The quote is from Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s and it represents a mindset that characterises many Christians as they go to work on a Monday morning in the contemporary world. The sociologists refer to this as the ‘privatisation’ of faith. Despite our profession that Jesus is Lord, the reality is that in the public world from Monday to Friday, the Christian faith has a subordinate role epitomised by Kroc’s quotation.
But How Would the Apostle Paul Respond?
But How Would the Apostle Paul Respond?
As the quotation from Colossians 3:17 indicates, the apostle Paul is no dualist. He does not see the world divided into a public world where we go to work and a private world in which we go to church, raise a family and play sport. Given Jesus Christ is Lord of every inch of creation both spheres belong to Him. As some have put it, he cares just as much for what happens in the boardroom as what happens in the bedroom.
Accordingly, Paul sees the whole world as a sphere of service for every Christian. Much like ours, the Greco-Roman society of Paul’s day had a strong tendency to split the world into the sacred and secular. Sacred tasks were those of contemplation and reflection. Secular or profane tasks had to do with physical work (such as farming) and menial household tasks. However, Paul’s words in Colossians show that the gospel sweeps away any such distinction: he affirms that all work has significance in God’s sight. We’re called to serve our Master in a way that honours him—whatever the circumstances he has placed us in
Some Christians are paid missionaries, pastors, and the like. Others are in ‘non-religious’ roles, like factory-work, banking, child-raising, and so on. Regardless of the context of our work, we’re all called in Christ to work “as for him”. In Colossians and elsewhere, Paul addresses this instruction specifically to slaves, so it’s clear that no work is too menial or insignificant to be beyond the reach of service for Christ.
Implications
Implications
There are three important implications that follow from Paul’s perspective.
“How” is Not Everything
First, we must recognize that what we do in our work is just as significant as how we do it. If we’re serving Christ, then our work should reflect the way he wants his creation cared for. When asked how they serve God in their work, many Christians focus on the relational or moral aspects of their day-to-day lives—being honest, caring, and diligent. These are essential virtues that we must cultivate. But rarely will Christians talk about how their work goes with the grain of creation: for example how an accountant brings order and accountability to a set of accounts, how a Doctor advises their patients, or how a playwright crafts a story that provides depth of insight to the human condition. Paul exhorts us to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). This includes much of the unbiblical thinking that pervades our workplaces. We need Christians in business, science, and the arts who think Biblically about their professions or trades, and who act in ways that cause life to flourish rather than to whither. This brings benefits to our society, and it also promotes the gospel to those outside the faith.
Measuring Success
Second, if we know that we’re working as for the Lord, it’ll reshape how we view success in our careers. We should remember that in all our activities the most important thing is that we’re in relationship with the Lord of history. He loves us and has given himself up for us (Galatians 2:20). We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ and not by any success we achieve in the eyes of the world. This gives some perspective to our performance in the workplace.
Without question, it is good when our skills and experience grow and when we’re good at our job because we’ll be all the better at serving others. But we should not pursue workplace excellence in order to fuel our pride, nor at the expense of other responsibilities that God has given us. Work will be in its place alongside other relationships such as friends, children, spouses, parents, citizens, and colleagues. And when we fail, we shouldn’t be crushed or seek to shift the blame. The adulation, envy, or disrespect of co-workers is short lived while a declaration by Jesus of “Well done, good and faithful servant” lasts forever. We need to remind one another of this truth.
Helping Each other in Faithfulness
Third, Christians need to help one another be faithful in their paid work, just as in every arena of life. We need to learn to see the significance of our work in the light of the gospel. Hopefully our churches devote some of their formal teaching time to helping Christians join the dots between Jesus and their workplaces. And since it can be difficult to work “as for the Lord” in our highly secularized society, Christians need to find practical ways of encouraging one another to do this. A simple start would be to talk about it: younger believers might speak with older believers in their industry; workers might be interviewed and prayed for in Sunday gatherings.
Anchored in this view of our working lives, we won’t stray into Ray Kroc’s mistake of believing first in work, then family, then God. When we enter the workplace on a Monday, we’ll be marked as people who are different, precisely because God is held front and centre in all that we do. Christians disciplined by this vision will be more likely to change the world than let the world change them.
