On the popular Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe, the star and narrator, travels to serve in some of the most back-breaking, grungy jobs one could imagine—jobs few of us would ever consider taking, even for one week. Some of his assignments have included road kill cleaner, mosquito control operator, turkey inseminator and sewer inspector.
Mike reminds us that our jobs can tire us, frustrate us and even slime us. Yet, our work can also make us feel most alive: being creative, building and serving. Some of my most gratifying life moments come through hard, focused work—like mowing my grass, then admiring the straight lines; clearing out my email inbox after hours of dedicated, thoughtful responses; or finishing a writing project that has required careful research and sustained attention.
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All of us experience the ups and downs of our daily work. Genesis 1:28 records God’s blessing of work and his first command to Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it …” But, as we know, this Edenic state didn’t last long. In response to Adam and Eve’s disobedience, God altered the way we experience work. Still a good and vital part of God’s creation, work now carries with it elements of pain, toil, “thorns and thistles” and sweat. We experience frustration, conflict, achy muscles and a slew of other obstacles alongside the satisfaction and joy of our daily labour. We both delight in our tasks and responsibilities, and, as the apostle Paul reminds us, “we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling.”
Despite this reality, we have reasons for unshakable hope. God promises to make all things new, to usher in a day of permanent justice and well being. As Colossians 1:20 describes, there is nothing in this world that escapes the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, “whether on earth or in heaven.” Christ is reshaping all that has been disfigured by sin. The grungy, hard and painful places of work and life are being restored.
But to flourish today, as workers created in the image of God, we, too, must incarnate God’s commitment to both creational and renewal work. The Bible tells us that when we are serving a world that longs for re-creation, Christ grants us the ministry of reconciliation. As Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice remind us in Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing (InterVarsity Press, 2008), God appoints us as ambassadors of healing, justice and shalom—to bear Christ’s image and represent his mission as special envoys in a hurting world. Our ambassadorship not only includes the work of evangelism, but also sharing and exercising the Good News of Jesus through the meeting of physical and emotional needs. When we incorporate this sense of mission into our daily vocations, everyday moments are enlivened with possibility and hope.
Understanding our jobs as mission critical is necessary if we’re to flourish in daily work, yet there’s another crucial dimension that has often been missing in the life of the church and the “faith at work” movement. If we’re to fully grasp and harness the gift of work, we must envision its eternal impact. Don Flow, a highly-respected owner of award-winning car dealerships across North Carolina and Virginia, captures this idea well in something he said at the “Bridging Sunday and Monday” conference at Seattle Pacific University in October 2007: “How we understand the future of the world, the final destiny of Christian life, and how such a future impacts our life now, has profound implications for how we invest our time in the world.”
Our capacity to be “salt and light” to a hurting world is enlivened when we allow the grandeur of God’s future to shape our understanding and actions in the present. And one of the surprising realities of the future is that our work not only makes a difference in the “here and now,” but for all eternity. Our work and works in the world are building blocks for heaven, showing up in real, material ways in New Creation.
This may seem like an outrageous claim. When you imagine heaven, you probably don’t envision work, but rather all the things that will be different from the gritty realities of life on earth. No more tears, sorrow, death, mourning, violence and weapons. But the New Creation is depicted as a place both different from and similar to the world we know and experience now. For example, it seems we will keep working in the New Creation. Isaiah 65:21 tells of the redeemed building houses, planting vineyards and enjoying the fruit of their labour. Work is still undertaken, yet experienced as it was intended, a blessing free of toil, sweat and injustice.
Not only does work remain, but some of our works seem to remain. The things we create in this life have the capacity to show up materially in the life to come. Revelation 21-22 and Isaiah 60 are highly instructive on this point. Consider for a moment that the trajectory of God’s plan for the world is a garden city, and cities by all measures are hubs of culture. In the Bible’s heavenly city, we see the riches of the nations, kings and political systems, animals under human stewardship and care, modes of transportation, precious metals and other building materials, as well as commercial enterprise, to name just a few. Isaiah 60:4-9 depicts the “abundance of the sea” being brought to the heavenly city, the great trading Ships of Tarshish sailing in with silver and gold, and herds of camels covering the land.
There are counter-arguments to what I am proposing. For instance, an annihilationist view of the future of the world is often anchored in texts like 2 Peter 3:10: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” A “lifeboat theology” often exists within this framework: since the spiritual, non-tangible aspects of our lives are the only things with eternal value (everything else is destroyed by fire), our primary objective in this life is to rescue souls—to get people into the heaven-bound lifeboat. As a result, a larger view of redemption is often underemphasized.
A transformational view of the future of the world offers a more holistic approach—valuing both people and culture. Rather than all things being destroyed, everything will be tested, judged and purified. As Richard Mouw notes in When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem (Eerdmans, 2002), “It is not the camels or the ships or the gold or the lumber that will be destroyed in the final conflict. Rather, it is the rebellious uses, the idolatrous functions, which seem under present conditions to be inextricably intertwined with these entities.”
This makes sense. If all of creation was going to be destroyed, then why, as Romans 8:19-21 reminds us, would creation wait in eager anticipation for its final liberation? Rather than all things being burned to nothing, in the end, all things will be tested by the refiner’s fire.
This leads me to my final, and possibly, most controversial point. Some of the things we create might not have as high a probability as others of showing up in the New Creation. Their actual identity, either through the process of being created or in their final state, may be so at odds with God’s character that they will have to be transformed into something else for them to make it through the “refining fire.” How we build and what we build matters!
Isaiah 2:4 offers an example (see also Micah 4:3). At the Mountain of the Lord the people of God “will beat their shields into plowshares and swords into pruning hooks.” Weaponry utilized to kill and terrorize is so incongruent with God’s character that it appears to have no tangible place in his restored kingdom. The building materials of the weapons survive, but are transformed from instruments of war into tools of agriculture.
Even if the products and services we create are functionally of the sort that we might expect to see in the New Creation, the spirit in which they were made or offered might soil their eternal utility.
The Tower of Babel serves as an example. Genesis 11 tells how the people of God constructed a tower and city that would both “reach to the heavens” and “create a name for them,” rather than serve and honour their Creator. God was not impressed, and he frustrated their efforts by scattering the people across the earth and confusing their languages. Both city and tower, likely impressive structures with both aesthetic and functional value, were tainted by bad motives. It therefore seems improbable that remnants of the Tower would be taken up by God in the construction of the New Jerusalem.
Personalizing the ministry of reconciliation and embracing the eternal nature of our earthly work should shape our decisions. As we consider work and calling, we need to take continual stock of our motives and carefully assess the industries we join and the kinds of products and services we create. Shoddy products have less temporal and eternal impact, as do products and services that don’t enable people and communities to flourish. But well-designed, high-quality products and services that honour God and serve people offer value here and now, and in the life to come.
Of course, there are many other factors to consider when making vocational choices, like personal interests, spiritual gifts, life experiences and learned skills. But recognition of the inherent goodness of work itself, a conscious awareness of our God-given ministry of reconciliation and the knowledge of the potential for our work and works to blossom in the New Creation, should guide our career decisions—and might just make the gritty, hard and painful places a bit easier to get through as well.
