The Purpose of Work

by Gene Edward Veith

"We work to have leisure, on which happiness depends." So said Aristotle, quoted by Notre Dame philosopher Gary Gutting to explain "What Work Is For" in a recent article for The New York Times. Luther countered this medieval view of work---which is coming back into style in our consumerist culture---with his doctrine of vocation.

To be sure, as Gutting says, we celebrate Labor Day by not working. We work so that we can save up money to take a vacation. We spend most our lives in the work force so that we can retire. Or as the British rock group Hard-Fi says, we are "Living for the Weekend." We work in order to not work.

For Aristotle, contemplation is the activity in which human beings reach their highest fulfillment. For that, we need leisure. In our culture today, though, most people probably do not use their leisure to contemplate the good, the true, and the beautiful. Our leisure is filled more with entertainment than contemplation.

Gutting recognizes that leisure can degenerate into idleness and boredom. We should use our leisure, he says, for "productive activity enjoyed for its own sake." Some things are good in themselves, Aristotle says. Other things are good because they lead to things that are good in themselves. For example, money has no intrinsic value---it is just dirty paper---but it is an "instrumental good" because it allows us to buy food so that we can stay alive, provide for our family, help others, and other human purposes, all of which are valuable in themselves. In Book 7 of the Politics, Aristotle argues that work is such an instrumental good.

If the "productive activity" enjoyed in leisure can be good in itself---say, writing poetry or building a birdhouse or reading a book---it would seem that similar exercises of human creativity and rationality occur in the workplace. But the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental goods is useful. What is missing, though, from Aristotle is other people.

Love and Serve

According to Luther, the purpose of every vocation is to love and serve one's neighbor. The farmer tills the ground to provide food to sustain his neighbor's life. The craftsman, the teacher, the lawyer---indeed, everyone who occupies a place in the division of labor---is providing goods and services that neighbors need. This is God's providential ordering of society. But for a Christian, the service rendered can become animated with love.

For Luther, vocation was far more than economic activity, including also our callings in our families, the church, and the culture as a whole. Each of these vocations calls us to particular neighbors whom we are to love and serve. Husbands are called to love and serve their wives, and wives are called to love and serve their neighbors. Pastors love and serve their parishioners, who love and serve each other. Rulers are to love and serve their subjects, and citizens love and serve each other for the common good.

Notice, vocation is not primarily about "serving God" for Luther. He was battling the high view of "contemplation" found in monasticism, which required the rejection of the vocations of marriage and parenthood (the vow of celibacy), the vocations of economic activity (the vow of poverty), and the vocations of citizenship (the vow of obedience, which replaced the authority of secular law with that of the church). Luther denied that "the contemplative life" of monasticism was more spiritual than "the active life" of ordinary Christians living in the world.  The problem with the former was that it tended to isolate Christians from their neighbors, at worse becoming a retreat into oneself. The monasteries claimed to serve God---indeed, to allow for salvation by works---but God in Scripture commands that we love and serve him by loving and serving our neighbors.

"God does not need our good works," Luther taught. "But our neighbor does." Our relationship with God is established solely by his grace in the atoning work of Jesus Christ. But then he sends us out into the world to live out our Christian faith in love and service to our neighbors.

Furthermore, God himself, in his providential care for his whole creation, is working through our human vocations. God gives us our daily bread by means of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. He protects us by means of lawful magistrates. He creates and cares for new human beings by means of fathers and mothers. He proclaims his Word and administers his sacraments by means of pastors. He creates beauty by means of artists and musicians.

To use Aristotelian terms, loving one's neighbor means to treat other human beings, particularly those we meet in our vocations, as intrinsic, not instrumental goods; that is, we see them as being valuable in themselves, and not just for how we can use them. This holds true for the way husbands and wives need to treat each other, and for the way a Christian business owner treats customers. Luther's neighbor-centered ethic requires self-denial---bearing the Cross, which is not just suffering but sacrificing oneself for others. Thus, wives submit (an act of self-denial) to their husbands, who "give up themselves" (an act of self-denial) for their wives---thus, in their callings embodying the relationship between Christ and the church (Ephesians 5).

What Transforms Our Work?

Gutting goes on in his essay to criticize capitalism for its view of work. Though Luther's doctrine of vocation played a major role in the rise of free market capitalism, as many scholars have shown, his focus on self-denial and service to the neighbor give it a different ethical dimension. The free market, according to the Enlightenment, is governed by individuals all pursuing their rational self-interest. Luther would no doubt recognize economic laws as part of God's ordering of creation. He would acknowledge that fallen human beings do not usually act in selfless love and service to others, but are instead motivated by selfishness and the desire to be served rather than to serve.

Nevertheless, God providentially works through vocation so as to bless others despite the sinner's evil motives. (A business owner may have selfish motivations, but unless the business meets people's needs, it will not be successful.) For the Christian, on the other hand, ordinary labor and ordinary relationships can be transfigured, as faith discerns the presence of God, who is active in the humblest of callings. Our vocations become the arena for the Christian life, where sanctification happens, the site of "faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6).

The economy can indeed be a dog-eat-dog, Darwinistic, self-obsessed struggle, which we yearn to escape---whether on a weekend, a vacation, or retirement. But even the leisure, bought at such a cost, may still keep us trapped within ourselves. The doctrine of vocation, properly understood, frees us from our sinful selves through the gospel as our love for God overflows into love for our neighbors.  Our very work becomes transformed not in its substance---Christian workers mostly perform the same tasks as non-Christian workers---but in its meaning and in its value.

Gene Edward Veith is provost and professor of literature at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia.

The Gospel and the Gender Wars

by Russell Moore (from Table Talk Magazine, October 2012)

Lewis Grizzard, the famous Atlanta newspaper columnist, wrote frequently of his ill-fated marriages, divorces, and remarriages. Eventually, he said he was going to give up on marriage altogether, that there wouldn’t be another Mrs. Grizzard. “I’m just going to find a woman who hates me and buy her a house,” he quipped. Grizzard’s lament elicited laughter, despite the obvious tragedy of his relational life, because it rang true to an American culture increasingly rife with gender wars. The universal tensions between men and women sometimes show up in their most innocuous form in jokes from women about men who fail to clean up after themselves around the house, or f rom men about women who can’t remember to keep their cell phones turned on. But the gender tensions run into much darker territory.

The divorce culture around us is the most obvious sign of men and women in conflict with one another, as marriages are ripped asunder and the custody of children fought over in law courts in virtually every major city on the planet. Even beyond that, many reverberations of the sexual revolution are built on self-protecting mechanisms for men and women who, at best, don’t trust one another and, at worst, want to exploit one another. Divorce courts and abortion clinics, porn sites and chick flicks— these all reveal men and women who, far from merging into some sort of unisex utopia, find it impossible to give themselves fully to the other.

That’s what the biblical concept of manhood and womanhood is about. The biblical notion of certain creational distinctives of what it means to be a man or a woman isn’t really about “who’s in charge,” and it certainly isn’t about “who’s the best.” King Jesus dismisses such categories— though common in our commercial, corporate, and athletic spheres—in favor of a newer sense of servantdominion in His kingdom.

The chief analogy used for the male/ female relationship—specifically in terms of the marital one-flesh union—is that of head and body. This is because, the Bible maintains, we are not genderless persons who happen to have been placed in arbitrary male and female bodies. Sexual differentiation isn’t simply a matter of genital architecture. From the very beginning, Scripture teaches, humanity is created “male and female” (Gen. 1:27; Mark 10:6).

Sometimes Christians will argue that male/female distinctions are obliterated by the new covenant. Doesn’t the Apostle Paul tell us that there is neither “male nor female” in Christ (Gal. 3:28)? Certainly, in terms of inheritance, there is no distinction. Men and women alike— not just firstborn sons—share in Jesus’ identity and, thus, in His inheritance of the universe. But Scripture doesn’t teach that this differentiation is in every way gone—in fact, the Bible directly applies some aspects of God’s commands to men and some to women. Masculinity and femininity are not aspects of the fallen order to be overcome; they are instead part of what God declared from the beginning to be “very good” (Gen. 1:31).

In fact, the mystery of the gospel explains to us why it is that Adam wasn’t designed to subdivide like an amoeba, why he needed someone like him and yet different from him, why he was to join himself to her in an organic union. It’s because the head/body union of a man and a woman is itself an illustration— one that points to something older and more beautiful: the union of Christ and His church in the gospel.

A man, then, is to lead his family. But this is not some sort of tyranny. A man’s leadership is modeled after Christ’s leadership of His church. He leads by discerning the best interests of his family and pouring himself out for them. This headship is self-sacrificial. A wife submits to her husband’s leadership not as a cowering supplicant but in the way the church submits to Christ. Jesus says of His church, in its original twelve foundation stones, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).

When we call husbands to lead their families, and when we call wives to respect such leadership (which, like every form of leadership, has biblical limits), we are not speaking of a business model or a corporate flow chart. We’re speaking instead of an organic unity. The more a husband and wife are sanctified together in the Word, the more they—like your nervous system and body—move and operate smoothly, effortlessly, holistically. They are oneflesh. It’s about cooperation through complementarity.

When Jesus carried out His gospel mission, the satanic powers sought to tempt the church to carry out the mission given to Christ (Matt. 16:22–23; 26:51–52), and sought to tempt Christ to seek His own provision rather than that for His bride (4:2–4). Jesus, though, set His face like flint toward the Place of the Skull, and the church eventually, by God’s grace, yielded to being served by the washing of water (Eph. 5:26).

The church continually works to reclaim a biblical concept of the family. We call men to prepare themselves to be other-directed husbands. We call on women to find their beauty not in cultural stereotypes of a woman’s value but in God’s delight (1 Peter 3:1–6). Such will look increasingly and, oddly, peaceful to a culture conditioned to gender wars. But in the end, it’s not about being better men and women. It’s about a clear proclamation of the mystery of Christ and His church. They’re not in tension with one another, in competition with one another, mistrusting one another. They’re head and body—one flesh.

Russell D. Moore serves as Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including Tempted and Tried. 

The Man at the Bottom

Contrary to popular belief, Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is about bad people coping with their failure to be good. That is to say, Christianity concerns the gospel, which is nothing more or less than the good news that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). “[Christ] was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). The gospel is a proclamation that always addresses sinners and sufferers directly (i.e., you and me).

The prevailing view in much of contemporary Christianity is more subjective. It tends to be far more focused on the happiness and moral performance of the Christian than the object of faith, Christ Himself.

Think about it: How often have you heard the gospel equated with a positive change in a believer’s life? “I used to __________, but then I met Jesus and now I’m ___________.” It may be unintentional, but we make a serious mistake when we reduce the good news to its results, such as patience, sobriety, and compassion, in the lives of those who have heard it. These are beautiful developments, and they should be celebrated. But they should not be confused with the gospel itself. The gospel is not a means to an end, it is an end in itself.

What happens in this scheme is the following: well-meaning Christians adopt a narrative of improvement that becomes a law (or an identity, which is often the same thing) through which we filter our experiences. The narrative can be as simple as “I was worse, but now I am better,” or as arbitrary as “I used to have a difficult relationship with my mother, but now it’s much easier.” Soon we wed our faith to these narratives, and when an experience or feeling doesn’t fit—for example, when we have a sudden outburst of anger at someone we thought we had forgiven—we deny or rationalize the behavior.

If the narrative we’ve adopted says that in order for our relationship with God to be legitimate, our life has to get better, we set up an inescapable conflict, or what social scientists call “cognitive dissonance.” When our view of ourselves is at risk, honesty is always the first casualty. That is, when the gospel is twisted into a moral improvement scheme, (self-)deception is the foregone conclusion.

There’s a classic New Yorker cartoon of a man sitting down with a woman, having dinner, saying to her, “Look, I can’t promise I’ll change, but I can promise I’ll pretend to change.” I hope that line doesn’t characterize your church, but it does characterize more churches than you think. Instead of a hospital for sufferers, church becomes a glorified costume party, where lonely men and women tirelessly police each other’s facade of holiness. The higher up in the pecking order, the less room for weakness. Perhaps it should come as no surprise when we read headlines of pastors of legalistic churches acting out in self-destructive ways (Rom. 5:20).

God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you construct for yourself, or that others construct for you. He may even use suffering to deconstruct that narrative. Rather, He is interested in you, the you who suffers, the you who inflicts suffering on others, the you who hides, the you who has bad days (and good ones). And He meets you where you are. Jesus is not the man at the top of the stairs; He is the man at the bottom, the friend of sinners, the savior of those in need of one. Which is all of us, all of the time.

By Tullian Tchividjian
(Excerpted from Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free, pg. 78-80)

Basic Thoughts on Manhood: Confidence & Fear

I hadn’t originally planned to do a post on manhood and confidence/fear, but my wife sent me something I can’t pass up.  I can’t pass it up because, honestly, I think it captures what a lot of men feel.  It’s a quote from Dr. Juli Slattery on Revive Our Hearts:

A man told me, “Every day, I feel like I’m one decision away from failing.” I think he verbalized what most men feel, but don’t know how to articulate.

What do you think about that, brothers?  Ladies, what would your husband say to this?

Men and Women Are Different

I think this man’s comment is spot on for a lot of men.  I know I feel this way sometimes.  And I think it might be one of the ways men and women experience pressure differently.  As I counsel and fellowship with sisters, it seems to me that most women feel like “I gotta get everything done.”  It seems most men feel like “I gotta get everything right.”  So women throw themselves into every task that’s necessary–gotta get up and cook breakfast, prepare the kids for school, get to work on time (did I turn off the stove), work on this report, pick the kids up from school, get them to after-school activity (what am I gonna cook for dinner?), stop by the grocer on the way home, cook dinner, help with homework, oh yeah, spend some time with my husband.  What sometimes looks to women like a lack of leadership or neglecting getting things done is sometimes a man’s fear of getting it wrong.  He thinks, What if I mess this up?  How will this hurt the family, disappoint my wife, once again neglect the kids?  Will I get fired from work if I mess this up or miss a promotion?  Is family worship working?  Does it matter in the scheme of things?

She’s worried about getting it done; he’s worried about getting it right.  For women there’s a certain “too-muchness.”  For men there a “too-risky-ness.”  Now, here’s the potential pitfall.  When she’s busy “just getting things done” and he’s worrying about “not messing up,” she sometimes begins insisting on help and his making a decision or taking an action.  That request isn’t sinful.  But when women are consumed with getting things done and don’t know what might be happening in his mind–the fear of failure and lack of confidence–their simple request, often repeated a number of times, compounds his fear and can paralyze him further.  For him, the stakes feel higher with each insistent reminder or request.  And if the woman’s “ask” comes with a frustrated tone or anger, he not only feels like he’s about to “blow it” but also quietly feels disrespected by his wife.

Then you’re into what Emerson Eggerichs in Love and Respect calls “the crazy cycle.”  He doesn’t feel respected so he withholds love.  She doesn’t feel loved so she withholds respect.  And round and round it goes.  Both the husband and wife feel deprived of a fundamental, God-given need they both have: she to feel loved and he to feel respected (Eph. 5:33).Ladies, there’s more.  Brothers, correct me where I’m wrong.

Decision Making As an Example

Ladies, when your husband has a decision to make, you guys have discussed it, and he seems to be delaying: Don’t keep talking about it.  Here’s why.  Your husband may not be a good decision maker; I don’t know him.  But this I feel somewhat confident about: many women make their decisions by talking through them; many men make their decisions by brooding over them.  Many men need to turn the thing over in their heads several times, consider different angles, and settle in their own souls that they’re doing the right thing and avoiding failure.  Remember: sometimes we feel like we’re one decision away from blowing the whole thing up.  We need the time.  It’s not that we haven’t heard you.  We have; oh, trust me, we have!  We just need the time to know our own minds and own the decision.

Now, I can understand why the woman feels as if her husband went into some dark mental cave and she’s standing outside waiting for him to come out.  She’s wondering, What’s he doing in there?  Why won’t he talk?  We need to make a decision and get this thing done!  And, as she feels that way, she feels neglected and unloved sometimes.  The way she expresses that ranges from saying, “Honey, can we talk” to accusations “You don’t care!” or even a rebellious “I’ll do it myself!”  Here’s what you have to remember: He does care–perhaps too much.  The average husband doesn’t want to harm the family in any way.  He wants to get it right.  And when the wife keeps asking, “When are you going to decide?” it’s like she’s throwing rocks at him down in that dark cave and yelling, “Come out here right now!”  Or, to mix metaphors, it’s like standing over his shoulder and yelling “Not that wire!” while he tries to disarm a bomb in the dark!

That pressure has two consequences.  First, he can’t own the decision and serve the family with confidence because of the constant interruptions.  Second, he abdicates.  He emerges from the cave and says something like, “Well, let’s just do it your way.”  And he thinks or hopes he’s pleasing you.

But, boy, why did he say that!  That’s not what the wife wanted to hear.  She wanted leadership, not what she interprets as another passive “you do it” response!  Cue the crazy cycle.  She doesn’t feel loved so she doesn’t extend respect.  He doesn’t feel respected so he withdraws love.  Round and round again.  The relationship grows colder.  Neither person feels “heard” or understood.

Wives, please recognize this: In a world where your husband might feel like he’s always earning respect, defending himself and his family, and worried about messing everything up, the last place he wants to have a fight about respect is in his home with his wife.  If he comes home and doesn’t feel respected by his wife and children, it’s the worst possible situation to him.  He can’t win.  He only has three options.  One: He can fight you back, in which case he feels all the more a failure and doesn’t even respect himself.  Two: He can mentally check out while at home (play video games, watch ESPN all the time, check out of family activities).  Three: He can physically avoid the home (work longer hours, drive home slowly, go out with the boys).  The worst thing a wife can do to her husband is make him feel disrespected and dishonored in his relationship with her and in his home.  There are many ways to do that; the most common is with the tongue and tone.

A Basic Way Forward

So, what to do?  Ladies, respect your husbands.  Make your main ministry to him a ministry of affirmation and encouragement.  I don’t mean flattery.  And I don’t mean never share honest feelings and concerns.  But never share those things in a way that attacks his sense of confidence and self as a man.  If you don’t know what that looks like, ask him–after a period of communicating to him the simple message, “I respect you.”  You’ll be surprised at the amazing changes that happen in your man’s life when he hears you say in various ways without flattery, “I respect you.”  You’ll be surprised at how eager he’ll be to love you as Christ loves the church.

Brothers, let us love our wives.  Let us set aside the fear of failure and give ourselves.  Nothing I’m writing here is meant as an apology for laziness and neglect.  There is the guy who just isn’t trying, never has, and has decided that not trying is safer to his ego than failing.  If that’s you, you need a swift kick in the pants and to man up.  But most of us should realize (a) the world isn’t going to fall apart if we make a mistake in leading and loving our wives and families (there’s no test or pop quiz or ‘sudden death’ period), and (b) our sovereign God reigns over our mistakes and failures and purposes to turn them into our advantage and glory (Rom. 8:28; 2 Cor. 4:17).  If you need time to think and make a decision, tell her so and tell her when you’ll decide.  If you need her to stop talking to you and start talking to God while you think, lead by telling her and praying with her.  If you need help in any area of leading and life, humble yourself and ask for it.  The Lord’s grace abounds in the brothers around you, and He does not withhold wisdom from those who ask.

Thabiti Anyabwile is Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman in the Grand Cayman Islands and a Council member with The Gospel Coalition.

When Godly Men Are Weak, They're Strong

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  2 Corinthians 12:9

“Christ says to those who seek deliverance from pain and sorrow, ‘It is enough that I love you.’ . . . Most Christians are satisfied in trying to be resigned under suffering.  They think it is a great thing if they can bring themselves to submit to be the dwelling-place of Christ’s power.  To rejoice in their afflictions because thereby Christ is glorified is more than they aspire to.  Paul’s experience was far above that standard. . . .

When really weak in ourselves, and conscious of that weakness, we are in the state suited to the manifestation of the power of God.  When emptied of ourselves, we are filled with God.  Those who think they can change their own hearts, atone for their own sins, subdue the power of evil in their own souls or in the souls of others, who feel able to sustain themselves under affliction, God leaves to their own resources.  But when they feel and acknowledge their weakness, he communicates to them divine strength.”

Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, 1973 reprint), pages 287-289.

posted by Ray Ortland