Just Got Paid Today

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.  — Colossians 3:23-24

No matter what we do for a living, or just for living, it is the Lord's work.  Most people we know, maybe even ourselves, need a change in perspective.  Whether a person is CEO or janitor, teacher, union boss, guard or governor, housewife or construction worker, he or she is able to do that job to please the Lord.  A person can be engaged in things that run generally counter to God's will and the rightness of that work has to be considered in a larger context — an assassin, for example.  Surely a hooker might want to look for a more legitimate and honest line of work, and the same for a professional politician — but I repeat myself.

Aside from the immoral, anything we do can be done as for God.  Paul addressed his words initially to slaves in the Roman Empire who might be assigned demeaning tasks by cruel masters.  It did not matter.  The Christian can turn an unjust demand into an opportunity to serve the Lord. 

Most of us these days are not faced with deep moral dilemmas on the job.  Our questions run more along the lines of whether or not our work is meaningful and significant.  Are doctors or EMTs or police officers more important than restaurant servers or factory workers?  Should we value teachers above farmers or truckdrivers?  In purely economic terms, supply and demand may should determine monetary compensation.  But how much we are paid has nothing to do with whether or not our work is significant.  A mother who stays home and raises her children is unquestionably worth more than the quarterback of a professional football team.  Only a handful of individuals can achieve on the football field, and because there are thousands willing to surrender large amounts of money to watch those activities, the players are well-paid.  With enough love and a little help from the Lord, anyone can become a reasonably good parent, despite the immense difficulty of it.  Good parents may be known only to their children, and their reward in monetary terms may be non-existent, but they are great in the kingdom of heaven. 

Right now close to a fifth of the working population have no job at all or they have taken work that is "beneath" them.  Some will say they will do whatever they have to do to take care of their families.  Whatever their belief system, such people are not far from the kingdom.  God is not asking us to always love what we do, necessarily; He asks us to love why we do it, to change the focus of our day-to-day work from making a living to living for Him.  It doesn't matter what the name is on the hat or who signs the paycheck; it doesn't matter if we drive a truck or fly a rocket to Mars; we work for the Master.   

Wheels, Clown Car, After-Market

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, in Christ; for He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. – Ephesians 1:3-4a

I am naturally inclined toward too much introspection, subject to bouts of depression, always wondering if I’ve done enough, or enough of the right thing. Coming out of college I had discovered about three ways to self-medicate and suppress this problem. Unfortunately, one was illegal, the second one caused me to fall down a lot, and the third one was a good way to get shot. And, honestly, “finding Jesus” did not help that much. I became a pillar of church – one who was inclined to too much introspection, subject to bouts of depression, always wondering if I had done enough or enough of the right thing, while smiling, singing, and pretending to have it all together. I was about at the point of thinking that maybe the best thing to do was look up Jim, Jack, Johnny, or Jose.

My problem was that I kept asking an inconvenient question: What good is this? All of our efforts and activities as Christians seemed to accomplish very little that I considered good. Either something was going on that I didn’t know about or my understanding of “good” was misguided, or possibly, there really was no point to all this crap at all. If you’ve ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you may recall that Pirsig’s conflicted alter ego Phaedrus encountered a dilemma that left him catatonic. I found myself thinking of Phaedrus a lot. I didn’t go that same direction, but I was in danger of making some very detrimental, irreversible choices.

There is the basic command to “be fruitful and multiple, and replenish the earth”, but once the kids are out of the house, the majority of that job is or should be done. That leaves most of us quite a bit of free time. Working night and day to buy all kinds of cool stuff that you rarely have time to use doesn’t seem too fulfilling. Building another building to house another worship service when most church buildings are mostly empty anyway never made much sense to me -- thus a successful career in ministry did not seem a likely choice.

So, why am I here? I’ve read the Bible a lot since I was a kid when the folks ordered one from Sears and Roebuck with my name stamped on the front. I’ve read Ephesians, especially the first couple of chapters, hundreds of times. Every time I read “He chose us … to be holy and blameless…”, I saw it as something I needed to work on. Yep, I need to be more holy and blameless. Then one day I looked at it and saw it differently. I was chosen to be holy and blameless. Why is that different? It is a state that comes with being “in Christ”. If you choose someone to be in a position – say, Homecoming Queen – she is the Queen. She can’t be more Queen. She can’t be less Queen. In the case of a Homecoming Queen, a person could be a poor choice, but that would not alter her state. I am undoubtedly a bad choice to be holy and blameless, but it’s not my “beauty”, i.e., my Good-ness that is being evaluated. Christ holds that office, and His suitability for it is without question. I am elevated to that position in Him.

My purpose in this world is to inhabit the state of being holy and blameless and let the position work on me. Proverbs 6:23 says: For a commandment is a lamp, teaching is a light, and corrective instructions are the way to life. The law is light by which we can see God’s pure and righteous nature, that we may know Him and understand Him. Beyond that, we when live according to the law – that is, according to His will, in the state of being holy and blameless, we will encounter pressures and forces that reshape us to fit our new state. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. Don’t worry about it. I’ve overcome the world.” I originally took that to mean that I would be delivered from my troubles the more I conformed to God’s will – which isn’t really a bad interpretation. In a sense it is perfectly true. I too long failed to see that it was my being conformed more and more to God’s will that caused my trouble, and that the trouble itself then became the hand of God to shape me to fit that really odd-looking hole in the wall of the Sanctuary. You might say we are not delivered from suffering but are delivered, as sons to our Father, by our suffering and endurance.

The tedious, repetitive drama alternating with chaotic circus that is this life, then, ceases to be meaningless, empty, and futile. The wheel keeps turning, yes, but it is not simply spinning horizontally on a vertical axis. The rubber is meeting the road of time. We’re not wandering in circles – the road goes ever on. We have a map. Our direction is laid out. It may be a wheel on a clown car, but the car is moving. We’re going somewhere after all. All the things and doings that seem to have no point are of value in transforming me, first, and also, possibly, in transforming others -- if not bringing them to the point of seeking transformation. We are being fitted for life in all its fullness, for that time, or timelessness, when the all limitations we have fall away and we stand, on our own, holy and blameless in His sight.