What Makes a Job Sacred?

I was sched­uled to speak in a prairie town at a Chris­t­ian con­fer­ence. One of my dear­est friends from uni­ver­si­ty teach­es col­lege in the area. We’d lost con­tact, so I googled her. I dis­cov­ered her pro­file on ​“RateY​our​Pro​fes​sors​.com.”

I hes­i­tat­ed to look at my friend’s scores. I knew dis­grun­tled stu­dents are typ­i­cal­ly more moti­vat­ed than hap­py ones to ​“rate” their pro­fes­sors. Still, I clicked on Sally’s name.

I read the post­ed com­ments through tears of pride. ​“She makes learn­ing fun,” wrote one stu­dent. ​“Eng­lish was my most hat­ed sub­ject. After hav­ing Sal­ly, it’s one of my favorites,” pro­fessed anoth­er. ​“Best teacher I ever had!” exclaimed a third, sum­ming up the appar­ent sen­ti­ments of count­less oth­ers. It was thrilling to get a bird’s eye view of a friend mak­ing a difference.

I even­tu­al­ly tracked Sal­ly down. We con­nect­ed over piz­za. After a while, she sighed.

“I read your con­fer­ence bio online,” she said. ​“I’m so proud of you. But I won­der about my life. You’re out there doing things for God, and I’m just here teach­ing English.”

I was shocked. How could my friend be teach­ing col­lege kids to love lan­guage, ideas, and them­selves, and not think she was doing things for God?

I assured Sal­ly that God was obvi­ous­ly doing things through her. We found our­selves unpack­ing how we’d been raised to think about vocation. 

As kids, Sal and I learned that the point of life is to tell peo­ple about Jesus. When we con­tem­plat­ed our future voca­tions, there were three faith­ful options: home­mak­ing, jobs that allowed us to explic­it­ly share the Gospel, or employ­ment that earned mon­ey to sup­port min­istries. We had been taught to pri­or­i­tize the sal­va­tion of indi­vid­ual souls. But I don’t recall hear­ing much about par­tic­i­pat­ing in the redemp­tion of culture.

We had what author and speak­er Gabe Lyons calls a ​“half-sto­ry” gospel. Lyons and oth­ers argue the Bible reveals a sweep­ing dra­ma unfold­ing in four acts — cre­ation, fall, redemp­tion, and restora­tion. Our child­hood church­es had zeroed in on Acts 2 and 3 — the prob­lem of sin and the solu­tion of the cross. The fer­vor for those mid­dle acts was good. But our under­stand­ing of Acts 1 and 4 was impoverished.

It’s in Act 1 that God cre­ates a world teem­ing with pos­si­bil­i­ty. When he asks Adam to name the ani­mals, the Cre­ator is invit­ing human beings to join him in gov­ern­ing cre­ation. If we take Act 1 seri­ous­ly, we begin to see that every time we par­tic­i­pate in good gov­er­nance, cre­ative endeav­or, the cul­ti­va­tion of beau­ty, or the nur­ture and pro­tec­tion of cre­at­ed things, we par­tic­i­pate in the gospel — in the sto­ry of God’s good plans for all He’s made.

Bet­ter yet, we see in Act 4 that God intends not to anni­hi­late his cre­ation but to restore it — to make ​“every­thing new” (Rev­e­la­tion 21:5).

If we won­der what a restored cre­ation might be like, the prophets reveal that what God has planned is shalom—a peace that Andy Crouch calls, ​“the com­pre­hen­sive flour­ish­ing of all things.” Isaiah’s vision of shalom includes the turn­ing of swords into ploughshares (Isa­iah 2:4), and wolves liv­ing peace­ful­ly with lambs (Isa­iah 11:6). Jesus promis­es it involves free­dom for pris­on­ers, recov­ery of sight for the blind, and release for the oppressed (Luke 4:18 – 19). Paul envi­sions a real­i­ty that oblit­er­ates racial, socio-eco­nom­ic or gen­der hier­ar­chy (Gala­tians 3:28).

If Acts 2 and 3 show us it’s impor­tant to tell peo­ple about Jesus, Acts 1 and 4 tell us it’s impor­tant to coop­er­ate with Him in His plans for the world. We are to be what pas­tor and author Jonathan Mar­tin calls ​“peo­ple from the future” — peo­ple who, because Christ lives with­in us, car­ry His com­ing shalom into our cur­rent contexts. 

There’s no job in which we are not called to be a sign of the good­ness God intends for his creation.

Author Kai Nilsen asks what would hap­pen if our church­es had com­mis­sion­ing ser­vices for accoun­tants every April. If Sally’s church com­mis­sioned teach­ers each fall, would she see her offer­ings of syn­tax and sto­ry as in-break­ing shalom? What if we com­mis­sioned our jan­i­tors, CEOs, and new moth­ers? Would we start to see that God’s inter­ests and plot twists are more var­ied than we can imagine?

Ever since our piz­za night, Sal­ly and I have begun to envi­sion a less-abridged ver­sion of God’s sto­ry. We wor­ry less about ​“doing things for God.” We’re far too busy delight­ing in the things that God is doing for His cre­ation … even through us.