WORKPLACE REDEMPTION And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new! Then he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. -- God gives us a glimpse of glory in Revelation 21:3-5. In the beginning, workers and even work itself were good. Shortly after that happy start, though, neither statement was accurate anymore. Every Christian understands people are not basically good. While not everyone who calls themselves a Christian understands that, every true Christian does. In order to receive salvation, we must acknowledge our sinful nature, acknowledge our inability to conquer that nature on our own, and then understand that Christ alone is able to affect our redemption. Jesus makes it clear theres no other path to redemption. Anyone who relies on good works to get the job done will be desperately disappointed at the doorway to eternity. (See John 14:6). What many Christians dont understand, though, is that work is also not basically good. It isnt even morally neutral. Just as human beings need redemption, so too does all of Creation, both the animate and inanimate. We resist this truth mostly because we havent studied Genesis close enough, or because we dont want it to be true. Wed like to believe that redeemed humans can assume roles in a morally neutral creation and live lives close to heavenly. As a result, we face life and work with a naivety that sentences us to surprise, shock and discouragement because we expect equity and integrity. We head out to our careers with the idea the world is a blank slate upon which we can write delightful stories. Then the reality of greed, white-collar crime, workplace violence, gossip, pettiness, inequity, prejudice, blue-collar crime, roller-coaster economies, shifting supply and demand, unexpected acts of God and other signs of sins impact on work and the workplace jump up and surprise us. Life can then become a game where we try to be successful enough to live above these realities – and even pretend they dont exist – or a struggle we ultimately believe cant be dented or influenced by our faith. In the beginning, death was not a part of creation. A careful reading of Genesis reveals that earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and natural disasters werent a part of Gods plans for His world and His people. Even the death implied by the food chain wasnt part of it. Man and beast were to be fed by plants, and it wasnt until sin rocked the natural and the human world that God added meat to the equation. (See Genesis 1:29-30 for the original food sources, and see Genesis 9:3 for Gods introduction of meat into human diet, which didnt occur until after Noah emerged from the Ark.) The workplace, indeed work itself, is tainted by sin in precisely the same way creation is tainted by sin. What God once meant as a blessing is now skewed by the introduction of sin, and is equally in need of redemptive influence. Just as human beings were the disruptive, and destructive, agents by our introduction of sin into the world, so too must we be redemptive agents. That redemption will not occur by good acts alone. Our jobs, our coworkers and even our work cultures await the residual effects of our own redemption. We must first be saved and surrendered to Christ in order to introduce eternal value and worth into our labor. Workplace Christians make two fundamental mistakes. The first, buying into the idea that people are basically good, denies their need for Christ and diminishes His sacrificial death and triumphant Resurrection to a symbolic act. The second, thinking work and the workplace are inherently good or at least neutral, causes us to shift our focus from redemptive action to self-pursuit. Our mission, should we decide to accept it, is to find redemption in Christ, and then carry that redemption into every part of our lives, places as desperately needy and damaged as we were ourselves before salvation. A WORK PRAYER Lord Jesus, I depend on You for salvation and transformation of my sinful nature. I depend on You to help me be a healthy influence in every part of my work life, too. Please help me in everything that entails. Amen. From Worklife.org
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 17:13:06 +0000
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