Keller on Work on a Monday Night

Over the past several days I've been listening to a podcast from Tim Keller, a pastor up in NYC who's got a sizable following in corners of my part of the Christian world. The podcast was a couple of years old on the subject of work. Some great stuff that has had me thinking as I've started this work week.

Here's some highlights from the sermon:

- Here's a working definition of work that he quoted from Dorothy Sayers: "work is the gracious expression of creative energies in the service of others."

- He goes on to quote Sayers' take on the problem with work in our culture: work is mostly seen as a way to make money or to achieve status.

That means that the actual work done is an appendage, an add-on. For example, doctors don't practice medicine for the joy of serving people. Doctors are doctors for the money and the social status. The patients are just the means to an end, not an end in and of themselves.

This is counter to the Biblical picture of work, where the work in and of itself is prepared in advance for us to do...and the work itself matters, not just the money it provides for us or the status it affords us in our society.

3. Keller proposes that as long as money or status are the primary motivators for our work, we will always take work either way too seriously (as we strive for more and more) or we will not take it seriously enough (as we get cynical and realize that it can't actually deliver what we want it to).

4. The proper role of work is in relation to God--that is, we are to work in order to please God.

He differentiates here brilliantly between working to appease God (i.e. the idea that God is perpetually ticked and we're scurrying around to keep him happy) v. working to please God--which is the Biblical command. In the latter image, God is on the look-out for things to delight in us about. He is easy to please, and our good work brings him joy.

5. Lastly Keller asserts that there's a couple of places that work can spring out from. One place is anxious drivenness--the life that puts too much weight on work. The other place is one of apathy--a life that is cynical of work.

A third option that he offers is work that springs from God's rest, the sabbath rest of God for his people. Work that springs from deep places of rest in the gospel of Christ is work that is truly life-giving. It is work in its proper place, for the right purposes.

And it springs from the gospel of Jesus, the good news that we are no longer bound by our own works to find favor with God and purpose in life. It is given to us for free in Christ, at great cost to him.

Work springing from rest sounds awfully appealing, doesn't it?

Looking back over the past couple of months, I can see all three of these motivations at work in my soul. Lots of places where I miss the boat on the right perspective and place of work.

Keller on a Monday evening reminds me that it's all about the gospel of Jesus making a difference in how I do e-mail, meet with students, prepare for meetings, make phone calls, and write reports.

I'd love for all of these things, not to mention loving my family and writing blogs and doing dishes and all the rest of it, to spring from a deep place of rest that energizes me for the good work prepared in advance for me to do.