God Glorified in Our Work

When it comes to work, many Christians feel as though they have much in common with the mythological figure Sisyphus. Having angered the gods, he was condemned by them to the task of eternally pushing a boulder up a mountain. As soon as he reached the summit with his burden, the boulder rolled past him down the slope he had just ascended. Sisyphus returned to the valley to repeat his pointless and wearisome efforts. Albert Camus, the existentialist writer, comments, "[The gods] had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor." (1)

Distant myth or personal reality? This scenario of meaningless drudgery too often describes our experiences on the job. We have an inner certainty that our need for meaningful, purposeful, and satisfying labor contradicts our experience of the daily grind. Charles Colson relates how this contradiction between despair and meaningless work, and our need for purpose, affected prisoners in a Hungarian concentration camp during World War II:

The Nazi officer commanded [the prisoners] to shovel sand into carts and drag it to the other end of the plant. The next day the process was repeated in reverse. They were ordered to move a huge pile of sand back to the other end of the compound. Day after day they hauled the same pile of sand from one end of the camp to the other….One old man began crying uncontrollably; the guards hauled him away. Another screamed until he was beaten into silence. Then a young man who had survived three years in the camp darted away from the group. The guards shouted for him to stop as he ran toward the electrified fence. The other prisoners cried out, but it was too late; there was a blinding flash and a terrible sizzling noise as smoke puffed from his smoldering flesh. In the days that followed, dozens of the prisoners went mad and ran from their work, only to be shot by the guards or electrocuted by the fence. The commandant smugly remarked that there soon would be "no more need to use the crematoria." (2)

In the face of such despair, living purposefully and meaningfully demands that who we are, the image-bearers of God, be directly related to what we do. Even our systematic theologies reflect this relationship between work and people as image-bearers of God. We find importance of person and work from our Creator's person and work. After all, we are his workmanship. He is actively involved in his Creation, and he is the one who calls us to be coworkers with him. "Calling" and "vocation" are identical as applied to our earthly responsibilities. Particularly in the Bible, the term carries the meaning of being called to a specific purpose: "God is at work within us, both to will and to do for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). He does this in our earthly calling as well, by equipping us with desires and abilities to perform tasks here on earth.

Even unbelievers recognize the relation between who we are and what we do. After World War II, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved the universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among other issues, it declared in Article 23 that the right to work is a human right. This is not an insignificant concern among international thinkers. In response to World War II, the organization of American States published the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. Chapter 1, article 14 reads: "Every person has the right…to follow his vocation freely, in so far as existing conditions of employment exist." Chapter 2, article 37 of the same document says: "It is the duty of every person to work, as far as his capacity and possibilities permit, in order to obtain the means of livelihood or to benefit his community." (3)

American culture has taken this concept of vocation or calling and shaped it after its own image. In his comments on Benjamin Franklin's attitudes and impact on the subject, Max Weber concluded that "the earning of money within the modern economic order is, so long as it is done legally, the result and the expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling." (4) Virtue and proficiency in a calling are useful because they bring financial success to the worker, as even a cursory glance at Franklin's autobiography makes clear.

Some people consider that performing one's work is the answer to the question, "What is the meaning of life?" Once a prisoner himself within a Nazi concentration camp, Victor Frankl asserts that one must rely upon the accomplishment of one's "mission in life" to give meaning to existence, rather than searching for an abstract "meaning of life." Frankl writes,

Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it….The majority, however, consider themselves accountable before God; they represent those who do not interpret their own lives merely in terms of a task assigned to them but also in terms of the taskmaker who has assigned it to them. (5)

Frankl's comments leave unanswered the question, "What meaning to labor exists if there is no God who gives it?" Frankl's idea that a completed mission is the meaning of life offers no assurance, psychological or otherwise. To his credit, he acknowledges the only other viable option’ a Creator who enlists us to work for his glory. His conclusion differs from Franklin's success system, where virtue and proficiency are useful because they bring financial gain and social status. In our day, the status of calling is imperiled by such errors and from the secularization of a segmented industrial culture. Sociologist Robert Bellah explains:

In the context of a calling, to enter a profession [was] to take up a definite function in a community and to operate within the civic and civil order of that community. The profession as career was no longer oriented to any face-to-face community but to impersonal standards of excellence, operating in the context of a national occupational system. (6)

The lack of a crucial link between the individual and the general community weakens our sense of "connectedness" and the importance of our living and working in creation. As social creatures, we benefit from work. "Employment offers to the individual not only economic viability but also an experience of community and a sense of social belonging, a source of structure and continuity in life, and a means of developing his or her talents and potentialities in contributing to the well-being of society as a whole." (7)

Turning to the Westminster Confession of Faith, we may ask if there are any clues in it for establishing a biblical basis for the value of work. Although there is no section devoted to vocation, the doctrine is implied throughout. For example, in "Of God and of the Holy Trinity" (2.2), we find: "To [God] is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience, he is pleased to require of them." In the Garden, Adam and Eve rendered to God the service of identification and maintaining order. Genesis 1:26’28 twice affirms a relationship between the fact that man is made in God's image and that he has been called to exercise dominion over the earth. Because man is made in the image of God, after his likeness, he is capable of ruling over the rest of the created order. Similarly in Genesis 2, man is given charge of the environment; thus maintaining, ordering, and organizing is fundamental to God's purposes for human life. (8)

Reformed theologian John Murray argues that labor is decreed and is included in the Ten Commandments. He states that about "the fourth commandment, it should not be forgotten that it is the commandment of labor as well as rest. 'Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work' (Exod. 20:9). The day of rest has no meaning except as rest from labor." (9) God designed work for Adam and Eve before sin entered the world, and God judged work, a part of his creation, to be "very good." As a matter of fact, Genesis makes it clear that Eve was a coworker with Adam. (10)

God did not make labor a curse when Adam disobeyed him, although the curse did include difficulty and frustration in man's work: "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return" (Gen. 3:17’19).

Note also that when God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden for their own good, the Bible says that Adam must still work the ground (Gen. 3:23). Work is actually a gift of God. The author of Ecclesiastes realized that "it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him, for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work’this is a gift of God" (Eccles. 5:18’19). Work, paid or not, glorifies God. "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward" (Col. 3:23’24; see also Eph. 6:7). Our employer is ultimately God, not a fallen human being. Hence, labor is for God. Work carries with it the possibility of satisfaction in its performance. After listing various manual occupations, the author of the apocryphal work Ecclesiasticus has this to say:

All these trust to their hands; and everyone is wise in his work. Without these a city cannot be inhabited; and they shall not dwell where they will, nor go up and down; they shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit high in the congregation; they shall not sit in the judge's seat, nor understand the sentence of judgment; …But they will maintain the state of the world, and all their desire is in the work of their craft. (Ecclus. 38:24’25)

Others may, and should, benefit somehow from what we do, but we steal the honor and glory due to God when we think of our labor as valuable or meaningful only when acknowledged by our earthly employers or as we are able to gain financial or personal success. In this way, we violate the first and the eighth commandments.

The section on providence (5.1) in the Westminster Confession clarifies the importance of vocation:

God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most holy and wise providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.

By calling believers to specific tasks in the world, God enlists us to be coworkers in glorifying him. In our labor, we imitate God and his providential care and governance. He instills within us abilities and desires to perform diverse tasks, and we reflect our Creator's workmanship when we perform tasks with our abilities and interests. We work from our varied abilities because God works from his varied abilities; we are created in his image. His sovereignty ensures that all things in this fallen world will ultimately glorify himself and benefit us too. Whatever our circumstances, we fulfill our purpose as salt and light in this world as we love God with our lives.

God is not the author of confusion. He orders all things for his glory. Calvin based his idea of vocation on the organic, natural order he saw in God's glorious theater, his Creation. The relevancy of such a doctrine was obvious to Calvin. John Walchenbach explains: "The conviction that one is called gave courage to people in a society in dramatic flux. In sixteenth-century Geneva, structures from medieval society had broken down, peasants were given new powers, refugees streamed into the city fleeing persecution, and a feeling of uncertainty pervaded the changing order." (11)

Calvin was not trying to stifle or control people for his own ends; rather, he saw society as a natural part of Creation, with an organic structure of interdependence to it. He also knew too well how we desire our own good above that of our neighbor. Given free reign, this sinful pride would cancel any meaning or benefit of society. John Murray makes an important observation on the importance of the relationship between work and order:

When Paul enjoins the Thessalonian believers to withdraw themselves from every brother who walked disorderly and not after apostolic tradition (2 Thess. 3:6), we might think that what he has in view is false doctrine…. [However] the particular kind of disorderliness that the apostle has in mind in this case is that of idleness along with its companion vice of being a busybody. "For we hear of some that walk among you disorderly, that work not at all, but are busybodies" (2 Thess. 3:11). (12)

Murray echoes Calvin here when he sees Christians' idleness as disruptive:

[Calvin argued that] the Lord bids each one of us in all life's actions to look to his calling. For he knows with what great restlessness human nature flames, with what fickleness it is borne hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once. Therefore, lest through our stupidity and rashness everything be turned topsy-turvy, he has appointed duties for every man in his particular way of life. Therefore each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life. (13)

We are stewards responsible to God in a fallen world. According to Calvin, the apostle "rather condemns that restlessness, which prevents an individual from remaining in his condition with a peaceable mind, and he exhorts, that every one stick by his trade, as the old proverb goes." (14) Hence, our worries about whether we are doing God's will by working in a certain job receive comfort here. Nor are we stuck in one particular job all our life. "Now it were a very hard thing if a tailor were not at liberty to learn another trade, or if a merchant were not at liberty to betake himself to farming." (15)

Paul is clear about the importance of working. "For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: 'If a man will not work, he shall not eat'" (2 Thess. 3:10). We must also provide for our families; as Paul writes in 1 Timothy 5:8, "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." Again underscoring the importance of actively participating in our responsibility to work in Creation, he admonishes believers to "make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody" (1 Thess. 4:11’12). This will also proclaim God the Creator as worthy of honor and glory. "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven" (Matt. 5:16).

The Westminster Confession "Of Communion of Saints" (26.2) draws upon the priesthood of all believers "in performing such other spiritual services as tend to their mutual edification; as also in relieving each other in outward things, according to their several abilities and necessities." God does not distinguish between professional Christians and the rest of the group. We all are responsible for the service of "loving our neighbors as ourselves." This love is the basis for Paul's admonition in Ephesians 4:28: "He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need."

The quality of our work reflects on our Creator. If we believe that our work glorifies God, then "quality control" becomes internal. This concern with quality before God is clear in Luke 10:7, "The worker is worthy of his wages," which echoes Leviticus 19:13 and Deuteronomy 24:14’15. Work, then, is an obvious way of showing good works. C. S. Lewis tells it this way: "When our Lord provided a poor wedding party with an extra glass of wine all around, he was doing good works. But also good work; it was a wine really worth drinking." (16)

Work is a gift and a commandment of God to glorify him. It reminds us that we and our labors are meaningful. Work also provides for ourselves and our families, benefits others by maintaining order in society, and shares with those in need. But our labor must always please God and not men. The daily drudgery that oppresses us is the consequence of trying to please human masters. When we please people rather than God, we are willing to do whatever is necessary to gain approval, even to the point of disobeying God. (17)