Why Work?

If you just answered..."To make as much money as possible, of course!" I would like to suggest thinking of the activity of work a little differently...and I will start by defining the underlining problem with thinking of work as something secular or separate from worshiping or glorifying God.

Dualism: the doctrine that there are two independent divine beings or eternal principles, one good and the other evil or the belief that a human being embodies two parts, as body and soul.

The Church had its first battle with dualism when the heresy of Gnosticism threatened the truth laid out in the Bible not long after the death of Christ. This way of thought has managed to penetrate the minds of Christians, especially in the west, and manifests itself in several ways as a radical discontinuity between Creator and creature, spirit and matter, religion and nature, religion and economy, worship and work, body and soul, and so on. This dualism is the most destructive disease that afflicts us. For now I will focus on the separation that has been made between work and worship.

Personally, I have had a dualistic mindset and am just now learning to change my worldview concerning these things. Over the weekend I read an amazing essay by Dorothy Sayers titled, Why Work? This essay addresses how for the majority, we have disconnected work from worship and work from pleasure. Sayers calls for a revolution in our whole attitude to work. She suggests that work should not be primarily looked upon as just a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. In this way work, which takes up the majority of a person's life, takes on a deeper meaning and purpose as it should. When we even hear the word work we tend to cringe. Sayers writes, "that it should, in fact, be thought of as creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God's image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing."

We should measure work not by the money it brings to the producer, but by the worth of the thing that is made. When work is reduced to a mere means of making money, although this is an obvious gain from work, one can find themselves becoming enslaved by work. Work then becomes a chore and a burden, something that is hated and despised. It is only when work has to be looked on as a means to gain that it becomes hateful; for then, instead of a friend, it becomes an enemy from whom tolls and contributions have to be extracted. What most of us demand from society is that we should always get out of it a little more than the value of the labor we give to it. By this process, we persuade ourselves that society is always in our debt...a conviction that not only piles up actual financial burdens, but leaves us with a grudge against society.

The second consequence of looking at work apart from worship is that at the present time we have no clear grasp of the principle that every man should do the work for which he is fitted by nature. The employer is obsessed by the notion  that he must find cheap labor, and the worker by the notion that the best paid job is the job for him. Only feebly do we ever attempt to tackle the problem from the other end, and inquire: What type of worker is suited to this type of work? People engaged in education see clearly that this is the right end to start from; but they are frustrated by economic pressure, and by the failure of parents on the one hand and employers on the other to grasp the fundamental importance of this approach.

A third consequence is that, if we really believed this proposition and arranged our work and our standard of values accordingly, we should no longer think of work as something that we hastened to get through in order to enjoy our leisure; we should look on our leisure as the period of changed rhythm that refreshed us for the delightful purpose of getting on with our work, that is if you value enjoying what you do. When one is engaged in a work that he or she loves and enjoys instead of how much it pays, then work becomes a pleasure and a joy. What do you love to do?

In nothing has the Church so lost her hold on reality as in her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation. She has allowed work and religion to become separate department, and is astonished to find that, as a result, the secular work of the world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and that the greater part of the world's intelligent workers have become irreligious, or at least, uninterested in religion. All that God made was declared good and Christians should be able to do the same as they engage in the creative process of working. Every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade not outside it. How does one serve God while working? By doing well whatever it is that person is doing, and if it is enjoyable and a pleasure to do this will be done with ease because it is done with passion and perseverance. Work then becomes an expression of ourselves and not just a tiring burden in which we have no interest. When work becomes separated from worship then a person will end up spending most of their lives laboring poorly, not doing their best and thus not fulfilling the purpose for what they were naturally created to do. Bottom line...do what you love and take joy in your work!