This chapter took me a decent amount of time to write. In part that was because I did not have something like a seminary paper to base it on. On the plus side, I’ve thought and read about Christian work for decades, but I needed to reread some of the books on the topic that I liked, organize what I wanted to say, and do additional research as well. As such, I did not have as much time to polish what I wrote as I would have liked. I’m trying to keep sharing what I have at noon every other Monday even if I don’t think it is “ready.” I’d appreciate any feedback you have on the flow of the chapter, what you think I have left out, and anything in it you disagree with. Don’t worry about typos, clumsy wording, and such as I’ll clean those up in a subsequent pass.
Besides polish, I feel like there is more that I should include in the chapter, so I will do that over the coming months. I need to put some more work into some of the Greek and Hebrew word studies. I also think it probably should be longer than the chapter on leisure. I would love to add a personal story or two, possibly to replace the ones I used. Anyone have anything about their experiences with work that might better help explain one of the points? I’m good with either fully anonymizing it, saying something like “my friend Don told me this about his work/retirement experience,” or including your full name and some specifics. Just let me know. Thanks!
A Biblical View of Work
Retirement is usually thought of, at its simplest, as no longer working for a living. Therefore, before understanding retirement, we need to understand the true nature of work. While this may seem like a diversion, I consider it fundamental to us knowing what retirement should look like.
Merriam-Webster’s definition of work is “to perform work or fulfill duties regularly for wages or salary.” By the time we reach the typical retirement age of 65, most of us have been working for 40 years or more. I had worked full-time since I was in my late teens, so when I retired at 65 it was after almost 50 years of work.
During those years, working was what I spent the most hours doing, usually more than I did sleeping. Work was the thing I often thought about even when I wasn’t officially working. For the last twenty years or so of my career, I was the co-founder of a successful technology company. I was able to use the rationale that it wasn’t just me and my family that I was working for; it was the dozens of other people who worked at my company. Like many people, when I met someone new, I usually asked, “what do you do?” (As a retiree, I’m now more likely to ask, “what did you used to do?”) My unintentional implication was that the job or profession of a person is the most important part of them.
Not everyone approaches their work life the way I did. Many other people think of work as what they must do to pay the bills. They consider their work a means to an end. They may or may not like their jobs, but they see them as essential to paying for the things they consider more important.
Of course, our view of work may well change at different times in our lives. Regardless, the question most of us ponder at times is whether we work to live or live to work. Put another way, the prevailing thought on work is that it is either a necessary evil or the meaning for our lives. The Bible tells a different story.
GOD WORKS
The Genesis creation account is very different from that of most other religious. Greek mythology viewed work as something that humans did, not the gods. Greek philosophy saw physical labor as bad while thinking was what good people and the gods did. Genesis instead records God working. God’s creation of the heavens and the earth is described as work. Genesis 2:2, says that “By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.” Work is not something for the lower classes, it is something that the supreme God of the universe did and continues to do. The result of His labor was something that He admired as evidenced by Genesis 1:31, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
God is often portrayed in other places in the Bible as working. As Ben Witherington, III (a professor and theologian) notes his book, Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor, God is described or shown as a potter, “metalworker, garment maker, dresser, gardener, farmer, winemaker, shepherd, tentmaker, builder, architect, musician, and composer.”[i]
The Bible also shows Jesus as someone who works. Pretty much every child in Sunday School knows that Jesus was a carpenter. The Greek word translated as carpenter is tekton and might better be translated as builder or craftsman. Regardless, His earthly father, Joseph, had been a carpenter and Jesus would probably have been apprenticed to him at a fairly young age. He did not start His 3-year public ministry until He was about 30. That means He spent far more time working in a common profession than He did in His public ministry. We know little about that earlier period of His life, but we have no indication that it was something He was ashamed of or hid from people. In Matthew 13:55, the crowds questioned His wisdom and miracles because He was only “a carpenter’s son.” Everyone seemed to have been aware of His profession.
The Bible describes Jesus as someone who works. In John 5:17, He responded to those persecuting Him because of His work healing a lame man on the Sabbath. The Apostle John writes, “But He answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.’” The Greek tense of the verb for working (ergazomai) indicates a past and continuing action. God continues to work, as does Jesus.
WORK WAS PART OF PARADISE
When God created man in His own image (Gen 1:26), the desire and ability to create and to work was part of that likeness. We were created to work, initially in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 2:15 says, “Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” The Hebrew word (abad) translated here as cultivate means to work or serve. The verb to keep (shamar) is active and means to preserve which can be understood as another form of work. [Need to explore these word studies a bit deeper.]
Beyond tending to the garden, God gave Adam defined roles to rule over the animals, subdue the earth, and name the animals (Genesis 1:26, 1:28, and 2:19). The animals and plants were only to multiply, but God gave Adam work to do as well. From the very beginning God intended Adam, and all mankind, to work. We did and do so because we are created in God’s image.
My favorite Christian book on work is Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work. He was a pastor in New York City, a theologian, and a popular author. I recommend this book to anyone who seriously wants to understand the role of work in our Christian walk. He points out, “The book of Genesis leaves us with a striking truth—work was part of paradise.”[ii] No one should be confused and think that work is a result of Adam’s and Eve’s fall.
Instead, part of Adam’s curse was that work would be hard. After Adam and Eve ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God metes out their, and our, punishment. Part of that punishment was banishment from the Garden of Eden. Another part is described in Genesis 3:17-19. No longer would Adam simply tend a garden, instead his work would include sweat, hardship, and weeds. I’ve heard it said that the fall turned gardening into farming. Farming is honorable work, just as gardening was, but the Fall meant that there is now hardship and pain in doing it. No matter what jobs you’ve done in your life, there are always some parts of them that remind us of Adam’s, and our, sin. I’ve often thought that the ideal job is one where the ratio of bad work to good work is as low as possible. The Bible confirms that the bad work will always be present.
Keller contends that God created us with a need to work. He says, “Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sexuality, it is not simply medicine but food for our soul. Without meaningful work we sense significant inner loss and emptiness. People who are cut off from work because of physical or other reasons quickly discover how much they need work to thrive emotionally, physically, and spiritually.”[iii]
My dad loved working with my mom as an antique dealer. They traveled up and down the East Coast buying and selling antique silver. He loved finding an old, blackened serving spoon at a garage sale for pennies, polishing it until it shined, researching when and where it was made, labeling it with all the relevant information, and selling it his booth at an antique show for $100 or more. He had a fine eye for what was valuable. When he reached the mandatory age (70) for receiving Social Security, he felt it was time to retire. He saw no reason for his antique business income to get taxed at a higher rate. It was finally time to relax, travel, and enjoy life.
That was exactly what he did, but it was not fulfilling. He often said that retiring was the worst decision of his life. I watched him over the next decade slowly shrink and die. It wasn’t as simple as saying that his lack of work killed him. Technically, Alzheimer’s did, but losing the working part of his life was a major contributing factor.
Keller further sees that the Bible shows “we don’t merely need the money from work to survive; we need the work itself to survive and live fully human lives.”[iv] People I’ve talked to about their retirement have told me confirming stories. One example was my best friend from high school who retired from the Postal Service when he was 64. After a few months of not working, he felt a real void in his life. He now works part-time at a hardware store and has been much happier. His work offers him personal fulfilment, a group of people to witness to, and some money as well.
OUR WORK, OUR CALLING
The Bible seems clear about the role of work in our lives, so why are many Christians confused about it? Keller sees part of the problem as being that there are so many Christian views of what it means to serve God through our work. Different books, sermons, and Websites maintain work is good if it promotes social justice, enables evangelism, shows excellence, creates beauty, glorifies God, engages and influences culture, brings joy, fulfills your passion, or makes money you can be generous with.[v] Each of these views boast some amount of confirmation from the Bible and Christian doctrine. Trying to pick one of them as the sole correct answer is impossible. The best we may be able to do is to see the value in multiple of them.
Another part of the answer is understanding the overlap between our work and our calling. Here I’m indebted to Witherington’s book on work which has much to offer regarding work in general and our calling specifically. He spends the second chapter of the book developing a theology of work or vocation as calling with much of that based on Gene E. Veith’s earlier book, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life.
Witherington puts a very high value on our work and calling. He states that our “work is what weaves together the very fabric of a called person’s identity, and fulfills it.” [vi] Keller points out that the word vocation is based on the Latin word (vocare) to call. Our work is meant to be a calling, not just a job. We often think of calling as something reserved for people in “Godly” professions such as pastor, missionary, seminary professor, church secretary, or charity worker. One of the great, most important changes that the Reformation, and Martin Luther in particular, brought about was the removal of the line between sacred and secular work. Callings are not just to ministry, but to all sorts of work. Farming is not a lesser calling than pastoring.
Witherington sees our work and calling as deeply intertwined and argues that “Work is not a secular activity; it is a sacred one originally ordained by God, and so it must be undertaken in holy ways. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with good, old-fashioned honest labor or hard work, including manual labor. But whatever we do, we are to strive for excellence.” [vii]
Because our work is more than just a job, there are some jobs that Christians will never be called to do. No matter how compassionate we may be, we can’t be a nice mugger and see that as our calling. Nor, a prostitute, con man, or pornographer. Yes, any of those people can be Christians, but God will call them away from those jobs, not to them. Instead, God will only call us to jobs that allow us to match our goals with His goals.
Even “good” jobs can have aspects of them that Christians cannot do. For example, lying to sell a car and cooking the books as an accountant are not what Christians should do. My dad quit his job as an accountant because the business wanted him to put a racehorse on the books as a business expense. He could be an accountant, but not a crooked one.
One challenge that some of us face is never actually working a job that feels like our calling. That maybe because the jobs have not been fulfilling, are bone wearying, or never match our expectations. That does not necessarily mean we did not find our calling. Keller relates the story of Antonio Salieri from the play and movie, Amadeus. He was very successful as an opera composer and at the top of his world. Once he heard the music of his contemporary, Mozart, Salieri’s world was ruined because Mozart’s music was what he wished he could have written.
Keller asks whether that means Salieri had missed his calling and answers that he had not. He says, “Just because you cannot realize your highest aspirations in work does not mean you have chosen wrongly, or are not called to your profession, or that you should spend your life looking for the perfect career that is devoid of frustration. That would be a fruitless search for anyone. You should expect to be regularly frustrated in your work even though you may be in exactly the right vocation.” [viii]
Some of us have faced similar crises, especially in our current time when we are encouraged to follow our passion. Following our passion does not necessarily mean we are following God’s calling. Fortunately, today we have long enough working lives that we can try different careers. It is also important to understand as Keller says, “God can—and often does—change what he calls us to do.”[ix] Our calling and career may well not be for life. This can be especially important as we consider what our calling should be in retirement.
Something that makes all this more complicated is how much work has changed since biblical times. The most common forms of work have changed from agrarian to industrialized to today’s service and knowledge work. What we do as work has become increasingly abstracted from what we earn. When you harvest or hunt for what you eat, it is easy to see the relationship. People did use money in Biblical times, much as we do today. A denarius, used in several of Jesus’ parables, was a coin equal to a day’s wages. However, if you had your own farm, your output was not coins, but wheat or olives. Now, we don’t even get coins, we instead get ones and zeroes in our bank accounts. When you respond to emails all day in exchange for electronic money, it is a lot harder to see whether it is God’s calling. How much money did I make per email? Per meeting? That might have given me more (or less) enthusiasm about doing email and attending meetings for a living!
Witherington wryly points out, “The old road construction signs used to say, ‘Men working.’ But in any calling worthy of the name, it is never merely human beings working; it is also God working.”[x] To me that is the essence of what makes working become doing God’s work.
One thing I’ve not discussed in this chapter on work and calling is money. Obviously, money is an important consideration, but it should not be our primary one. Yes, making more money means you will have more money to use for God’s work, but that is seldom our real motivation. Adam’s physical needs were taken care of in the Garden of Eden, but God called him to work. This need for work beyond providing for our needs is important to consider when we think about what retirement should look like. In discussing this book, a friend asked me the following question, “If someone received a substantial, unexpected inheritance, what should their work look like?” I did not have a good answer. Keller sees work as an inherent need for all of us, beyond that of simply making money. If the hypothetical person receiving the inheritance no longer needed to work for the money, that person would still need to work in some way to fulfill their purpose as God’s image bearer. That has obvious implications for our retirement. We will examine this question in more detail in Chapter 4.
Regardless of our jobs and callings, the Bible gives clear instruction of how we should work. In Colossians 3:23, Paul instructs his readers, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord, rather than for men.” That doesn’t just mean to work hard. Instead, the Greek word (psuche) for heartily literally means from the soul. That verse is one that I have long tried to incorporate into my life. I wear it on my wrist as a reminder. The verse means that I am to work, not lackadaisically, but with my very soul. And, not for the approval of others, but for God. It is hard to put any higher value on work than that.
Before seeing to see how to turn this understanding of the importance and calling of God’s work to retirement, we need to examine in the next chapter what our society’s expectations of retirement are.
[i] Ben Witherington, III, Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor. (Chicago: Eerdmans, 2011). Kindle edition, 7.
[ii] Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work. (East Rutherford, NJ: Penguin Books, 2012). Kindle edition, 36.
[iii] Keller, 37.
[iv] Keller, 38.
[v] Keller, 22.
[vi] Witherington, 13.
[vii] Witherington, 16.
[viii] Keller, 94.
[ix] Keller, 95.
[x] Witherington, 35.
