1.    Introduction

The purpose of this essay is to answer the question, “How should I approach work as a Christian”. Obviously, this will be a highly personal and specific answer. Work looks different for every Christian and we all have a unique set of gifts, circumstances, backgrounds and personality traits that give rise to different opportunities and motivations. Additionally, work has looked different across the centuries and still looks different today across geographies. The question “How should I approach work as a Christian” would have been nearly meaningless (or at least have had a very different meaning) to most people before the 20^th Century. It is only in affluent Western societies that we have the luxury of even engaging with this question.

Given therefore, that this is an answer for one person, in one place, in one time in history, I will begin with a description of my own circumstances and tendencies. I will discuss the motivations and mind-frames that come naturally to me, and then attempt to respond to these biblically, before outlining some guiding principles and making some resolutions. The essay will thus move from descriptive (non-critical) to prescriptive (critical). The reader should keep this in mind when reading through the Background and Motivation sections. Statements of motivations, decisions etc. are simply statements, with no pre-judgement attached.

Eventually, the goal is to reconcile the ‘is’ with the ‘ought’, but I have attempted to provide an accurate picture of the ‘is’ up-front, as the temptation is to filter it through the lens of the ‘ought’ if done the other way around.

As the essay progresses, the question becomes narrower as I uncover the crux of the issue: motivations. I don’t deal with how the Christian should choose what to do for work, and I certainly don’t deal with general theology of work. This had been done quite well by several authors, but I never found their books very practical or relevant on the subject of motivations, hence the need for some individual thought on the topic.

2.    Necessity

I can imagine a factory worker from the 1800s or a peasant farmer being slightly bemused about the time taken to think about these things. “’How to approach work?’ You can’t be serious right? You just do it!” It’s a legitimate question that I can see many people asking, regardless of their profession – frankly anyone who doesn’t think too hard about work, it’s just something they do. That makes me a bit arrogant to ask the question. Surely I must think I’m someone special, called to shoulder a burden of choice that others don’t have to bear due to their limitations and constraints. And that’s a fair criticism. But at the same time, I think I’ll call the bluff. Everyone, in their own way, thinks they’re ‘someone special’, and everyone has a mixture of motivations and attitudes that they bring to work, which will always be a mixture of godly and worldly. I don’t think I am alone in my experience of confusion and confliction when it comes to work.

The reality of 21^st century work in Australia is that it’s more complicated than just surviving. In that sense I think this discussion has a relevance beyond my personal circumstance. But I do admit that its focus is really on the aspects of work that go beyond the mere necessity, so I would expect it is most relevant to competitive, aspirational professionals, because they are probably the people who most need questions asked of their motivations and attitudes.

3.    Background

Naturally, I never put much thought into work until the age of about 15 or 16. I can’t remember how I used to respond when people asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. When I started year 11 at school, the HSC (and doing well in it) became my focus. My competitive tendencies meant that I didn’t really need an after-school goal to motivate me – I just wanted to do better than everyone else. Still, around this time, I did start thinking about life after school, and very organically came to the conclusion that I would be an engineer, like my Dad. I was good at maths and physics and I liked figuring out how stuff worked, designing and building things, etc., so off I went into the HSC.

When it came time to actually apply for university, a double degree seemed like a smart thing to do, so I tacked Commerce onto my engineering degree. During my 5 ½ years at university, my aspirations slowly drifted away from engineering (particularly when I realised there were very few Aeronautical jobs in Australia), and gravitated towards the business world, particularly Investment Banking. I was drawn by the status, prestige, highly competitive nature, and of course, money. Having done well at school, I believed myself to be a cut above the rest, and there was a feeling of expectation that I had to prove that (more to myself than to anyone else) and translate that success into the job sphere.

This progression took place very naturally, and quite consciously. I often spent time planning for the medium-term future and considering my gifting, and how best to use it. Questions of ministry aside, I thought that if I was going to work, then I may as well aim high and do something that pays well. I saw no moral difference between engineering and banking, or any other job for that matter.

There were any number of different jobs I could do, each lying on a spectrum of difficulty, demands on time and energy, status, and remuneration.

What would be the difference between working with my hands, and working with my mind? Wearing high-vis compared to wearing a suit? Would one be a waste of my talents, while the other put them to good use? Am I obligated to work up to the limit of my capacity? Would it be a waste to have the opportunity to work hard in a good job, yet choose a cruisy job with lower pay?

I never really achieved clarity on any of these questions, but my default answer was ‘no’ – there would be no difference, and I was under no obligation. So the decision of what to do for work became as simple as: ‘may as well go for maximum bang for buck’.

Around this time was when I first had the sense of a clash between my Christian worldview and my views on all this. I can trace it through many journal entries, even during the HSC. This identification of my own pride and desire for status and comfort. At times I would affirm my rejection of these things and declare that I was content to live a humble life, glorifying God, not myself – trusting and seeking him above worldly gain. At times over the last 8 years, these motivations have waxed and waned and I have experienced seasons of fleeting clarity and contentment. More insight into my intrinsic personal motivations is given in section 4.

These questions and this wrestle have not disappeared as I have entered full-time work. I have less time to think about them, but they are still present, and I would like to sort them out, so I can approach the rest of my career with principled direction and a clear conscience.

As an addendum to all this, there is the topic of full-time ministry, which was first floated to me early at university. A handful of people have suggested I at least give it a go, some trying harder than others to convince me. The church where I spent much of my young adulthood has a very ministry-focused culture, where secular work is seen as less valuable than church ministry.

 This is a topic I have written much about previously and is a sister-theme to this essay’s topic, to be dealt with separately. Suffice it to say that I did seriously consider the prospect but ended up deciding against it (at least for the first 5 years). This essay considers how I should approach work, given I am working in a full-time secular capacity.

4.    Motivation – honest thoughts

Again, let me point out that the objective of this stage of the process is identifying, not evaluating. I’ll point out some things about my thinking and try not to judge them (yet).

Here’s a flowchart I just made up:

Why do I work? What gets me out of bed in the morning? What keeps me at the office in the evening? Moreover, why banking? What motivated me to work hard at the HSC, then university to do this in the first place? Why stay where I am and not do something else? At some point, everyone sits back in their chair, looks up at the ceiling and asks, “why am I doing this?”. That moment is when motivation is most transparent.

The first obvious answer is money – it’s the reason anyone ever works. But of course, it runs deeper. The reason I desire money is itself composed of other desires. I think it’s helpful to split the discussion into financial and non-financial motivations.

4.1. Non-financial

In terms of non-financial motivation, status is definitely a big one. There’s a slightly duality here – on the one hand, I’ll sometimes play it down when asked the ‘what do you do’ question because I’m conscious of how it affects people’s judgement of me and I’m uncomfortable with being evaluated by association with my job. I don’t like being known as a ‘suit’, and I don’t enjoy talking about my work. I think there’s a genuine humility in this.
On the other hand, I want people to respect me, a lot. I want people to acknowledge my status, just not necessarily to my face. I want people to know that I’m a someone, and I gain much of my social security from people knowing what I do for work, and I imagine people respect me because of it (whether or not they actually do is another question).

This flows directly out of the hierarchical way I’ve been tempted to see the world, particularly in the past. Constantly assessing the worth of other people relative to myself, judging people based on power, wealth, capacity, calibre, job title, etc. It’s the lens through which I have often seen the world – the lens of pride.  Given that’s what I see, that’s what I assume other people see, which isn’t the case most of the time. But given that’s what I think they see, it makes sense that I would choose a job that would rank highly on these metrics.

There’s insecurity at play here, too. I want to prove my worth to others because I’m not confident of my own worth. This in turn stems from an understanding of worth as measured by power, wealth, etc. (the metrics above).

All of this is completely natural, and indeed it is interesting that this is the way society trains us to think. Almost every structure is hierarchical, starting with the schooling system, and continuing in to the rest of life. The ATAR is a comparative score, not an absolute one. Of course the full range of metrics by which we judge each other is broader than those listed above, but it’s fair to say that these are the dominant ones. Reserving judgement at this stage, it should be noted that to live in the world is to engage with this hierarchy in some measure – it cannot be avoided.

4.2. Financial

What is the place of money in my life? Where does it fit into my decisions about work? Beyond survival, what drives my desire to acquire dollars?

1. Leisure – ‘the good things’. I honestly really enjoy a Saturday morning bacon & egg roll. I want to live in a nice house and I’d like to go skiing every now and again. I want a job that pays well so I can afford these things.  I also want a holiday cottage on a hillside with a large verandah facing west. Somewhere to escape and watch the sun go down with a nice glass of Shiraz.
2. Family. I want to be able to provide for my family. To have a comfortable home, be able to educate my kids well, and to have the financial freedom to allow spending time with them, and have the financial freedom to live on a single income if necessary.
3. Generosity. I have seen some incredible role models of generosity who I want to emulate. People who are recklessly generous and have the means to be. Of course generosity is relative to your wealth – you can be just as generous giving $10 as someone wealthy giving $1000, but the gross output of your generosity also matters. I want to be able to bless people in tangible, meaningful ways. You need $$$ do to that. I want to be able to fund the training of several gospel workers, to bless growth groups, churches and families through the use of facilities, resources, holiday houses, etc. To be able to take homeless people off the street and train and empower them. To shout people meals. This is by no means the least of my motivations, and is (with the limited clarity of introspection) relatively pure and free from the ulterior motive of pride.
4. Security. I’m a barn builder. I really want to get to that spot where I can kick back and say “I have enough – I don’t need to worry about the future because of all the zeros in my bank account. I am rainy-day proof”.

OK. So those are all the motivations laid out in plain sight. It’s obvious there’s quite a mixture of good and bad here. To articulate them is not at all to justify them.

4.3. Motivation vs outcome

It may well be that my motivations during university were illegitimate – that the way I thought about money, status and power were unhealthy. Though they did lead me to forming goals/aspirations for worldly success, it does not follow that having a goal for worldly success is an illegitimate goal. This aspiration could have been reached from a completely different set of motivations and needs to be evaluated on its own merits.

Likewise with the end result: the achievement of the goals. Illegitimate motivations do not invalidate the end result. It is very hard to make a case that there is anything intrinsically wrong with jobs that are high-status and pay well. 

I guess the point of all this is that motivations and end-results have to be evaluated separately. Why? Because motivations are a fickle thing. They change and fluctuate and they do not reliably drive end results. Not only can two people doing the same job have completely different motivations, but one person’s motivations can change completely within a job.

There are categories of things where motivations are more closely linked to activities; where a skewed value system directly leads to an ongoing pattern of skewed behaviour. I am open to being persuaded that my work is demonstrably unhealthy, and no doubt this will be more applicable in some seasons than other. But what would that look like? Where is the line? How do you make that call?

The rest of this essay will attempt to answer these questions. The challenge for the Christian is maintaining a right motivation. A godly system of values and perspective. I will attempt to outline what these values are and how to maintain them.

When looking at the problem from this angle, the question of what to do for work becomes irrelevant, insofar as it has no intrinsic moral value. The why is far more important. This is not to say that careful deliberation over career choice is irrelevant and useless for the Christian, but rather that it fits into a different category of questions that are not the subject of this essay.

5.    The Pendulum

There are many metaphors that could be used to illustrate the subject of motivations in the Christian. You could use a spectrum, but the tricky thing is that it’s nearly all grey, with tiny slivers of black and white at the extremes. It’s very difficult to get anything of practical use out of so much grey.

The pendulum is the next best thing I could think of but is still not exceedingly useful. The idea is that there are good and bad ways of thinking and feeling about work – godly and worldly – and that the Christian can swing between them at different times in their life.

The Goal: Godly motives, values, perspectives and ways of seeing things and people The Trap: Worldly motives and values. Ways that we can slip into thinking the way the rest of society does.

This presupposes certain theology about wrestling desires and motivations away from conformity with the world and to conformity with the spirit, which I need not establish here except to note that  even though we have the spirit, this transformation of desires is by no means automatic, and is a very intentional, often difficult process.

I have attempted to apply this illustration to three main areas, distilled from my ruminations above:

• Money – greed vs contentment
• Provision – security vs dependence
• Status – pride vs humility

Each topic is dealt with in four sections. I first outline and annotate the main points of key passages from scripture. Each passage is quoted sparsely, and so bears a more detailed supplementary reading. I then attempt to distil these principles into the traps the Christian can fall into, and the goals the Christian should aim for. The traps generally describe the world’s ungodly approach to the topic and the ways in which it is easy for Christians to conform to this, even unconsciously. The goals are the ideals presented in the bible for how we ought to think on the topic. Along with descriptions of views and motivations, which tend to be invisible, I have also listed indicators – visible signs that might be typical of a person in each category. The risk with including such a metric is to prescribe outward, legalistic actions or restrictions on actions, regardless of individual context. However, the risk of not including this metric is that this essay would not be very practical and, like every other resource on the topic, leave the reader frustrated that they “still don’t know what that actually looks like”. The indicators are therefore to be taken with a grain of salt.

For each topic I have also listed several diagnostic questions. These are not designed to be tick-box yes/no questions. Rather, they are designed to prick conscience and expose ways of thinking that might not be immediately obvious.

5.1. Money

As noted above, on a basic level, money is the only reason anyone ever works. We need it to survive, to house, clothe and feed ourselves and our dependents. Survival costs, and money generated from time and effort is the resource we expend. Money is neither good or evil, simply a reality. Beyond survival, though, money gives us the ability to do/have enjoyable things. From the bacon & egg roll on a Saturday morning to the nice jacket, the overseas holiday and the new car, good things are good and are to be enjoyed.

But under Jesus, there is now a right hierarchy of desires, and we often get it upside-down. God’s purpose for us is to love him with all our heart, soul and mind. I don’t have a crystal clear picture of how that interacts with the humble bacon & egg roll, but it’s pretty easy to spot when the love of money and things takes the place of love of God.

5.1.1.     Notes

1 Timothy 6:6-10

“people … who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. But Godliness with contentment is great gain”. Notice the play on words here. The real profit to be made here is not financial.

“We brought nothing into the world, we can take nothing out of it, but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” Echoes of Ecclesiastes 5:15

“Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap”. Desire for riches leads us astray and brings ruin and destruction. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Not all but much. It is the cause of much apostacy.

Philippians 4:11-12

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances”. Paul does not tell us how or what his ‘secret’ is. Only that he has learnt it. I suspect this is because there really isn’t much of a secret to it. At risk of stating the obvious, Paul is saying that we learn contentment. It is not a state we reach when we have enough. It is an intentionally cultivated attitude that sees the danger of the love of money clearly and puts money in its rightful place. It does not depend on physical circumstances. Paul is able to be content while ‘being hungry’ and ‘living in want’.

Contentment is the key virtue in all this and is the Christian’s chief weapon against greed.

Ecclesiastes

“What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labour under the sun” (2:17-26). Work is futile and frustrating. It’s hard and often incredibly stressful, yet in the end, it is rendered meaningless by death. We leave everything we’ve worked for to someone else.

“all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another” (4:4-6). Competitive work arising from envy is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Yet this is exactly how our society operates. As mentioned before, competition, comparison and hierarchies drive our society. The warning is clear: don’t join in; or at the very least, know that joining in is foolish and futile. For me, this hits in two different ways. First, I am disappointed, as I’m already straining at the leash and to be told not to compete takes the wind out of my sails. But second, it’s incredibly liberating, knowing that I don’t have to play the rat race game by the world’s rules. I’ve been given the scoop on the whole operation: it’s a waste of time. Everyone will eventually discover that one day but I’ve been told before I even joined. Now of course, this doesn’t mean the Christian should eschew all achievement and all corporate echelons, but rather, to be wary of envy driving them to want something that is ultimately meaningless.

Obviously don’t be lazy either, because “fools fold their hands and ruin themselves”.

“Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless” (5:8-17). Important to remember. “Just one more dollar”. People are chasing satisfaction in money, whether they realise it or not.

Don’t chase after the wind. It looks silly.

James 5:1-6

“You have hoarded wealth in the last days”. “You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter”. It is dangerous to misinterpret the times we are living in. Eschatology drives priorities, and if your priority is to accumulate wealth, you have read the room very badly indeed. James does not actually offer a direct command to these rich people, only a woe, but it’s clear that their sin was to live in luxury and self-indulgence on their wealth acquired through fraud, oppression and miserliness. I suspect these people were outside the church, but elsewhere in James (2:15) he speaks against a lack of generosity within the church, and a favouritism shown to the rich within church.

Wealth is dangerous for the Christian, not because it is intrinsically evil, but because it almost inevitably leads to a life of luxury and self-indulgence that distracts from kingdom priorities. Does that mean the Christian should never be wealthy? That all depends on how the wealth gets used.

Luke 18:18-30

“One thing you lack. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven”. There’s a sure-fire defence against greed: generosity. Generosity liberates us from greed.

5.1.2.     The Trap – Greed

The ‘trap’ of greed is not so much a potential pitfall as a default position for everyone – a pervasive attitude toward money that no-one is immune from. We are constantly told that money is power. That it is the key to status, respect, security, leisure, and pleasure. Money is happiness. While these things can be pursued apart from money, it is true that most people see money as the most effective path to them. Money is also one of the easiest external markers to rank people by. It’s also the ‘measure of a man’ in many people’s eyes. Even more powerfully, we believe that money will make us safe, independent, self-sufficient (although this will be dealt with in the ‘provision’ section).

It’s really that simple. All of these concepts are so familiar because they are they air we breathe.

Indicators

The indicators of greed are more subtle than the manic obsession career-guy or the dollar-stacking entrepreneur or the designer-brand wearing big spender. Think about it – how many of these people do you actually know?

A person who thinks the way the world does about money will:

• Be self-indulgent and selfish with their money
• Choose a job that pays more at the cost of other things in their life
• Be willing to devote more time and energy to the accumulation of wealth than to other pursuits
• Run just that little bit harder, just that extra hour, a little more than the others. Nothing extreme of course…
• Have a ‘when I make it big’ list of things to build/buy/do
• Find themselves envious of those with more than them

5.1.3.     The Goal

Here are some helpful principles to remember, distilled from the passages above.

• Money does not satisfy. Its promise is a lie.
• You can’t take it with you when you die
• We live in the ‘last days’. Be very careful what you prioritise
• The love of money is one of the most dangerous things in existence for the human soul
• Generosity is the simultaneous litmus test and the antidote to greed

How generous you are is an indicator of your view of money. And if you love money too much, a great way to fix it is to give it away. It is both the diagnosis and the prognosis. In Luke 12, Jesus says to “sell your possessions and give to the poor”, and to be “rich toward God”.

Indicators

A person who has a godly view of money will:

• Be sacrificially generous

5.1.4.     Diagnostic Questions

• If your income suddenly increased by 50%, what would you do with it?
• What are you currently saving for/paying off?
• What are you going to do when you make it big?
• How much more do you need to earn to be able to start giving more?
• What’s an appropriate amount to give?

5.2. Provision

Barn building is a very common (and indeed common-sense) attitude and would be accepted wisdom but for the fact that Jesus specifically warns against it. At its core, it speaks of a lack of trust in God, and a practical belief of self-dependency. Fate mastery. But at the same time, conventional wisdom would have me be responsible with my resources and build for the future. How this plays out is quite a tricky issue.

5.2.1.     Notes

Psalm 54

“Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.”

Psalm 55

“Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you”, “But as for me, I trust in you”

God is good, and he sustains us. It is our job to trust in him.

James 4:13-17

“What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes”

There is no such thing as a self-made man. Be humble. We don’t know the future and we cannot control it. God is sovereign, and if it is his will, we will ‘carry on business and make money’. We ought to be careful with what attitude we plan for the future.

Luke 12:13-48

This is the ultimate passage for perspective on provision.

Barn-building (vs 13-21)

The underlying attitude of the barn builder is, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years”. Jesus labels this greed (vs 15), and he notes there can be different types of greed. The desire for security and self-sufficiency is subtly different from your garden variety money-lust, but it is still greed. Jesus’ summarises this person as one who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God (vs 21).

Jesus offers 2 remedies. The first, simply: “a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions”. There’s more to life. Jesus calls us to a right perspective on what matters. But this begs the question, what does a man’s life consist in? What more is there to life? Jesus will give a specific answer to the spiritual dimension of these questions eventually, but there is also a common-sense dimension. I think if you asked the average person on the street, they could easily give you several answers. People instinctively know that there is more to life than money.

The second remedy is a right perspective on death. Death, over which God is sovereign, cannot be controlled, and there is no security against it. No amount of barns can delay it and there is no insurance against it. We don’t know when our life will be demanded of us, and when death comes, all preparation and stockpiling will be futile. The point? Wealth, possessions, investments are a false security. They give an illusion of control over life, but in reality, we cannot control the future and we cannot guard against death.

Do not worry (vs 22-34)

In direct response to his admonition in vs 13-21, Jesus gives encouragement. After showing us the folly of barn-building, he now shows us how we can depend on God.

Firstly, the command, “do not worry”. Specifically, don’t worry about the daily necessities of life – food and clothing, etc. Which is not so much a command as a concession. In the sense of someone saying “Oh, don’t worry about doing the dishes, I’ll do them later”. He’s not telling us not to worry, he’s saying we don’t have to worry. Why? Because God’s got us. He will look after us. We know this because God looks after all his creatures, from the lilies of the field to the birds of the air. They have no barns but God feeds them. We are worth much more than sparrows, and God knows what we need. He will look after us.

Again, the same two perspectives are offered here. Jesus reminds us that there is more to life, “Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes”, and he reminds us of our powerlessness against death. We cannot barn-build or worry our way out of death, so stop worrying. RELAX.

Don’t ‘set your heart’ on food and drink. In keeping with the theme, he’s not talking about gluttony, but rather the obsession to secure our physical needs far into the future. The phrase ‘set your heart’ is interesting and appears many times throughout the New Testament. It implies an active direction of desires, focus, motivations, daydreams. It can be people-oriented or possession-oriented, and is best understood in the examples, ‘I have set my heart on her’ or ‘I have set my heart on that new car’.

Finally, in vs 31, we are given the ‘more’ that we are to live for. We are to seek God’s kingdom, rather than our own; to stop trying to amass treasure for ourselves, and to amass heavenly treasure instead. The phrase ‘seek His kingdom’ is too familiar to Christians to mean anything. Jesus doesn’t say ‘pursue His priorities’ or even ‘preach the gospel’.
Seek. As one would a hidden treasure, or an audience with someone great, or an answer from someone wise. It implies quest, adventure. This is the ‘more’ that there is to life. It’s a strange word to use, ‘more’. In some senses, it could be used to imply something extra, a bonus, a little on top of what already is, but not as big as the ‘is’ itself. This this is ‘more’, in the sense that there is more air to soar in that the caged bird can conceive of existing; more ocean to swim in than the goldfish in a tank can dare to dream of.

“Sell your possessions and give to the poor”.  Not that this act provides you with eternal treasure, but that eternal treasure is so much more to be desired that all earthly possessions are of no account. This is the practical defence against the temptation of self-dependence and security – force yourself to have none.

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”. A sobering warning. It is worth asking, what do I treasure? What have I set my heart on?

The master is coming back (vs 35-48)

How will Jesus find us when he returns? Will we be watching (vs 37), ready (vs 38), doing (vs 43)?

Jesus’ return should dictate every aspect of the way we live. We are not our own; we are the servants, he is the master. We know his will – he has given us the bible to figure out the grand scope of it, though it is not prescriptive in its detail. We are given freedom, and it looks different for each of us. Yet each of us have the same vocation, the same calling, the “Follow me” call of Jesus (as Os Guiness puts it). Some more Os Guiness:

The corporate calling … is that part of our life-response to God that we undertake in common with all other follower of Christ. For example, all follwers of Christ are called to be holy and to be peacemakers – simply by virtue of being followers of Christ.

It is very difficult to sit down and intellectually work out whether a certain career choice is in keeping with this calling. There are far too many factors, unknowns and ‘what ifs’. But practically, it is easy to gut-feel it. The simple question to ask ourselves: if Jesus came back tomorrow, would he find us watching, ready, doing? Would he call us ‘good and faithful servants’? If not, we’re pursuing the wrong things. Our hearts are set on trash.

In summary, in Luke 12, the same antidote is offered for the twin traps of greed and self-sufficiency:

• Realism in the face of death and eternity
• An eternal calling and a purpose to live for – seeking Jesus’ kingdom, being his faithful servants while we wait expectantly for his return

5.2.2.     The Trap

As with money, the pitfalls to be avoided are all natural modes of thinking that permeate society. We want to be self-sufficient, to pay off the mortgage, to have enough for a rainy day, and to be able to retire comfortably. Beneath all this are two key failures.

We risk conforming to the world’s approach to provision with:

• An attitude of self-sufficiency, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”
• A sense of security stemming from what you own and what you earn, and your plans to keep doing so into the future
• A temporal mindset, focusing on plans for what you will achieve in the coming years, rather than thinking of Jesus’ return and its implications.

We fail to trust God, and to appreciate both his sovereignty and his promises of care for us.

And we fail to appreciate the reality of Jesus’ return and the urgency of the mission he has left us with.

The result of both of these failures is a skewed value system. Setting our heart on looking out for ourselves, leading us to focus our efforts, desires and attention on the pursuit of the accumulation of stuff at the cost of His mission and His kingdom.

Indicators

Someone who is a barn-builder, who has an attitude of self-sufficiency:

• Looks frequently at their bank account. Probably has an Excel spreadsheet projecting their net worth over the next 10 years.
• Serves less/seldom/not at all in favour of working more
• Makes many plans for the future of their career, their investments and ventures, as though they were sovereign over them
• Prioritises saving over giving, and says “I will give when I have  in my bank account”
• Thinks seldom of Jesus’ return
• Thinks often of the future (primarily their future)

5.2.3.     The Goal

There are several key contradictions to the world’s way of thinking that must be made explicit.

First, we should be humble about the future. We can’t control it, and it’s foolish to think we can. James’ admonition to preface our plans with “if it is the Lord’s will” is helpful because it both acknowledges our lack of sovereignty and causes us to question whether our plans are godly.

Recognise God’s sovereignty and his promise to look after you. Make decisions that show you trust that. These decisions might involve saying ‘no’ to opportunities that would lead to greater financial security at the cost of the kingdom. You can say ‘no’ because you’re confident in God’s plan and his provision. Learn to rejoice in this. You’ve been liberated from the terrible burden of self-dependency and the constant struggle to acquire, to protect yourself against the unknown future.

Finally, constantly re-examine the source of your security. You are secure, not because of the zeros in your bank account, but because of your status as a redeemed child of God, who is of uncountable worth in His eyes. You are an heir to eternal life. Your past redeemed, your future secured.
Getting this right is incredibly hard to do because much of this is subconscious, but you can learn to take notice of it whenever it pops up.

Indicators

The person who truly trusts God and finds security in him:

• Gives generously, even though they are unsure of future prospects
• Is able to say ‘no’ to lucrative opportunities if necessary
• Does not worry about the future or obsess over making plans
• Serves the church sacrificially with their time that could be otherwise spent working
• Thinks often about Jesus’ return and how they are ready

5.2.4.     Diagnostic Questions

• If Jesus were to come back today, how would you feel? Would he find you watching, ready, waiting?
• How often do you think of Jesus’ return?
• Do you daydream of being content one day? Of having enough to say ‘I have enough’?
• When was the last time you said “no” to further work commitments and why?
• When was the last time you said “no” to further church commitments and why?
• If you lost your job tomorrow, how would you react?
• How often do you thank God for his provision of your meals each day?
• Do you feel secure? What makes you say that?
• How do you feel when you look at your savings account/portfolio?
• Are you a self-made man?

5.1. Status

It is interesting that with money and provision, there is an underlying ‘necessity’ that we use a starting point. Money is not intrinsically evil, and we need it to go about our daily lives and pay for things so we can survive. Likewise, having savings is not evil, but indeed prudent and wise. The temptation for the Christian in these topics is one of subtle departure from Godly views; of slightly skewed values and priorities.

With Status, there is no underlying necessity. It’s chalk and cheese. There is a vast cavern between the way the Christian thinks on this and the rest of the world.

5.1.1.     Notes

James 2:1-9

“Believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favouritism”. There is no status in God’s kingdom. The church is not to organise itself hierarchically like the world does.

Luke 14:7-24

First the anecdote about choosing a seat at a banquet. “He who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted”. Quite a practical tip. Don’t think more highly of yourself than you ought. But this also hints at God’s hierarchy being different to ours. He values humility, and in his kingdom, worldly status counts for nothing.

Next, the parable of the great banquet. “bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame”. Reflective of the theme throughout the bible of God scorning the world’s hierarchy. He invites the beggars to his party. We are those who have been brought in from the streets, and we ought to remember it.

Luke 9:46-48, Mark 10:35-45

“It is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest”. Jesus’ disciples are arguing about who would be the greatest. James and John even argue about who will sit at Jesus’ right hand. They are completely status-oriented. This is only natural. It’s the way the entire world operates.

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you”. Not so with you. In Jesus’ kingdom, we do things differently. “Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant … For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.

The point of all this? Jesus sees greatness very differently from the world. He turns the human hierarchies upside-down. He’s been doing it for all of human history. True greatness is sacrifice, service and humility. This concept is enormous. Take everything we’ve ever been told by the world about what it means to be great and throw it in the bin. Redefine greatness according to Jesus’ standard.

Philippians 2:1-8

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves”. We are to have the same mindset as Jesus. To align with how he thinks about greatness. He is God, yet he entered our world and humbled himself to death on a cross. When put against the mind-boggling scale of Jesus’ sacrifice, our petty conceit is not just sinful, it’s downright embarrassing.

Galatians 3:26-29

“You are all one in Christ Jesus”. We are all children of God. There is no hierarchy, no special people, no privilege, no status.

Psalm 131

“I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with it’s mother”. This very short psalm is a great prayer of humility. A confession that we are not great, and we are content with that.

Finally, a quote from Os Guiness with a bonus quote-within-a-quote from C.S. Lewis:

Envy corrupts calling by introducing the element of competition. Like pride, envy by its very nature is comparative and competitive. Or more precisely, pride is competitive and envy is the result of pride wounded in competition. As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “Pride is essentially competitive. … Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others.”
Lewis’ point about pride also applies to calling. Once the element of competition comes in, envy will not be far behind. For what happens if you pause for a moment in the path of your calling and look across at other people in theirs? You can always find someone who has a happier marriage, more delightful children, a higher income, greater public recognition, or whatever surface successes touch on the subterranean depths of your desires.

5.1.2.     The Trap – Pride

It is so easy to see the world the way everyone else sees it. There are hierarchies everywhere we look. Humans are hierarchical creatures, and in a sinful world, this infects everything.
We judge other people, ranking them relative to ourselves based on worldly metrics: popularity, wealth, career, association, earning potential, intelligence, humour, attractiveness. We gain our identity and our sense of worth as people by how we rank in these hierarchies. Of all these metrics, wealth and career are probably the most common. Many people gain their sense of worth from their job, or by the numbers in their bank account. If you asked the career-proud person the question “what is the measure of a man”, their answer would include their job.

As Christians in the affluent west, the risk is that we imbibe this worldview, never realising that God actually sees things the other way around.

Indicators

The person who is proud and is consumed with status:

• Often passes judgment on people, deciding they are not worth their time
• Is continually ranking themselves relative to other people
• Will wear, own, drive and do items and activities that are symbolic of status
• Thinks they are pretty good. Probably a bit better than you.

5.1.3.     The Goal – Humility

As alluded to in the discussion on Philippians, there exist two sledgehammers with which we can drive the nail into the coffin of our own pride: our own depravity in the face of the Holiness of Almighty God, and God’s mind-boggling example to us in Jesus. If we dwelt on these truths more often, we would realise how comically foolhardy it is to believe we are worth any more than an amoeba to anyone. It would be like a group of kayakers making battle plans against a U.S. Navy carrier group. When you’re the admiral of the Kayak Armada, it doesn’t mean much to be ‘worth’ more than the Able Seamen under your command.

Grasping these truths necessitates us ceasing to view the world hierarchically. Starting with the church, that means seeing all Christians as brothers and sisters in Christ – equal, nay, more important than us. What we do for work does not even enter the picture – as with so many other worldly status markers.

We should likewise see all non-Christians as impoverished sinners, in need of grace, regardless of their worldly wealth. This should completely eliminate envy of their wealth and status. If anything, pity should be the primary emotion, and a desire for them to know their maker.

True greatness is servanthood and sacrifice, not positions of power, wealth or influence. Learn to align your admiration of greatness with this definition. Dwell on this when you read the newspaper, or biographies or obituaries.

Finally, we should constantly re-examine the source of our worth. We gain our worth from our identity as redeemed children of God, and not from anywhere else. As wretched sinners, we have forfeited any ability to earn our own worth, and indeed we should be glad not to even open that account because if we did, we’d find we are severely in debt. Similar to our security, this is a constant and subtle challenge.

Indicators

The person who is humble, not consumed with status:

• Speaks seldom of their work, especially if it is what the world would consider prestigious
• Makes little of their positions, possessions, investments and ventures. If they earn or own much, they do not show it – it would genuinely surprise people to learn they are rich
• Maintains friendships with and shows hospitality to people from all walks of life
• Pays no regard to any worldly metric of worth in their association with other people

5.1.4.     Diagnostic Questions

• What is the measure of a man?
• What makes you great/worthwhile?
• Do people respect you? Why?
• How do you feel when someone asks you what you do for a living?
• How do you feel when you find out one of your peers earns more than you?
• Would you feel less of a man if you lost your job?
• Name three people who you think people respect less than you.
• Name three people who you think people respect more than you.

6.    Resolutions

Coming to the practical, pointy end of this essay, it would make sense to distil the principles discussed above into resolutions for my career. I will distinguish between resolutions for my motivations and my actions.

6.1. Motivations

To the extent that I am able to shape and mould the way I think and feel about work through the Holy Spirit, I am resolved to:

• Be content with what I have in whatever circumstances God places me
• Be humble about my future and continually place my plans in God’s hands
• Find my security in God’s promises and not in my preparation or performance
• Be humble and to reject the world’s hierarchy and to value true greatness

6.2. Actions

To the extent that I am able to control the direction of my career under God’s sovereignty, I am resolved to:

• Give generously in all seasons – at least 20% of my income with a view to expanding this when I have the means
• Work hard with honesty, diligence and shrewdness so as to maximise my income while upholding my other roles and responsibilities in God’s kingdom: personal, church, family, etc.
• Let my career be shaped and guided by an overarching mission to follow Jesus, seek His kingdom and serve His church.

7.    Conclusion

The answer to the question “How should I approach work as a Christian” is refreshingly boring. There isn’t really anything special about it. In a nutshell, the answer is: I should approach work like I approach everything else as a Christian – with the freedom Jesus has given me, under His sovereignty, and with a careful watch on my heart and a constant wrestle with my motivations, remembering that Jesus will return soon.

Notes

Topics that I have successfully managed to dodge in this essay by excluding them from the ‘scope’ of the question, but that may need dealing with in future deliberations:

• The sacred/secular full-time ministry vs normal work debate
• The question of what the Christian should do for work, how best to use their talents, etc.