God Loveth Adverbs
Work, vocation, calling and what we do all day long
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I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I, along with many others, have had a change in my work situation over the last few years. I mentioned that at the beginning of a piece about change and in this piece I want to say a few things about work - some of which I have learned or have been reminded of over the past few years.
America has an … interesting, slightly unique, maybe strange view of work. We are very identified with it. When someone is out of a job, it can be a struggle to answer the “what do you do?” question that seems inevitable in adult small talk. Even when someone is content to find their vocation at home and not in the workplace, the very context of the question can be awkward. This context is changing, probably in some ways for the better, but we are still a bit confused on how to think of work - beyond an obligatory recognition that it is a means of providing food and clothing and shelter and electricity and such.
Nikola Jokic is not an American, but he works here - as a two-time Most Valuable Player in the National Basketball Association and the most recent NBA Finals MVP for the newly crowned Denver Nuggets. When asked his reaction after this (one would think) pinnacle event in his life, he said, “the job is done, we can go home now.”
He wanted to go home and be with his family and take care of his horse in Serbia. He also displayed at the post-championship press conference an unglamorous view of his (one would think) glamorous job - “nobody likes their job … maybe they do … they are lying.”
This reaction was praised (or puzzled over) because it seems so out of step from what we would expect. However historically good he is at his very high paying and public job, he doesn’t care to be identified solely with it. This is good and healthy, but a good and healthy view of work is unusual for us.
We seem to be catching on to this fact and looking for what is a good and healthy understanding of work - but I am not sure that has been completely successful. In May of 2021, Anthony Klotz, then an associate professor of management at Texas A&M, coined the phrase “the great resignation” to reflect the large number of people who left their jobs during the pandemic.
“I knew from talking to my students, workers and business leaders that the pandemic had changed how many people felt about work,” he said. “Workers saw that quitting their jobs gave them a chance to take control of their personal and professional lives.”
Anthony Klotz, Texas A&M
The disorienting environment of the pandemic brought a moment of re-evaluation - is this job “worth it”? Is this what I want to be doing? Is this who I am or want to be? Many people decided the answer to that question was no. But some recent research indicates that the great resignation might be turning into “the great regret.” Multiple studies have found that about three quarters of those who changed jobs in 2020 and 2021 have experienced either “surprise or regret” that their new job wasn’t more satisfying and almost half of these workers would go back to the job they left if they had the chance. Some in Gen Z have coined the term “funemployment” to describe, well, having fun being unemployed or very underemployed - which may indicate some level of despair in finding ‘fun’ or meaning in a career.
Vocation - Calling - Purpose
Some in Christian circles have also struggled either to find meaning in their work or struggled not to find all their meaning in it. One (incorrect, I think) view is that the fall of humanity made work necessary - and that in a perfect world, nobody would work. The fall didn’t make work necessary, it just made it fallen. We have a calling, a vocation. This calling is more than our work and exists within and outside of our work.
I daily (well, most days) pray that the Lord’s kingdom come and His will be done. I (usually) work every day as well. Do these two things have anything to do with each other? Cornelius Plantinga’s wonderful book, Engaging God’s World, describes a Christian and her calling -
In her best moods she longs not just for happiness, but for joy; not just for joy, but for God; not just for God, but also for the kingdom of God … she doesn’t merely endorse justice in the world; she hungers and works for it. She doesn’t merely reject cruelty; she hates and fights it. She wants God to make things right in the world, and she wants to enroll in God’s project as if it were her own. She ‘strives first for the kingdom’ in order to act on her passion.
In short, she is a person with a calling.
This calling exists alongside, within and through our work, whatever it is. For those who find lots of overlap between this calling and their employment, work likely seems to be a “fit”. But many people don’t. They sell consumer goods, they serve at restaurants, they deliver the mail, they drive people around … what does this have to do with a calling? The answer to this question has to do far more with how you do what you do and who you are doing it than what you do. Or, in not letting the what part overshadow the who and the how and the why. An expression coming from the Reformation, showing that this question and reflection on the what, who, how, and why has been around for (at least) centuries, is “God loveth adverbs”. Employment for most people four centuries ago consisted of hard manual labor without a lot of celebration or compensation. How can this work be part of a kingdom calling? It is because God is concerned with how we live in the world far more than what we do to make a living in the world.
Now if we compare worke to worke, there is a difference betwixt washing of dishes, and preaching of the word of God: but as touching to please God none at all … The homeliest service that we do in an honest calling, though it be but to plow, or digge, if done in obedience, and conscience of God’s Commandment, is crowned with an ample reward ... God loveth adverbs; and cares not how good, but how well.
Joseph Hall - 1610 (ish)
Love Your Neighbor (at work)
We are taught that one of the two great commands of Christianity is to ‘love our neighbor as we love ourselves.’ One might say this is integral to the calling, or vocation, of the Christian. What does this have to do with what I do all day? The key question related to the command to love our neighbor was asked of Jesus by a teacher of the law in an attempt to limit the command. He asked, “... and who is my neighbor?”
In the workplace, the neighbors may be the customers, who are to be loved and served. The boss is to love and serve the employees, his neighbors who are under his authority. They, in tern, are to love and serve him. Teachers love and serve their students; artists love and serve their audiences …
… God is hidden in vocation. It is also true that God is hidden in our neighbor.
Gene Edward Veith Jr. God at Work
The coming of the kingdom and the loving of my neighbor is to be an everyday reality from which I do not clock out when I begin working. God is hidden in vocation. God is hidden in my neighbor whom I work with and for - for whom I make things - to whom I sell things - to whom I serve. God loveth adverbs. In case you are a little rusty on the grade school English, God wants me to work joyfully and honestly and selflessly and conscientiously and … lovingly. This is where my work, my vocation, my calling, and my participation in the kingdom becomes an everyday reality - whatever my work is. In this context, work - at home or for employment - may be difficult, but it can never be meaningless or purposeless. The meaning isn’t in the work, it is through it, it is in the working.
Links
The Texas A&M Professor Who Predicted The Great Resignation - Texas A&M Today
The Great Resignation is Turning into the Great Regret - msn.com
