A LIFE OF WORK

The other evening at dinner Ouida was observing how our lives together is a world of almost incessant work. She wasn’t complaining, but was rather recalling something she had read about Pat Nixon, how the First Lady and the President did not have and did not need much of a social life since they were so dedicated to the tasks at hand. Ouida and I must be like a lot of our readers, as well as the President and his wife, in that we keep too busy with our responsibilities to find much time for things out on the periphery. We concluded that this is probably a good thing, that we are healthier in both mind and body in that we keep as busy as bees.

But Ouida’s observation set me to thinking about how being busy is related to being spiritual. Surely one may be as busy as a beaver without being spiritual, but it is not likely true the other way around, for spirituality is dependent on a measure of activity and aggressiveness. Just how these may relate makes for an interesting question. I can see how a busy carpenter or plumber is so engrossed in his work that he may go for hours without a single so-called “spiritual thought.” We would suppose that in the daily business of any disciple of Jesus there would be those flashes of thought upon God’s goodness or perhaps a hurried prayer, but one would hardly expect an airline pilot to be meditating on a prophecy of Isaiah while landing a giant jet at Love Field, nor would we suppose that a brain surgeon is thinking about the Incarnation while performing a delicate operation. And it may not be proper for the haggard mother to chastise herself for “going all day without thinking about God.”

This may mean that every working day should have coffee-breaks that are devotional. A telephone operator is simply too busy to think about things more important than putting calls through, but as a Christian she may turn her short breaks into moments for recharging her batteries, so that she might be aglow with the Spirit the rest of the day. The busy disciple learns to take advantage of his marginal moments. It may be by means of a pocket Testament, articles crammed into a purse awaiting for just such a time to be read, or a quiet talk with a fellow-worker about the Lord.

Ouida’s comment led me to think also about the busy life of our Lord. Being human as he was (and what a neglected truth this is, that Jesus was indeed man), I suppose that when he fished he thought about fish, and when he made merry at a wedding feast, with wine in hand, he was caught up in the joy of the occasion like other folk. I do not see Jesus as monastic, hidden from the ongoing of life and sheltered by endless prayer and meditation. If Jesus could have seen the Olympics in his time or a modern football game, I suppose he would soon have been engrossed in the drama transpiring before him. Our Lord was no monk, but rather a worldly man in the highest sense of that term. And by that I mean that he so loved the world that he entered into its history and gave his life in order to change that history.

Jesus may well have been a busier man than most of us can imagine. After all, he was busy changing the world by changing people. People can be tiring and boring. Our Lord, being God as well as man, never seemed to have been bored with anyone. He never left the impression with people that he was in a hurry or that he did not want to be bothered. His time was theirs, and his resources were at their disposal. But he did grow tired and weary, and he too sought out those opportunities to steal away to a quiet place where he could be alone with God.

John 9:4 tells us something important about how Jesus viewed his life: “We must keep on doing the works of him who sent me, as long as it is day; the night is coming, when no one can work.” There is a sense of urgency here. Our Lord came into this world to work, and he wanted to keep at it. But the next line is equally informative: “While I am in the world I am the light for the world.” That phrase in the world is weighty. He was in the world and he was at work. This is the Christian’s pattern for action in our time. We too are to be in the world and we are to be at work. We should seek out the quiet moments, as our Lord did, so that we might be with God; but we must realize too that the work itself can be a spiritual experience.

I recall the old Texas farmer, a dedicated disciple, who was so tired after toiling in the field all day that he would fall asleep while leading the family devotional. We are slow to see that work in the field is as spiritual (or can be) as conducting vespers. If one’s life is within the will of God, his place behind the wheel of a truck is as sacred as any pulpit, and cleaning a latrine may be as much to the glory of God as a season of prayer.

My point is that if there are any sacraments work is as much one as is marriage, “sacrament” supposedly referring to those avenues through which God bestows his grace. In our day when men’s minds are preoccupied with the security of pensions, trust funds, retirement, and all sorts of fringe benefits, along with the notion that the less one works the better, we need to restore the concept of the sanctity and dignity of honest labor. Work is of God, who Himself worked six days before He rested.

The divines who gave us the notion of “the seven deadly sins” may have wisely included slothfulness as among the number. In meandering through Proverbs one is soon convinced that it is work rather than cleanliness that is next to godliness. “Idleness lulls a man to sleep,” one reads, and he is urged “to go to the ant, you sloth, consider her ways and be wise.” One theme of Proverbs is reflected in 21:25: “The idler’s desires are the death of him, since his hands will do no work.”

The great sages have all extolled the virtue of work, which for some reason seems to be slipping from us in our carefree world. The man who prefers a welfare check to an honest day’s work is of no disposition to appreciate Joseph Conrad’s view that “A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.” John Burroughs insists that the promoter of health and happiness is something to do. Happiness comes, he points out, not by seeking it, but by losing oneself in worthwhile tasks. “Blessed is the man who has some congenial work,” he says, “some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.” We would expect Socrates to say it philosophically: “A man should inure himself to voluntary labor, and not give up to indulgence and pleasure, as they beget no good constitution of body nor knowledge of mind.”

Teddy Roosevelt’s wisdom seems especially appropriate in these days when hard work is viewed more of a vice than a virtue: “I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who doesn’t work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.”

In my boyhood days I recall that anyone who had to “work like a nigger” really had it rough. It was often a cry of woe, having to work like a black man, some job fit only for a slave. The Christian response to that has to be that if it is honorable and worthwhile it is appropriate for any man. Any Christian will be pleased to “work like a nigger” once he sees it as God’s will for him. Something is wrong when an able-bodied man sees himself as above menial tasks. We know that Jesus chose to wash men’s feet, and we can suppose he would volunteer to do any humble task, whether cleaning fish or emptying bedpans. Paul is urging us to be like Jesus when he writes: “Never be condescending but make real friends with the poor” (Rom. 12:16).

The professional ministry, something that has happened in the institutional church that God probably never intended, usually denies a man the blessing of “suffering hardship” by supporting his efforts in the gospel by working with his own hands. Not that the hired preacher is not a busy man, but it hardly makes for the kind of situation Paul describes to the Ephesian elders: “You yourselves know that with these hands of mine I have worked and provided everything that my companions and I have needed” (Acts 20:34).

The dignity of labor blends gloriously with the ministry of the word. We all admire the man who supports himself in the preaching of the gospel. The apostles left an example in this regard that is too seldom followed: “Surely you remember, brothers, how we worked and toiled! We worked day and night so we would not be any trouble to you as we preached to you the Good News from God” (1 Thess. 2:9). To the Corinthians Paul speaks of the apostles not only as fools for Christ’s sake but also as men who “work hard to support ourselves” (2 Cor. 4:12). Elsewhere in listing his hardships Paul says: “There has been work and toil; often I have gone without sleep; I have been hungry and thirsty; I have often been without enough food, shelter, or clothing” (2 Cor. 11:27).

The modern minister’s situation is too much in contrast to such a picture, for he hardly knows what it is to put in a hard day’s work at the factory. The neophyte, fresh out of college or seminary, has learned to expect a life of relative ease: reading and study, calling on folk, office hours, counseling, pulpit activity. Not that such things are not work, but it is a kind of activity that sets a man apart from the working man. It is noteworthy that the apostle Paul, while defending his right to be supported, chose to work with his own hands. It says as much for the glory of work in the Christian’s life as it does for the attitude one should have toward the ministry.

It makes an interesting question as to how we would be faring if no one ever received a dollar for preaching the gospel, if all gospel workers in some way supported themselves. Would our divisions be more serious or less serious? Would we be more concerned or less concerned for huge plants and real estate holdings? Would more or less of our money get to the poor—which, by the way, is the only reason the early Christians ever raised any money? It may not be going too far to say that the modern pastor system depends on, thrives on, and is preserved by money. It certainly was not the example of Paul that brought it into existence. It would be both unfair and untrue to charge that preachers ply their trade for the money that is in it, and yet they are to some measure vulnerable to the criticism in that they do make their living from the ministry. Certain things are expected of the professional preacher, whether visiting the hospital or tossing out pious platitudes; and the response is “Well, after all, that’s what he’s paid for.”

We are saying that even our concept of ministry might change should we restore to our outlook the glory and dignity of work. If a brother does take on some position that tends to set him apart, such as being a hired minister, maybe he should also, as time would allow, be the church janitor. Cleaning commodes and washing windows would reduce the distance between himself and the working man. He should be the first to volunteer for the menial tasks, doing all he can to show that he does not consider himself above such. Or he could search out those in his congregation that have the most undesirable ways of making a living, and make it a point to lend them a helping hand from time to time. It would do any professional minister a lot of good to be on a milk truck at 5 a.m. occasionally, or perhaps joining the clean-up crew in an office building after hours. However he does it, the minister needs to stay close to the common man and his work, for whether he likes it or not he is part of a long and ugly history that has set priestcraft apart from the rank and file of believers.

Plain, old-fashioned hard work is at the heart of our Christian profession. When the Thessalonians began to lose sight of this truth, Paul enjoined that if a man does not work neither is he to eat. The principle is also economically sound. Each man is obligated to work and take care of himself and the family that he has brought into the world. The Bible bills the man who has not learned this simple lesson as “worse than an infidel.” Considering the welfare checks issued by our government, there must be within our nation, if not within our brotherhood, many who are worse than infidels.

This is the force of Paul’s instructions to Titus that “Those who have come to believe in God should see that they engage in honourable occupations, which are not only honourable in themselves, but also useful to their fellow-men.” Again he says to Titus: “Our own people must be taught to engage in honest employment to produce the necessities of life; they must not be unproductive.”

This is at the heart of the glory of work, that it is useful, that it satisfies the necessities of life, both for oneself and others. Those engaged in the manufacture and sale of cigarettes may have a problem here, as would those who follow high-pressure techniques to sell a set of books to a family that can hardly read and whose cupboard is bare.

When one labors in a useful task to gain the wherewith to help a brother in need, he has earned the means of a great blessing: being able to give something of himself, the fruit of his own labor. A nation becomes less Christian when its government follows interventionist policies that discourage individual charity. It was once to a man’s credit when he could work a little harder so as to be able to help his aging parents. It was good for folk to tighten their belts somewhat so as to help some neighbor with his hospital bill Those days seem to be disappearing, for now Uncle Sam is taking care of everybody and everything. And along with it something is happening to the Christian concept of work.—the Editor