The President of McDonald’s in America has been quoted as saying, ‘my priorities are God, family and work’; and when I go to work I reverse the order. For two thousand years, said an Executive Marketing Director, Christians preached the Gospel of Salvation and for the life to come today we preach the Gospel of success with money for the present life
It is therefore difficult to keep our work in the right perspective. There are enormous pressures on people, particularly young people to conform often to values at odds with Christianity, pressure to be one of the boys. Pressure to work long hours, compounded with stress.
WHAT IS WORK?
The Oxford Dictionary defines work as “the ability to produce by labour or exertion”. Work can be described as a meaningful service each person renders to the community. John Scott in his book: ISSUES FACING CHRISTIANS TODAY says work is the expenditure of energy [manual
or mental] or both in the service of others which brings fulfilment to the worker, benefit to the community and Glory to God.
WORK DOMINATES
Work it seems, we cannot live without it. It occurs as a constant topic in our conversations, consumes most of our waking hours for much of our adult lives and it serves as a shorthand description of our identity. From the age of five when we first attend school, to the age of 65 or thereabouts, when we retire and sometimes beyond, we are engaging in or preparing for work. Without work, the complexity of modern Government would be greatly diminished. Most of the books in our libraries would vanish; MARK’S DAS KAPITAL would probably never have been written, everyday would seem like the weekend. Like the citizens of Athens in Acts 17 we would most likely spend our entire waking hours, doing nothing, but talking about and listening to the latest ideas [Acts 17:21].
Since Creation, work has been part of human experience. [Genesis 1:26, 2:15]. Even monks and nuns who consecrated their entire lives to the Lord are compelled to work. For many of us work is unwelcomed.
Many view it as oppressive, arduous and demeaning. The perception of work as a curse [Genesis 3:17-19] is a commonly held one. St. Paul made tents, [Acts 18:3] so as not to be a burden on those he visited, even though he would have preferred to pursue other goals [1 Cor. 9:3-18].
Work is therefore somewhat ambiguous. Some can look at it positively and recall that when God placed Adam in the garden, he commanded mankind to “till it and keep it” [Genesis 2:15]. Others however, see the negative implications of the fall and lament the experience of sweat, alienation and exploitation.
The proper place of work in life is clouded further by the sheer complexity of modern commercial culture. Christians today face a complex myriad of workplace processes: division of labour, the gulf between management and workers, mass communication, the impact of modern technology, and its application in industry, the information age and many more. On top of these structural factors are piled the related personal pressures to perform and conform: consumerism, success at any price, workaholism, alienation, the breakdown of ethics.
As work occupies such a large slab of life, it inevitably acts as a focal point for the shaping and living out of underlying values, priorities and beliefs.
The working world can be seen as the everyday laboratory in which many of our Christian values are crystallised and expressed or suppressed. Work tends to bring our fundamental beliefs into sharp focus, because at the end of the day we are talking about time, money, power, status, goals, honesty and dignity. In short, the workplace constitute an important arena for all Christians, hence this is the first of a series of articles in a topic deserving focus.
