• education
• vocational counseling
• job training and retraining
• worker wages and satisfaction
• upward mobility opportunities
None of these have kept pace with increases in GDP during the past half-century. The result, according to Oren Cass, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, has been
• worker dissatisfaction,
• disruption of families
• instability in whole communities
• a surge in drug addiction
• lowered life expectancy.
In spite of the immensity of this complex set of challenges facing our divided culture, there is reason for hope. Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, points out that people on all sides of the issue want a better quality of life for all Americans. All that is needed, he adds, is for people of diverse opinions to sit down together and discuss the best ways to accomplish the goal.
Brooks has just released a movie documentary entitled The Pursuit
in which he visits a community in Appalachia and a homeless shelter in New York;
then, interviews people as far away as the streets of Barcelona and Mumbai. His question--“How can we lift up the world,
starting with those at the margins of society?” The film promo adds, “Along the
way, [Brooks] discovers the secrets not only to material progress for the least
fortunate, but also true and lasting happiness for all.”
Work and Workers Misunderstood: When some experts think of “lifting up the world,” they think in terms of better and affordable education as a solution. But Oren Cass disagrees. In his recent book, The Once and Future Worker (Encounter Books, 2018) Cass writes: “Despite the nation doubling per-pupil spending and attempting countless educational reforms, test scores look no better than they did forty years ago. Most Americans still do not achieve even a community college degree.” To add injury to these disappointing statistics, consider that the federal student loan program has driven up the cost of a college education and created a new class of young American debtors. In the words of Mike Rowe, “We are lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist.”
In recent years, a number of scholars and leaders have begun to focus attention
away from “wealth redistribution and welfare” and instead, toward improving the
“welfare of workers” and their “work ethic.” According to Cass, we need to shift our
priority from researching, wooing, and satisfying the consumer to the priority of encouraging the worker. In Cass’s words,
“We got exactly what we thought we wanted: strong overall economic growth and a large GDP (gross domestic product), rising material living standards, a generous safety net, rapid improvements in environmental quality, extraordinary affordable flat-screen televisions and landscaping services. Yet we gave up something we took for granted: a labor market in which the nation’s diverse array of families and communities could support themselves. …What we have been left with is a society teetering atop eroded foundations, lacking structural integrity, and heading toward collapse."
Work and Workers Matter: According to Cass, “work matters” and fulfilling work promotes strong families and communities. In The Once and Future Worker, Cass offers his “Working Hypothesis;” namely, “that a labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of long-term prosperity and should be the central focus of public policy.”
Regarding “strong families,” Cass cites well documented statistics that children
of two-parent families have “better physical and mental health, less substance
abuse, and better educational outcomes.”
Furthermore, he notes that “…family characteristics within a community
also influence each other”—in negative ways as communities deteriorate; but in
positive ways as “dense networks of relationships” are established. “The safety net offered by friends, family,
and church will always be more responsive and tailored than a government bureaucracy—and
is likely to come with some much-needed moral judgment or a swift kick in the
pants.”
Readers who hold to a biblical worldview can detect in Cass’s “Working
Hypothesis” a call to return to a moral and spiritual foundation for family and
community. Marvin Olasky, in a recent WORLD Magazine review
of Cass’s book, points to the Dominion
and Stewardship Mandate revealed by God in Genesis 1 and 2. Olasky writes, “God could have given Adam a
perpetual vacation. Instead, he put him
to physical and intellectual work right away, caring for the garden and naming
animals.” He adds, “… [evidence shows] us
how living without work does not make us happy and does not glorify God. The Sabbath commandment is six-sevenths a work
commandment. This is important to remember
at a time when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one of the world’s richest
persons, is among those calling for a universal basic income (UBI), even for
people who don’t work.”
To summarize, it is clear that our culture faces a growing crisis that stems
from the gradual abandonment and misunderstanding of the interests of workers and
the qualities that support worker satisfaction as well as family and community stability. Instead of valuing quality products through encouraging
good workers and workmanship, our emphasis has shifted to increasing GDP and consumption. Instead of promoting the biblical ethic which
promises God’s blessing on quality work that reflects His glory and serves
others, workers are supposed to work for the sake of a larger GDP which supposedly
guarantees satisfaction through a larger piece of the “economic pie.” Thankfully, as I have noted, there is an
increasing call to revalue good work and a healthy “work ethic.” The call comes from both secular experts and
theologians.
A Theology of Work: Those readers seeking to delve deeper into the Judeo-Christian “theology of work” will find Pastor Timothy Keller’s book, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, an excellent and practical source. The theology of work is based on the biblical teaching that the design of work rests on our right relationship with God. According to Genesis 1-2, God created the material universe, found satisfaction in His work (Genesis 1: 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), and rested from His work (Genesis 2: 2-3). Then amazingly, God appointed mankind to exercise dominion over the rest of His creation as stewards whom He commissioned to work in harmony with Him. How exactly does a worker apply biblical stewardship in the practical “day-to-day?”
According to Keller, when we make God our foundation, He “keeps all other factors—work,
friendships and family, leisure and pleasure—from becoming so important to [us]
that they become addicting and distorted.”
Without a larger, God-centered purpose in life, our work can become an
idol. When idolatry invades our lives,
according to Dorothy Sayers (author of Creed
or Chaos? as cited by Keller) we become vulnerable to the sin of sloth (or
acedia), “the sin of the empty soul.” Sloth
opens the door of our lives to allow other deadly sins to enter—covetousness,
envy, gluttony, wrath, and lust.
In contrast, when our work mirrors God’s creative work, “we create culture that conforms to His will and vision for human beings…” God is not only our Creator but also the Keeper of His creation through what we call His providence. That is, according to Keller, “God does not simply create; He also loves, cares for, and nurtures His creation…
But how
does His keeping providential care reach us? [According to] Martin Luther, God’s loving
care comes to us largely through the labor of others. Work is a major instrument of God’s
providence; it is how He sustains the human world.”
But isn’t God’s providence also evident in ways beyond the work of Christ-followers? Keller explains that by common grace, people who are not Christ-followers contribute much to the human workplace. However, the steward of God’s provision has a spiritually empowered commission to do his or her work distinctively for the glory of God. Work that glorifies God reveals itself as an extension of God’s providential work—i.e. it is done in a way worthy of God's approval and for the good of our neighbor. Indeed, a the worker who seeks to perform his or her work in alignment with God’s providence is practicing stewardship in its most basic form—work as an act of worshiping God.
The manifestation of God’s glory through our stewardship of work will take on
different forms according to the nature of the work to which God has called us. God’s calling, or “vocation” (from Latin, vocare = calling) is not just for
pastors or priests, but for the farmer, mechanic, engineer, musician, doctor, homemaker,
educator, etc. You will find great insight into your particular
calling from the way Keller and his co-writer of Every Good Endeavor, Katherine Leary Alsdorf,
thoughtfully apply their theology of work to various vocations in clear and
practical ways.
Under Pastor Keller’s leadership and the direction of Katherine Leary Alsdorf, Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City established the Center for Faith and Work. The aim of the CFW is to understand the intersection of Christian faith and work, and then to work out the applications of this integration for the renewal of communities within New York City. Its mission is to equip Christ-followers in their personal vocations to integrate their faith and their work as members of their residential and professional communities. This effort is especially timely as New York City and many American cities and communities try to accommodate the arrival of immigrants, many of whom have a willingness to work but who need acculturation based upon the transforming message of the Gospel.
Your Comments are always welcomed. I know that many of you prefer to read, reflect, and then move on without comment. However, I value your ideas because they often help me see issues from another perspective. Meanwhile, may you be encouraged in the work to which God calls you to do—and I hope you can worship God in your work.
• vocational counseling
• job training and retraining
• worker wages and satisfaction
• upward mobility opportunities
None of these have kept pace with increases in GDP during the past half-century. The result, according to Oren Cass, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, has been
• worker dissatisfaction,
• disruption of families
• instability in whole communities
• a surge in drug addiction
• lowered life expectancy.
In spite of the immensity of this complex set of challenges facing our divided culture, there is reason for hope. Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, points out that people on all sides of the issue want a better quality of life for all Americans. All that is needed, he adds, is for people of diverse opinions to sit down together and discuss the best ways to accomplish the goal.
 |
| "How can we lift up the world, starting with...the margins...?" |
Work and Workers Misunderstood: When some experts think of “lifting up the world,” they think in terms of better and affordable education as a solution. But Oren Cass disagrees. In his recent book, The Once and Future Worker (Encounter Books, 2018) Cass writes: “Despite the nation doubling per-pupil spending and attempting countless educational reforms, test scores look no better than they did forty years ago. Most Americans still do not achieve even a community college degree.” To add injury to these disappointing statistics, consider that the federal student loan program has driven up the cost of a college education and created a new class of young American debtors. In the words of Mike Rowe, “We are lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist.”
“We got exactly what we thought we wanted: strong overall economic growth and a large GDP (gross domestic product), rising material living standards, a generous safety net, rapid improvements in environmental quality, extraordinary affordable flat-screen televisions and landscaping services. Yet we gave up something we took for granted: a labor market in which the nation’s diverse array of families and communities could support themselves. …What we have been left with is a society teetering atop eroded foundations, lacking structural integrity, and heading toward collapse."
Work and Workers Matter: According to Cass, “work matters” and fulfilling work promotes strong families and communities. In The Once and Future Worker, Cass offers his “Working Hypothesis;” namely, “that a labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of long-term prosperity and should be the central focus of public policy.”
A Theology of Work: Those readers seeking to delve deeper into the Judeo-Christian “theology of work” will find Pastor Timothy Keller’s book, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, an excellent and practical source. The theology of work is based on the biblical teaching that the design of work rests on our right relationship with God. According to Genesis 1-2, God created the material universe, found satisfaction in His work (Genesis 1: 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), and rested from His work (Genesis 2: 2-3). Then amazingly, God appointed mankind to exercise dominion over the rest of His creation as stewards whom He commissioned to work in harmony with Him. How exactly does a worker apply biblical stewardship in the practical “day-to-day?”
In contrast, when our work mirrors God’s creative work, “we create culture that conforms to His will and vision for human beings…” God is not only our Creator but also the Keeper of His creation through what we call His providence. That is, according to Keller, “God does not simply create; He also loves, cares for, and nurtures His creation…
But isn’t God’s providence also evident in ways beyond the work of Christ-followers? Keller explains that by common grace, people who are not Christ-followers contribute much to the human workplace. However, the steward of God’s provision has a spiritually empowered commission to do his or her work distinctively for the glory of God. Work that glorifies God reveals itself as an extension of God’s providential work—i.e. it is done in a way worthy of God's approval and for the good of our neighbor. Indeed, a the worker who seeks to perform his or her work in alignment with God’s providence is practicing stewardship in its most basic form—work as an act of worshiping God.
Under Pastor Keller’s leadership and the direction of Katherine Leary Alsdorf, Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City established the Center for Faith and Work. The aim of the CFW is to understand the intersection of Christian faith and work, and then to work out the applications of this integration for the renewal of communities within New York City. Its mission is to equip Christ-followers in their personal vocations to integrate their faith and their work as members of their residential and professional communities. This effort is especially timely as New York City and many American cities and communities try to accommodate the arrival of immigrants, many of whom have a willingness to work but who need acculturation based upon the transforming message of the Gospel.
Your Comments are always welcomed. I know that many of you prefer to read, reflect, and then move on without comment. However, I value your ideas because they often help me see issues from another perspective. Meanwhile, may you be encouraged in the work to which God calls you to do—and I hope you can worship God in your work.
