Work. Now there's an exciting topic! Yet it constitutes such a huge part of our lives. In fact, it consumes the larger portion of our waking hours. Our labor-saving gadgetry has certainly not eliminated it. It remains, in the words of Pope John Paul II, Aa fundamental dimension of human existence.

But evidently it does not follow that we enjoy it. Surveys show that the vast majority of North Americans are dissatisfied with their jobs. American society today generally views work as a necessary evil at best, and concludes that the less of it the better. Part of the American dream is to plan shrewdly enough to say good-bye to employment hassles as early as possible, retire with a comfortable income, and then begin to enjoy life as it was intended: care-free, responsibility-free and work-free. Hello, RVs and par-threes. With cultural ideals like these, is it any wonder that the fabled work ethic is in decline?

Unfortunately Christians tend to buy rather uncritically into these prevailing attitudes. Like most everyone else we raise our voices in the nationwide chorus of bleary-eyed groans on Monday mornings, and join in the impatient Friday afternoon countdowns to freedom.

After all, the line that work is bad fits with our read on what the Scriptures say about the Fall. God told Adam that as a consequence of his sin the idyllic garden scene was over. Now he would be fighting weeds for the rest of his life, toiling to eke out his living by the weary sweat of his brow. We know all about weeds and sweat in their late-twentieth century urban lifestyle manifestations. We take work, therefore, to be a curse. Something to be avoided, like sin.

All this suggests that perhaps it is time that we take a fresh look at work, and review our assumptions about it from a biblical perspective. When we do, we quickly discover that we have to march to the beat of a different drummer on this topic. The Christian view of work can be summed up under two points.

Our experiences of work are often draining, tedious and difficult. The workplaces of our land have been tainted by sin. And to be fair, if anyone has been obliged to work in an extremely negative workplace, or to endure tasks wholly lacking in meaning for years and years, retirement may feel like liberation. But it does not follow that work is basically a blight to be avoided.

It was not invented for punitive reasons at the time of the Fall. Rather, work was and remains part of God's original design for humanity. It was not a burdensome obligation to be grudgingly shouldered with, in the words of William James, a slow, dull heave of the will. It was intended, rather, as a key to our own human fulfilment and happiness.

The best way to explain how this works is to start with God. He is not an inert, immobile deity. Our God is a God who acts. He does things. Great things and subtle little, whispery things. He brings order out of chaos. He playfully creates things, and produces artifacts of beauty. He takes pains to communicate truth and set the record straight. When necessary, he rolls up his sleeves and gets involved in messy situations and puts things right.

Now why did he and does he bother? The short answer is that He seems to enjoy it. That little remark in Genesis at the end of the creation narrative--and God saw that it was good--is our hint here. The Creator gets satisfaction out of doing what he does. The ruler of the universe gets a sense of pleasure from planning a task and bringing it to successful completion. It is as though he stands back from his completed masterpiece, cocks his head (forgive my anthropomorphic language), and pursing his lips experiences the exquisite delight that only a master craftsman knows. Humans can scarcely imagine the fine delight shared in heart of the Triune inventor of the sounds, colors, order and symmetry of the universe!

The point is that He decided early on not to keep this pleasure to Himself, but instead to give us a chance to experience a measure of it ourselves. He set things up so that we could play a role in the accomplishment of his designs. Like an ecstatic little boy, permitted to sit on his father's lap and help him steer the car as they travel along, we have been allowed to share and experience the very joys known to the heart of God.

God is a surprising sovereign. If we had his powers, we would probably prefer to administer everything from the top down. God leads, by contrast, in a shared and participatory way.

Consequently he made us like himself--in the image of God, as we say--so that we too can take a chaotic situation and make it run smooth, produce things of beauty out of the materials at hand, imagine something never seen before and bring it into reality, make a difference in people's lives, pierce through the darkness with a clear discovery and statement of truth.

What do we make of the artist who holes herself up, without sleep or food for days, passionately pouring out paint or ink or notes, only to surface days later, exhausted and disheveled, but strangely exultant and fulfilled? More than anything else it is a manifestation of godlikeness. We mirror godlikeness in our creativity and the satisfaction that follows. We get to share in the delight and satisfaction of God himself. So honorable work is fundamentally a gift, not a curse. And as we engage in it we are simultaneously most God-like and most humanly fulfilled.

People Thrive on Meaningful Work

The late Klaus Bockmuehl, a German evangelical theologian who taught latterly in Canada, wrote a wonderful little devotional work entitled Living By the Gospel. He divided the contents of this book into two sections, which he entitled, respectively, gifts from the Gospel and tasks arising from the Gospel. What is startling about his organization of this work is that he elected to place his chapter on the Christian's vocation and duties in the first section among the gifts we receive through Christ. How strange it appears there, but how profoundly appropriate. The opportunity to engage in meaningful work is actually a wonderful privilege.

William Willimon, the dean of the chapel at Duke University, in his book on the topic of Clergy and Laity Burnout, observes with great insight that seldom is burnout the direct result of overwork. Hard and demanding work can often be remarkably energizing. Instead, argues Willimon, burnout is almost always the result of a loss of a sense of meaning in our labors.

We find sustained energy when we are engaged in something that we believe matters. Henry Scougall, a godly Scotsman of the last century, pointed out that every human being craves a cause worth exchanging one's life for.

Jesus concurs. My food, He said, is to do the will of the Father and to accomplish his work. Note that word food. It means that Jesus found his soul's nourishment and a healthy vitality and personal intensity from the commission he had received from his heavenly Father. It was the same with the Apostle Paul's sense of privilege in being called as an ambassador for the Christ. As Bockmuehl put it, God's call upon our lives, his invitation to play a part his own unfolding plans and purposes for history, liberates us from drifting and from our natural egocentricity; it boosts us to a different plane of living. Feeding our ego occupies so much of our attention, yet it is so notoriously too small an aim for a human being. Man's creational design is to serve a purpose bigger than his own sustainment (32).

The key to fulfilment and happiness is not indolent inactivity, but to set as our goal to participate in God's ongoing purposes of creativity, earth-care, truth-telling and grace-giving through the responsible use of our gifts in the service of others.

We Christians can make such a difference by looking at human labor from God's perspective. We can embrace work, and celebrate the gift. We should stop complaining about having to work. We can see all honorable vocations as worthy service to God. We must always remember that church-related jobs are not necessarily superior. One's gifting and aptitudes are the best clues to one's vocation in life. More than anything else they point to the sphere of one's greatest usefulness, and therefore of one's greatest personal fulfillment as well. There is wonderful freedom in realizing that who we are deep down is the best indicator of what we are supposed to be doing.

Now it is true that some types of employment are more conducive to achieving the purposes and fulfilment for which humans were designed. Insofar as we are able, we should aspire to jobs which allow for expressions of freedom, creativity and the satisfaction of achievement and of making a difference. Particularly those of us who may own businesses or manage the work of others should have goals beyond maximizing profits; we should also prioritize the humanization of our workplaces, and the designing of jobs so that human fulfillment is possible.

Those of us who feel locked into relatively unfulfilling career circumstances should take comfort from the fact that in an imperfect world God practices the art of bringing significance and meaning out of the ordinary. Bethlehem's manger is a premier example! And above all else, as a people of grace, who have been touched and sensitized by the Holy Spirit, let us affirm and sympathize with the unemployed. Let us help those whose gifts are not being utilized, or whose desire to contribute is being thwarted. Recognize that nothing less than their full claim to humanity and the image of God is being threatened at this difficult time in their lives. May the people of God be know for their own signature cheer: While Sunday was great, Thank God It's Monday!