3 Credit Hours

by

Rob Barrett

July 26, 2000

Christian attitudes toward work tend to divide into two polar views. One side begins with the Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20) and finds a picture of the ideal Christian life in Paul as the travelling missionary. The resulting belief is that life’s full focus should be on proclaiming the gospel. More ‘earthy’ work for the maintenance of physical life (e.g. farming, manufacture of clothing, housing) is regrettably necessary, yet we should endeavour to avoid things that distract us from the real task at hand – preaching the gospel.

The opposing view begins with the Cultural Mandate (Gen 1:26-28; 2:15) for the care and shaping of creation. It then draws from Paul’s exhortations to glorify God in "whatever you do" (Col 3:17, NASB) and his teaching with respect to working "with good will…as to the Lord" (Eph 6:7). The resulting belief is that all work is equally glorifying to God as long as it is done with the right attitude.

Both approaches seem to have scriptural warrant yet either extreme result in problems. The former attitude unhealthily divides the people of God into a hierarchy of worth. The missionaries are on top, the pastors next, the human caregivers follow, etc. Instead of a Christian view of the diverse and interactive body of Christ, individuals all chase after a single ideal, the Christian ‘Renaissance man,’ and each person fails to a greater or lesser extent to reach this ideal. We seek the perfect outward expression of Christianity and fall headlong into idolatry. The latter attitude can also be unhealthy. Given a metric that judges all work equal and only evaluates the worker’s attitude, we quickly become complacent about the actual results of our labours. The simplistic extreme of this view would find God glorified by one set of workers moulding gravel into concrete blocks and another set of workers beside them crushing the concrete blocks back into gravel! They can certainly work wholeheartedly, but clearly such useless labour is unworthy of God’s purposes. We are designed to be ethical workers and therefore we must evaluate the results of our labours and adjust accordingly. The attitude of ‘holy work first’ degrades those whose work is judged to be less holy. The attitude of ‘all work is holy’ lures us to expend our energies in worthless work, as dictated by the unbelieving world.

In this paper, I seek to reconcile these two polar views of Christian work by starting from a different scriptural launch pad. Jesus prayed, "As Thou didst send Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world" (John 17:18, cf. 20:21-22). By focusing on Jesus’ mission of redemptive incarnation, I describe a theology of Christian life and work that continues Jesus’ work on earth. To make the discussion more concrete, I discuss the implications of this theology for Christian workers in the field of high-technology. I conclude with suggestions for how our Christian community can help in the task of being faithful Christian workers.

Before his ascension, Jesus commissioned his disciples by saying, "‘Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’ And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’" (John 20:21). This scene re-enacts both the original creation and Jesus’ baptism. When God created Adam, he breathed life into the newly formed man (Gen 2:7). He also gave him a mandate: to cultivate and keep the rest of creation (Gen 2:15) – to continue God’s creative work. In the Christian era, the new mandate from Jesus is to continue his redemptive work in the world. This does not negate the commission of keeping creation, but focuses it for these "last days." This scene also parallels Jesus’ baptism, when he accepted the ministry given to him by his father and the Holy Spirit descended upon him (John 1:32-34). On that day Jesus began his ministry of redemptive incarnation. Empowered by the Spirit, the unique God-man brought these two natures together for the purpose of rescuing humanity from their enslavement to sin. Jesus likewise gives the Spirit to those who accept the ministry to which he has called them.

Christians are commissioned for the special task of continuing Jesus’ mission. This purposeful mandate is in stark contrast to many popular Christian views about the purpose of life. Fundamentally, we are not here to prepare for heaven, or to get to know God better, or to simply survive the difficulties of life. We are here to redeem creation from its fallen chaos. And the method we use is incarnation—mysteriously bridging the divine and the earthy. This was Jesus’ ministry and now it is ours. Paul understood this, as can be seen in a reflective moment when he struggled over whether he desired to live or die:

For Paul, "to live is Christ." He knew that he was carrying on with Christ’s work as one who, however imperfectly, incarnated God to the world through being both flesh and spirit. He faced personal pain and difficulty in this life (cf. 2 Cor 11:23-28). But just as Jesus could look past the cross to the resulting benefit, Paul saw that this "momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison" (2 Cor 4:17). Going to Christ immediately might have seemed better for him personally, but he was willing to live and work because it was for others’ good. Jesus chose incarnation so that he could be "the first-born among many brethren" (Rom 8:29) and Paul likewise chose incarnation because of his goal of sharing eternity with many brothers and sisters.

From this discussion, it may seem that the Christian life should follow the model of Jesus and Paul: we should all be travelling preachers. This line of thinking would support the ‘holy work first’ view of Christian work. However, even though Paul writes "be imitators of me" (1 Cor 11:1), he never counsels anyone to lead the missionary life that he leads. His writing does not describe a universal Christian lifestyle. His conclusions are deeper. For example, when he reaches the point of applying Christian theology to everyday life in his letter to the Ephesians, he writes, "I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called…" (Eph 4:1). As we wait breathlessly for the call to some radical activity that would be a worthy response to God’s action on our behalf, Paul surprises us: "…with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph 4:2). The radical nature of the Christian commission is a call to a "clean break with the world’s value-systems" rather than a break with the world’s activities.

So now that we have a reformed value-system, what should we do? Paul explains what we should do in his letter to the Philippians: "…work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure" (Phil 2:12-13). Paul’s advice is necessarily vague. He has four points. First, God is at work in us, through the Holy Spirit. God’s direction is not primarily through external forces (though Scripture and the Church are necessary helps) but through his work inside the believer. Second, because it is God himself who is purposefully at work in us, we need to have a proper sobriety and reverence about the way we express ("work out") his salvation in our lives. Third, his work will shape our will, our desires so that they are pleasing to him. Fourth, his work in us will shape our work so that we are able to do the things he wants us to do in a way that pleases him and accomplishes his purpose.

This view of the Christian life is an expression of incarnation—being somehow part God through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives while remaining earthy creatures with all of the limitations that that implies. Our role in this life is to embrace God with one arm and embrace the world with the other. The resulting mystery is that God accomplishes redemption through our incarnation. Evangelism brings God’s good news to those who have not heard it. Preaching instructs and exhorts those growing in Christ. Farming produces necessary food that expresses God’s commitment to human life. Science and engineering express God-given intelligence and enable thoughtful sovereignty over his world. These and many other activities embody God and his ways in the physical world. Jesus was rejected for eating with sinners by those who saw holiness as being separate from the ‘unclean.’ However, just like Jesus, our incarnation is a way of bringing God’s holiness to ordinary people and situations, making them extraordinary and transformational.

There remains a wide gap between these principles and the many decisions that we face when we step into our daily lives. As I "work out" my salvation, it is vital for me to realise that my course will not be the same as everyone else’s. As I search the Scriptures and observe the lives around me, I see that it is impossible to describe the normative Christian life in concrete terms. The actual shape of an individual Christian’s life is not prescribed in Scripture, but is left to the unique inner re-shaping of that person by God as we each become "his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:10). However, the focused purpose of the Christian life during this age is universal for all followers of Jesus: "to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10) – to continue Jesus’ mission, with each individual expressing this mission in a unique way.

Because of my background in high-technology work, I decided to look more closely at what it means to be a Christian and a high-technology worker (e.g. computer programmer, research scientist, electronics designer). How does this societal role fit in with God’s view of the Christian life and work? I have struggled with my high-tech job since I began eight years ago. It has also been a frequent topic of discussion with both Christian and non-Christian friends. To further expand my horizons, I sent a questionnaire to 51 of my friends and colleagues in high-technology employment, asking them to relate their worldview/religion to their high-tech work. I received 20 responses from equal numbers of Christians and non-Christians. A copy of the questionnaire is included in the appendix.

My personal struggle has centred on the question of the value of my work. Though I enjoy my work and am good at it, I do not have a conviction that the important needs of the world will be met by better internet software. I can convince myself that my work contributes somewhat positively to society. However, in the end I am often discouraged with the apparent purposelessness of my labour. I have lived with that tension, contributed to charities with my excess income, spent my free time pursuing activities that are more meaningful to me, and sought to be a man of integrity at work. My year at Regent, and this paper in particular, are part of my process for determining what I want to do next.

A number of my high-tech Christian friends also have trouble reconciling their work with their beliefs. The overwhelming majority of the Christians responding to my questionnaire said that they would leave their current line of work if they were free of financial burdens, with most going into more directly people-oriented jobs (such as Christian service, teaching, or counselling). Interestingly, only about half of the non-Christians would leave their jobs. This strong tendency toward working for money rather than for belief in the results of their labour is discouraging in light of God’s promise of security and Jesus’ warnings concerning money. I suspect that the issue is not so much the need for money as a fear of the unknown and a lack of a different vision for life apart from the current job.

It is also clear that many agree with Luther’s beliefs about work: "all forms of work [are] of equal value and [are] equally pleasing to God." Although many of the respondents are working toward specific product and business goals that they do not necessarily believe in, they believe that working productively and honestly is valuable in its own right. The implicit corollary is that one need not look for a job that both has intrinsic merit in what it produces and can be done productively and honestly. I agree with Marshall’s point that this approach to work has led many Christians to a "quiescence and passivity before the social order." Karl Barth goes further, saying that by focusing on doing our jobs with the right attitude, rather than thinking about the jobs themselves, has led Christians to being bound by the "law of the world and its historical and transitory order." The results of my questionnaire seemed to agree that Christians are doing pretty much the same work and for the same reasons as their non-Christian peers, though the Christians more closely linked their beliefs with the way they do their jobs.

One other result of my questionnaire deserves mention. I was deeply moved by the strong sense of human care in the non-Christian responses. The way they described the positive value of technology, the jobs they admire the most, and their worldviews were wonderfully supportive of doing good for people. Christians often focus on loving people and acting out that love. It is important for us to remember that people with other beliefs also deeply love people and act that out. Christians often justify their working in ‘secular’ jobs by pointing out how they are able to bring God’s love to the workplace. This may very well be true, because Christian love at its best is more than any human love. However, if we see ourselves as being on a mission based on love, we must remember that others see themselves that way, too, and we should critically examine ourselves for the unique love that comes from Jesus.

In summary, many Christian high-technology workers feel significant levels of tension between their beliefs and their work. This is not so much a result of their work being contrary to their beliefs as it is that there is no strong correspondence between their beliefs and their work. Also, Christians and non-Christians have very similar attitudes toward why they do high-technology work (though it should be pointed out that Christians largely believe that influencing others’ beliefs is an important aspect of their work, unlike non-Christians).

Many of the problems that high-tech workers face are the same as any other worker, yet some are more pointed. One problem is evaluating the consequences of our work. As Hal Miller puts it, "High-technology work tends to create innovative things. As a result, we’re unsure what uses are good and what are bad. By contrast, we have generations, sometimes centuries, of experience dealing with the problems of traditional work." Technologists build ever more powerful tools but have difficulty evaluating the effects of people using those tools. Even an ‘old’ technology like television is a mixed-bag of blessings and curses. In my personal reflection, I struggle with contributing to such ethically ambiguous goals.

Ethical thinking about technology is also impeded by a common belief (confirmed by many of my questionnaire respondents) that technology is value-neutral and therefore exempt from ethical consideration. However, "philosophers of technology are one in declaring that all technology is ‘value-laden’ and not ‘value-free’…. Technology is not neutral, but expresses human values." Monsma agrees: "It is simply a fact that technology has carried and will continue to carry, with it and within it, the valuing decisions that people have inevitably—even if unconsciously—made in doing technology. Obscuring this fact with the approach of declared neutrality has been very costly." Technology is value-laden. For example, many technologies are designed to increase efficiency, expressing a value for efficiency through structure, and devaluing anything that does not fit that structure. Those who have struggled with phone-menus that do not describe their need as an ‘option’ knows this problem. I suspect that if people understood the level of commitment to pure economic efficiency that our current technological boom is expressing, they would question this direction.

Another feature of high-technology work is that it makes use of a highly-developed division of labour and enables further division in other industries. Though not bad of itself, such high division leads to ‘alienation’ (to use Marx’s term), the separation of the worker from having an interest in the motivation for doing the work and the ultimate use of the product. I agree that this is a dehumanising force that leads to workers simply selling their time and talent to the employer for a salary. Many respondents to my questionnaire referred in some way to being mercenaries for The Company rather than partners in the work.

Finally, our society strongly values high-tech work, making ethical evaluation of the work seem less necessary. My talents for science and math led naturally to my high-tech job without me ever asking "Why?" until I had finished graduate school. In exchange for following this course, society offers prestige, admiration, high salaries, and considerable freedom and room for creativity. Many of us in high-tech have never asked the question of who we are, and how we want to make a difference in this world.

So what should we Christian high-technology workers do? Should we become ethicists, missionaries and anti-capitalist demonstrators? Or should we use our talents like everyone else and become internet millionaires while loving the people we work with? How do we practically embody redemptive incarnation as people with skills and employment in high-technology?

For many high-tech workers, the answer will be that of William Diehl, who chose to direct his efforts to the management of a steel corporation, living modestly yet not radically diverging in action from his non-Christian peers. Some would charge him with succumbing to the world. However, his approach is deeply incarnational. He sees the necessity of Jesus being present among the world’s people; he is unafraid of being tainted by them and confident of imparting holiness where he walks. It is a very difficult route, being "constantly barraged with a worldly theology that equates our worth with our works, and so we are never at peace with ourselves. We feel we are the victims of systems and organizations over which we have no control." If we believe in incarnation, we need to struggle with both abstract purpose and the concrete feeding of our families. But we will do so differently, because our home and security lie somewhere else. The world needs to see us struggle through these same problems that they have. The world needs to see us fall, too, and to see what happens after we fall. Yes, it is a good thing for Christians to live within the world’s system.

But some Christians in high-tech need to follow a different course. They look at the seemingly useless products they are helping to design, build and sell, and they find themselves unable to hold their beliefs and their job responsibilities at the same time. They discover that they are just following the path of least resistance and that this is not the service for which God is shaping them. As incarnations of God, some of these may need to find new roles. This may result in incredulous co-workers, lower pay, lower prestige, and may appear to be the throwing away of a successful career. Their Christian friends may say that they are neglecting an opportunity for Christian witness at their workplace. But some will need to follow this path in order to live their lives faithfully. This new role could be more focused on human service, overtly Christian service, artistry, political activity, or anything else. The important thing is that each follows the will that God is shaping in them.

There are obviously dangers for each of the paths described above. It is easy to stay in the current job, justify it with incarnational language, yet live no differently than the world—to forget our purpose of continuing Jesus’ work in the world. It is easy to make a radical change in our lives out of frustration with our current situation, falsely believing that becoming a pastor or a missionary will make everything better. As much as we want one, there is no universal pattern for following Jesus.

To conclude this paper, I have three concrete suggestions for how to proceed. First, our theologians and pastors need to teach us anew about our purpose in living. So many Christians falsely believe that we are here to get ourselves ready for heaven, or to triumph over life’s troubles, or to pretend that we are working but really to evangelise everyone. There is a great need for the body of Christ to understand our role as priests of God’s creation. Pastors also need to apprehend their job of "equipping…the saints for the work of service" (Eph 4:12), which requires an understanding of what it means to serve God in daily life. Serving God in daily life must be full of hope and free of the common despair that results from thinking that it is impossible to live fully "Christianly" in such a broken world. If it is impossible to be like Jesus in a broken world, then we do not know Jesus at all.

Second, we need to recover Christian community in our local churches. We need a safe place to be among our own on the seventh day after taking on the difficult task of serving Jesus in the world during the other six. We need a place to be re-taught who we are and what we are about. We need a place to share our discoveries and successes, to find compassion in our hurts and failures, and a place of forgiveness and re-launching after mistakes. Where else than in Christian community will the one seeking to be different in a secular job discover that he has become complacent? Where else than in the Christian community can someone take a risk and quit her high-paying high-tech job to become an elementary school teacher? There is a reasonable chance that she will fail at this new job. Will there be a community to support her materially, emotionally and spiritually while she decides on her next move?

My third suggestion is that we seek to increase the freedom we give one another to follow God’s personal work in our hearts. If we follow the tradition of contributing a tenth of our income to support our Christian community, that means that one family in ten can devote themselves to work that has no financial support from the world. Pastoral work may be part of this, but it can also include those who have a vision for work that is not remunerated by the narrow ideals of our capitalist economy. Yes, this requires discernment and maturity. But more than that, it requires trust within our community that we are not taking advantage of one another. Trust and freedom implies not having a single view of what a Christian life should look like, but, following the biblical pattern, embracing fundamental values with manifold outward appearances.

In this paper, I have endeavoured to show that the purpose of the Christian life is based on the principle of redemptive incarnation, of being sent by Jesus as he was sent by his Father, of remaining in frail human form while embodying the Spirit of God and embracing the world he loves. This beautiful image becomes complex, ambiguous and confounding when it meets the real world. High-technology workers, in particular, face tremendous struggles in what it means to live out this life. This is as God intended: we are not exempt from the difficulties of life in this fallen place, even though we are exempt from its values. We are present in the world in order to reveal the one true God, and we do this best by being both very much like the world and yet very different. God has left the details of living this incarnational life up to each individual Christian, with the promise that he will shape us and guide us individually (even if it often feels that we are without such guidance). He assures us that the result will be mysteriously redemptive. We can help one another along this difficult way by rediscovering the basic principles of Christian living, by living in vital community together, and by offering each other freedom to live out our personal responses to God’s work in our lives.