This
week's "thought" comes to you from Tim
Keller's book "Every Good Endeavor - Connecting Your
Work to God's Work." I have not finished it yet (just
over half way through), but what I have read is enlightening, inspiring,
well-thought-through (as is typical for Keller) and so helpful for those
seeking to find meaning and purpose in their jobs or work. Better yet (as
the title suggests), it is helpful for those who would like to connect their
work to God's work in this world, and bring redemptive change into their
workplace. In my humble opinion, this book really is a must read.
We
all function according to some type of underlying worldview -- a worldview that
guides our choices, priorities and pursuits. "Our
worldview," says Keller, "places our work
in the context of a history, a cause, a quest... and in so doing it frames the
strategy of our work at a high level." My challenge to
you today is to see if your worldview is Christian, non-Christian, or a mixture
of competing worldviews spliced together? Read below and find
out... Enjoy.
The
Gospel and Other Worldviews
"Any
worldview consists of posing and answering three questions: 1. How are
things supposed to be? 2. What is the main problem with things as they
are? 3. What is the solution and how can it be realized? Leslie
Steven's book (Seven Theories of Human Nature) includes Christianity among its
"theories," but the author points out how different Christianity is
from the alternatives. He observes that "if God has made man for
fellowship with Himself, and if man has turned away and broken his relationship
to God, then only God can forgive man and restore the relationship." In
other words, the biblical worldview uniquely understands the nature, problem,
and salvation of humankind as fundamentally relational. We
were made for a relationship with God, we lost our relationship with God
through sin against him, and we can be brought back into that relationship through
his salvation and grace.
Plato,
Marx, and Freud all identify some part of the created world as the main problem
and some other part of the created world as the main solution. The protagonists
and antagonists of their respective world-stories are played by finite
things. Thus, Marxism assumes that our problems come from greedy
capitalists who won't share the means of economic production with the people.
The solution is a totalitarian state. Freud, on the other hand, believed
that our problems come from repression of deep desires for pleasure. The
villains are played by the repressive moral "gatekeepers" in society,
like the church. The solution is the unrepressed freedom of the
individual. Many people have a worldview that to some degree is indebted
to the Greeks or Plato. They think the problem with the world rests in
undisciplined and selfish people who won't submit to traditional moral values
and responsibilities. The solution is a "revival" of religion,
morality, and a virtue in society. Philosopher Al Wolters writes:
"The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God's good
creation and identify it, rather
than the alien intrusion of sin, as
the villain. Such an error conceives of the good-evil dichotomy as intrinsic to
the creation itself... Something in the good creation itself is
identified as the source of evil. In the course of history this
"something" has been variously identified as the body and it's
passions (Plato and much of Greek philosophy), as culture in distinction from
nature (Rousseau and Romanticism), as authority figures in society and family
(psycho-dynamic psychology), as economic forces (Marx), as technology and
management (Heidegger and existentialists)... As far as I can tell the
Bible is unique in its rejection of all attempts to either demonize some part
of creation as the root of our problems, or to idolize some part of creation as
the solution. All other religions, philosophies, and worldviews in one way or
another fall into the trap of idolatry -- of failing to keep creation and fall
distinct. And this trap is an ever-present danger for Christians [as
well]."
Look
again at the uniqueness of Christianity. Only the Christian worldview locates
the problem with the world NOT in any part of the world, or any particular
group of people, but in sin itself (our loss of relationship with God). And it
locates the solution in God's grace (our restoration of a relationship with God
through the work of Christ). Sin infects us all, and so we cannot simply
divide the world into the heroes and the villains. (And if we did we would
certainly have to include ourselves among the latter as well as the former.)
Without an understanding of the Gospel, we will be either naively Utopian or
cynically disillusioned We will be demonizing something that isn't bad enough
to explain the mess we are in, and we will be idolizing something that isn't
powerful enough to get us out of it. This is, in the end, what all other
worldviews do... The Christian story line, or worldview, is: Creation (plan),
Fall (problem), Redemption and Restoration (solution):
1. The whole world is good. God made the
world and everything in it was good. There are no intrinsically evil parts of
the world. Nothing is evil in its origin... You can find this
"creational good" in everything.
2. The whole world is fallen. There is
no aspect of the world affected by sin more or less than any other. For
example, are emotion and passions untrustworthy and reason infallible? Is
the physical bad and the spiritual good? Is the day-to-day world profane
but religious observances good? None of these is true. But non-Christian story
lines must adopt some variations of these in order to villainize and even
demonize some created thing instead of sin.
3. The whole world is going to be redeemed. Jesus is going to
redeem spirit and body, reason and emotion, people and nature. There is no part
of reality for which there is no hope.
The
Gospel is the true story that God made a good world that was marred by sin and
evil, but through Jesus Christ he redeemed it at infinite cost to himself, so
that someday he will return to renew all creation; end all suffering and death;
and restore absolute peace, justice, and joy in the world forever. The vast
implications of this gospel worldview -- about the character of God, the
goodness of the material creation, the value of the human person, the
fallenness of all people and all things, the primacy of love and grace, the
importance of justice and truth, the hope of redemption -- affect everything,
and especially our work."
That's
obviously a bit to chew on! But I hope it helps you see how
the worldview one chooses to adopt will have great effect on how they view
their work, carry out their work, and choose to live. My question is: Do
you have a Christian worldview? Or, like many, have you adopted elements
of a Marxist, Greek, Capitalist, or Freudian worldview? Everyone has a
worldview that under-girds their life choices and endeavors. Is your a Gospel
worldview, or a syncritistic mix of many others with a small element of
Christian lingo or references to Jesus added in?
And
I must stress that it is NOT irrelevant. Since God
commands us: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all
you soul and all your mind and all your strength," it
would seem to lay upon us as believers an unavoidable responsibility to think
things like this through as best we possibly can. For whatever worldview
we have has a profound effect on influencing the choices we make, why we make
them, and what we will pursue. It will impact how we treat people, why we love and
value the things we do, live as we do, and view work the way we do.
So
my prayer for everyone is this: If you have come to Christ, yet retained
a non-Christian worldview (or elements from various ones), you will seek (by
the grace God gives) to root those elements out and replace them with
distinctly Christian or Gospel elements -- something Keller's book distinctly
aims at helping us with!
In
His Service, Pastor Jeff
