Showing posts with label Work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Work. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

The Job That Americans Would Fear Holding the Most

Politician.

That's what a new survey by CareerBuilder shows.
Americans think being a politician is scarier than being a mortician or an infectious disease doctor. In fact, there's no job in the U.S. that workers fear more than being an elected official, according to a nationwide survey by CareerBuilder.

It's all that public speaking, rejection and accountability associated with the job that terrifies workers most.
Maybe all of these factors are things we should consider before opening our yaps about how bad "all" politicians are. We're all entitled to our opinions, of course. But character assassination directed at people doing work that we ourselves would find too daunting, sometimes because misinformaton or outright disinformation, is an abuse of our freedom of speech.

The Huffington Post article in which the findings appear reminded me of a piece of information I ran across and wrote about a few years ago. It discussed what jobs that the late business management researcher and thinker Peter Drucker identified as the four toughest ones in the United States.

On Drucker's list were, in no particular order: the President of the United States, a university president, a CEO of a hospital, and a pastor. I wrote about Drucker's list from the standpoint of someone who's been a student of presidential history all my life and who's been a pastor, now for thirty years, here

The whole top ten of fear-inducing jobs for Americans surfaced by the CareerBuilder survey looks like this, in order:
1. Politician
2. Microbiologist
3. Security guard at teen pop idol concert
4. Kindergarten teacher
5. Crime scene investigator
6. Animal trainer
7. Mortician
8. Radio, cellular, and tower equipment installers and repairers
9. Stand-up comedian
10. Parent
There are more than a few daunting jobs on that list, to be sure.

But none is more daunting or more rewarding than that of being a parent. From the Scriptures we learn that the role of a parent is the most important in all creation. Parents are to help their children prepare for adulthood and to introduce them to the God revealed to all the world in Jesus Christ. That's a big job! And no conscientious person wants to totally mess up when doing it.

Kindergarten teachers, crime scene investigators, microbiologists, and morticians all have the capacity to make mistakes that can harm people. That's what makes them frightening, I think.

Yet clearly, in a society that often expresses the value it attaches to the work people do by the amounts of money and perks employees and contractors are given, at least two, maybe three, and possibly all four of these professions are undervalued, especially in light of the good they do for people.

Read the whole article.


Monday, August 05, 2013

Why Do We Work?

[This was shared during both worship services with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-26
Our son Philip, now thirty-one, was nine years old when we attended my Dad’s retirement party. On the way home from the party, a voice came from the backseat and asked, “Dad, why do we work?” That struck me. We take work for granted as part of our lives. We work to earn the money to pay our bills, of course. But why exactly do we work?

In our first lesson for this morning, a world weary Solomon, successor to his father David as king of Israel, gives vent to his own frustration with work.

Take a look at some of what Solomon says.

In Ecclesiastes 1:12-14, he writes: “I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven; this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.”

He goes on to say in Ecclesiastes 2:18-23, that he hated all his toil, his hard work, because he would die and then all the money and possessions he had would pass on to his heirs and lose all the things he’d gained through wisdom by acts of foolishness.

Solomon thought that hard work can be a vanity, a vain endeavor, meaning it was worthless and insignificant.

Now, other than Jesus, Solomon was the wisest man to ever walk the earth. Solomon is right here, I think. When you work just to pile up riches, comfort, influence, and power, all your work is in vain, meaning nothing, and a waste of our lives. One of the main characters in the classic film, Citizen Kane, surrounded by ticker tape machines that showed how his investments were going, while being interviewed by a reporter late in his life, speaks this wisdom when he says, “Well, it’s no trick to make a lot of money if all you want is to make a lot of money.” He understood how vain and worthless the mere acquisition of money is.

Shifting from fiction to real life, an acquaintance of Ann’s and mine once worked for a hard-charging man who built a business empire, shedding wives and any relationship with his adult kids he might have had in the process. When he died, there were a number of people at his funeral. But he went unmourned. You see he’d worked hard to leave behind a pile of money. But he never used his work or his money to achieve anything truly worthwhile in this life or in eternity.

So, why do we work?

Let me tell you, first of all, what’s not a reason to work. Someone once asked the writer G.K. Chesteron what the greatest problem in the world was. Chesterton said, “I am.”

You and I--our sins, our faults, resentments, jealousies, grudges, imperfections--are the main problem in the world. Often, we look at that fact and tell ourselves to work harder, strive to be better people, to fulfill God’s laws as embodied in the ten commandments. There’s nothing wrong with the ten commandments or with God’s law, of course. God gave them. They contain God’s will for our lives. They’re perfect.

The problem is, we’re not perfect. That’s the problem with the world. You and I could never work hard enough to earn a place in God’s kingdom or to be worthy of His love. Instead, God gives a place in His kingdom, His overflowing love, His forgiveness, as gifts of His grace to all infused by the faith only the Holy Spirit can give, to turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, the only way to life with God.

Yet even after God’s grace has come to us in Jesus Christ, even after we accept that only Christ’s hard work on the cross, and even after the most miraculous work of all, the work God the Father did when He raised the crucified Jesus from the grave--even after all that, we still work. We do so, I think, for four reasons.

First, we work because, simply, God planned things that way. God gives us work to do--as employees, family members, and citizens of our communities. Work isn’t God’s punishment for sin. In the Old Testament book of Genesis we’re told that God placed the first human being in a garden. The Bible says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” God never meant for the man to sit around and watch the garden grow! God’s intention was always for him--and for all of us--to work. God gives each of us our own parts to play in caring for, building, and renewing the world He gives us. Human beings were made to work.

A second reason we work, I think, is this: When we work, we most reflect the presence of the image of God within us. The Bible tells us that we human beings were created in the image of God. There are many implications to that statement, but one of them becomes clear when you scan the opening verses of the Bible as it talks about God. You’ll find phrases like, “God created...God separated...God named...God made.” You see, God works. God creates. God builds. We’re made in the image of a working God. So, there’s something intrinsic to being children of God that impels us to work.

But there’s a third reason that we work. Pastor Steve Goodier tells the true story of an elderly man considered by his townspeople to be both wise and thrifty. “When he died,” Goodier says, “everyone expected the authorities to find money stashed everywhere in his home. [But a]ll they found were a few gallon cans filled with coins. It turned out that he had used most of his money to help put needy young students through college. And the coins filled his pockets as he walked down the streets of the business districts looking for parking meters that had expired. When he found one, he would drop in a coin. One of his neighbors commented, ‘That explains why he looked so happy and contented!’” Here was a man who worked in his own special way even after he retired. He knew that another reason we work is to experience the joy that goes with serving others, that goes with being someone others can depend on.

God has created us for community with Him and with others. When each of us does our best at working, giving to, and serving God and others, we live out the love God has given us in Jesus Christ. And make no mistake, God and the world are depending on us to play our part in God’s creation. Elsewhere in Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes: “If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks.” We work because God has constructed the world in such a way that we all need each other to do our jobs well. Others are depending on us.

And this continues even when people can no longer do the things they once could. Often, when I visit with the elderly, they tell me, "I can't do the work I used to be able to do." It's then I try to convince them that, as we grow older, God may shift our workload, calling us to do the heavy lifting of more intense, longer sessions of prayer for the needs of our church, community, and world. In this too, God and our neighbors, especially those neighbors who don't realize it, are depending on us.

Now there’s a fourth reason for working which, I think, may only make sense to those who are followers of Christ.

In his fine book, Christians in the Marketplace, Pastor Bill Hybels tells the story of a young man his father hired to work in his wholesale produce business one summer. He was a student at West Point and rumor had it, a Christian. As Hybels tells it, many of his dad’s other employees were “rough...hard-drinking, hard-fighting, women-chasing men” who “relished the opportunity to make sport of a nice, clean-cut, all-American...” kid. They wanted to make this young man’s summer miserable.

But they didn’t. Instead, “David, the all-American boy, turned the company upside down.” On his very first day, he befriended some vagrants out behind the company warehouse. He gave them his lunch. Soon, he was doing Bible studies for them. Before the end of the summer, in his quiet, loving way, David had become a valued friend and counselor to some of the most hardened employees of the Hybels company. I like what Hybels says after recounting this incident. “The shame of the marketplace is that so often it centers on nothing but business. There aren’t enough Davids in the workforce.”

Our daily work isn’t just about keeping the house clean, meeting deadlines, making money, or keeping the boss off our backs. (Although those things can be part of our work lives.)

It’s not about piling up an estate that, as Solomon laments in our lesson, the kids may fritter away foolishly.

And, may I say, it’s not even about piling up the money for a bequest to the church. (In this, I liked Mary Jane Stofcheck’s philosophy, If you’re going to give money away, give it away now. Give when it requires faith that God will supply all your needs even though you give away part of your money!)

For the Christian, the key questions as we do our work boil down to a few:
  • Am I giving glory to the God Who gave His Son to die on the cross and rise from the dead to give forgiveness and everlasting life as free gifts to all who believe in Jesus? 
  • Am I giving 100% of my effort to glorifying God and loving my neighbor every day? 
  • Am I showing consideration--(another way of asking, Am I giving love) to my employer, my coworkers, my customers, or others I serve?
Many days, I honestly have to say, “No” to questions like those.

“No, I haven’t been a good husband. I’ve been surly and selfish.”

“No, I haven’t been a good father. I’ve been impatient.”

“No, I haven’t been a good pastor. I should have worked harder on that lesson plan, should have listened more to that counselee, should have prayed before I took action.”

It’s in these circumstances that I turn to the God I know through Jesus in repentance and ask for the power to recommit myself to giving Him all the glory in all that I do.

Why do we work?
  • Because God wants us to work; it’s part of being human.
  • Because when we work, the presence of God’s image in us is visible.
  • Because when we work, we experience the joy of serving others.
  • And because when we work, we glorify God.
In Colossians 3, the apostle Paul encouraged a group of first-century slaves who were Christians to work for others with all their hearts, “as though you were working for the Lord and not for others...For Christ is the real Master you serve.”

We Christians work because when all is said and done, we really work for the One Who loves and works for us every moment of every day.

We work because Jesus Christ, the One Who went to the cross and rose from the tomb for us, loves us and nothing is so important to the Christian than to use our whole lives to give back to the God Who gives us everything. Amen

Friday, May 06, 2011

The Privilege of Work (and the Stupidity of Proof-Texting)

Have you ever heard of "proof-texting"? (No, it doesn't have anything to do with your cell phone.)

Proof-texting is what happens when people choose a passage of Scripture to prove a point they want to make without taking the rest of the Bible into account.* Proof-texting is destructive and un-Christian.

A central principle taught by Martin Luther for understanding the Bible is to "let Scripture interpret Scripture." In other words: pray, read, think, and reflect on what the whole Bible reveals of God's will on a given subject. This will give you a clearer picture of God's character and of God's will for your life.

One isolated piece of Scripture people misuse to uphold a strange belief they hold is Genesis 3:17-19. There, after Adam had decided to rebel against the will of God, God tells Adam:
"...cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
The proof-texters look at this and claim that it means that human work is a curse for sin. One of my factory co-workers was fond of repeating a mantra during our breaks and lunch times. "Live in hope; die in despair," he would say sagely between drags on cigarettes. That "little ray of sunshine" was based in part on his viewing Genesis 3:17-19 in isolation. He believed that God had decided to punish the human race, including punishing us with work to do, long before he was born.

But work is not a curse.**

In Genesis 3:15, after God had created the first human being, we're told:
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
In other words, from the beginning, before the fall into sin, human beings were meant to work. Work is not a curse; it's a privilege.

But something happened to our work after the fall into sin. As surely as death became part of the human life on earth after the fall, so did the burdens of futility and self-service in our work. Sin--not work itself--is what can often make our work hard or futile.

Sin lay behind all the watercooler gossip that can make work hard.

Sin lay behind the "It-can't-be-done" jeers directed at workers who have dreamed, innovated, researched, or striven through the centuries.

Sin lay behind the laziness that ruins productivity--ours and others.

Sin lay behind bosses who shortchange employees and consumers.

Sin is what causes employees to miss deadlines, cut corners, skip out early, and even swipe money or supplies from employers.

It isn't work itself that's a bad thing, it's the inborn condition of sin we bring to work as descendants of the first parents and all the sins we commit because of that condition that can make work hard or futile.

Today's installment of Our Daily Bread is based on Proverbs 6:6-11 in the Old Testament. Through Solomon, God reveals a call for the lazy to be diligent in work, as an expression of what it means to be part of His creation:
Go to the ant, you lazybones;
consider its ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief
or officer or ruler,
it prepares its food in summer,
and gathers its sustenance in harvest.
How long will you lie there, O lazybones?
When will you rise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want, like an armed warrior. 
No work we do will earn us a place in God's kingdom, of course. (Also see here.) The gift of eternity with God belongs to those who repent for sin and take Christ's outstretched hand of forgiveness and grace

But that's no license for the faithful to sit on their blessed assurance! 

Christians should hate the thought of anyone having legitimate reasons for saying of us that, as the phrase goes, we're so heavenly minded we're no earthly good. 

Work is a privilege. Do it for as long as you can in life and do it to the glory of the One Who made you and Who sent a Savior to set you free, eternally, from sin, death, and futility. Ephesians 6:7 in the New Testament says, "Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women..." 


Work because it's part of what makes us human...something that will keep being part of what it means to be human for those who live eternally with Jesus Christ.

*It also happens when people flat out misread a passage of Scripture. One of the most widely misread passages of the New Testament is the one in which people tells us to take up our crosses

Many look at that and figure that Jesus is referring to adversities that come our way as a cross. Jesus is portrayed as pushing an attitude that combines stoicism and self-pity. 

People don't consider what the cross was for Jesus. Through it, He bore our sins. Our crosses are our sins. To take up our crosses means to honestly acknowledge our sin and our need of Christ. It means being honest before God and the world, that we, by our inborn nature, fail to love God and fail to love others; that we deserve the punishment for sin that the sinless Jesus took for us. It means submitting our old sinful selves to daily crucifixion so that God can remake us into the people we were made to be. 

It's only in honestly taking up our crosses that the freedom from sin and death Jesus won for repentant believers in Him can come to us. 

Adversities that come to you--from small to tragically shattering--are not your cross. Sin, the only thing that has the capacity to destroy you for eternity, is your cross, and we must submit to its destruction through honest daily repentance and renewal from God. 

Jesus says take responsibility for your sin and come to Him. He will make you new.

**A superficial consideration of all the great things we have in the world because somebody worked--from the light bulb to the computer chip, from the food on your table to the music you enjoy on your iPod--will demonstrate that work itself is no curse. 

Friday, November 07, 2008

Praying for the Unemployed, Pondering the Dignity of Work

On a day when the government announced troubling increases in the numbers of unemployed, statistics about joblessness and the recession were brought more sharply into view for me.

My daughter called from Florida to say that the Curves at which she works on a part-time basis and where she works out, is closing down. (She has a full-time job. So, no worries there, although her hours have been cut back.) The owner of the franchise, a woman who holds two other jobs, simply can't afford to keep the place up and running.

I learned today that a Christian publishing house is closing down all of its retail outlets. There is a general trend away from the overhead associated with physical stores, toward online sales. So, this decision may have been in the pipeline anyway. But it was probably also hastened by the economy. The decision comes as an enormous blow to an acquaintance of mine with more than thirty years with the company.

Over the course of the week, I've spoken with several people who have lost their jobs because of the shrinking economy.

It isn't just the loss of income that's so horrible when one loses a job, although that's worrisome enough. It's also the loss of self-worth.

There's a downside to tying up one's sense of worthiness to a job, of course. As I said here, we're human beings, not human doings.* In God's eyes, we're accounted worthy not because of what we do or own, but simply because we are children of God.

On the other hand, we weren't made for idleness, contrary to the bad rap that work sometimes gets. Some Christians even have the mistaken impression that work is a punishment for sin. Not so. Even before the fall into sin recorded in Genesis, God gave the first man work to do. Work isn't a punishment. It's part of our purpose for living. When it's taken away from us, it chips away at our dignity.

Tonight, I'm praying for all who are without work.

I'm praying too, that the economy not only of the United States, but that of the world, will improve, bringing new opportunities for people.

I'm also praying that once things do improve, we won't forget our vulnerability or our need for God in good times and bad. (See here.)

*The phrase isn't original with me. But I don't remember where I first read it.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

"You have to do your work whether you get recognized or not."

So says veteran jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins of all the prizes and awards he's received during a sixty-five year musical career.

I heard NPR's profile of Rollins as I headed to another part of town to conduct a funeral. His words grabbed me. The reason: In our media-saturated culture where every blogger is a potential celebrity and people are extolled as idols and superstars because they entertain us, Rollins' words are a needed smack-in-the-chops.

Part of the joy and the glory of being human is that we're privileged to work. We can set out to accomplish something and at the end of the day, behold, it's done. Or, we've advanced toward getting it done.

None of this is to say that some work isn't arduous and repetitive.

Nor is it to say that some who work aren't exploited by others. (It happens and it's immoral.)

But I'm convinced that work was never meant to be like that. Work is meant to be an expression of beings created, as Genesis tells us, "in the image of God." (Work, according to the Genesis account, was also never meant to be punishment of humanity. Human beings were charged with working, including caring for and ruling over creation, before sin entered the human picture. God will even have work for us to do in heaven. The old saying has it that there's no rest for the weary. The Bible seems to say that in heaven, we won't be wearied by work.)

But, even work that we love can become boring or difficult. In fact, the more difficult our work, often the more fulfilling it is. Just ask your local heart surgeon, flight controller, housewife, store manager, or pastor, among others.

Nonetheless, it's taken (taking) me a long time to get over this recognition thing, my addiction to being lauded for simply doing my job. According to Rollins, though compliments are nice--and I believe in handing them out liberally--they can't be the reason we work. Here's what he also told NPR:
The real deal is doing it, as best you can do it. And that's it. That's its own reward.
Amen!

[UPDATE: Amba picks this topic up and makes some interesting points.]