dies, he, the whole, the great painting he was working all he got was a leaf, one leaf. But then he goes, he dies. He gets on a train is going to the afterlife and when he gets to heaven as it were there's this tree and he realize, he sensed the tree as an artist and realize that everybody some day would see the tree.
And one other things that here's the last thing that you're Christian faith can give you is hope because if you go into law, you want to do justice. If you go into the city planning, you want to build great cities. If you go into art, you want to show people beauty and when you actually get into those places, you're going to find because in the fall, because thorns and thistles come up from the ground, very often you can work for years and years and years and only ever get "one leaf" out. But Christianity gives you "hope" and says that the passions we have to see, the human race be all that God made it to be.
We're trying to realize our work even if in this life because the frustrating nature love the world. Now, this fallen world. We often are going to be very, very frustrated. We may only get a leaf out. There's hope, there is a tree as it were. If you're city planner, there is a new Jerusalem, If your lawyer, there will be a time, of perfect righteousness and justice. Here comes the judge, the earth and so the hope that helps us through frustrating times, the inner ballast and sense of who we are in Christ, that keeps us from being you know with back and forth because success and failure division of God just caring for creation through his work. So that all is good work God's work all these things are absolutely crucial. For us to be disciples, not just on the weekend when we are at church, but how in the world truly doing everything had Jesus Christ, hoping everything Jesus Christ told us to do.
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