Proverbs 8.30-31
“… when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.”
Do we as Christians really believe that God is the author of all truth? Do we believe that God is the architect of the physical laws that govern the world in which we live, work, and worship? And since God commanded us to have dominion over the planet as his stewards, is it not our responsibility to understand his physical and spiritual laws and wisely apply both sets of laws to fulfill the mission we have been given?
If the Christian community really believed that God is the author of the physical world, then we would invest much more time and effort at being effective stewards of it. But as it stands, the Christian community pays mere lip service to the natural world and the laws that God created to govern it.
When it comes to creation, the Christian world tends to reflect the mistake of secularists, except on the other side of the mirror. Secular thinking focuses on the natural world but marginalizes the spiritual. Church thinking focuses on the spiritual world but marginalizes the physical. Each has a 50% grasp on reality – and proud of it!
We live in a culture that separates our faith from our work. Ironically, this comes at a time when the single most common demographic among people in the church is work, and at a time when the culture and realities of the workplace are most in need of the impact of Christ-centered principles and people.
As I said above, the church’s perspective of work tends to be shaped by a dualistic worldview that draws a sharp distinction between the “spiritual” realm and its related activities (seen as primary and superior) and the “physical” realm and its related activities (seen as secondary and inferior). The physical world, which includes the marketplace, is thus deemphasized by the church.
The dualistic worldview is not biblical; rather, it is platonic — at times even Gnostic. “Platonic” is a reference to the Greek philosopher Plato, who believed the universe was divided into two halves: the physical realm and the “ideal” realm, or what he called the “noumenal.” Plato claimed that ultimate reality was noumenal, not physical. He asserted the physical world was a poor reflection of the realities of the noumenal realm.
This great divide seriously impairs the Christian view of work.
The impact of the dualistic worldview in the church has been the adoption of the false idea that the real work of God’s kingdom is done by missionaries and members of the clergy, and that believers in other professions do daily work in order to make money to support the “real work” of the kingdom. Because of this distorted theology, many Christians operate under the misguided belief that the work of a missionary or a pastor is more “spiritual” than the work of a mailman or a bank teller.
This has led the evangelical church to be strangely silent about life at work. Very few churches have a robust “theology of work.” Very few focus on the role of the Christian at work, or the role of work in the life of the Christian. Even though our work is a daily reality, most of the “spiritual growth” activities in churches tend to focus on the inner life and the after life. Spiritual life is often detached and disconnected from what we spend the majority of our time doing — work.
And let’s be honest, an occasional sermon on “Faith at Work” won’t cut it. Nor will a retreat with a speaker on “Christ in the Marketplace” or a book study of the latest Christian bestseller on the topic. Those things help, for sure, but they are insufficient. The issue is bigger than that. Much bigger.
There have been some solid books written on faith at work. Some marketplace ministries have emerged that provide good resources. Nonetheless, we haven’t moved the needle in the church. The worldview of the Christian community has not changed; it is still locked in a limited, dualistic theology. Faith and work are still disconnected.
Wisdom was a master craftsman who rejoiced and delighted in the work of creating and forming the world. So should we rejoice and delight in the work we do every day as agents of the kingdom of God.
More next week.
“In diligent work there is profit, but mere talk produces poverty.” (Proverbs 14.23)
