Working at Happiness

Jeremiah 2:4-13

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

I posted two questions to the church’s twitter account and facebook page earlier this week.  (And I don’t usually get immediate response from my post’s, but I did from a few of you this week!).  So here they are – take a minute and share your answers with a few others sitting around you.

Question 1: If you had to start over, would you choose the same line of work or would you choose a different path – and what would it be?

Question 2: Suppose you lose your job today and had to start a new business tomorrow.  What business would you start?

OK, so if there are new businesses started as a result of these conversations, I’d like 10% of the profits.  When I was in High School, I wanted to be either a pastor or a physician (and it took me a long time to settle into my role as a pastor – at three different times in my life, I've considered Med School). 

But now that I’m 42, if I had to choose a different career path, I’d probably be a high school teacher and coach.  If I had to start a business tomorrow, I’d start a restaurant (because I love to cook) or a Tennis Academy (because I’ve been watching the US Open!).

I’m not sure what your alternative career would be, or what business you’d start tomorrow.  But I do know this.  In the surveys we conducted earlier this summer, you all were much less happy with your work life than with every other area of life.  Here’s what we asked:

On a scale of 1 to 7, how happy are you . . .

with marriage/singleness                            6.2

with your congregation/spiritual life          6.0

with the community where you live           5.7

with friendships                                           5.6

with physical health/body image                4.9

with affection/intimacy/sexuality               4.7      

with family life                                            4.6

with work                                                     3.8

Tim Ferriss wrote a bestselling book titled: The Four Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.  Ferris promises to teach you how to drastically reduce the amount of time you spend working, significantly increase your income, and design the life you’ve always wanted.  (He did not mention what I’m supposed to do with my kids). 

This 4-Hour work-week idea sounds like total you-know-what to me, and so I visited Ferris’ blog where I learned that Ferris won an international Tango competition and that he speaks five languages.  And I was NOT AT ALL surprised to learn that Wired Magazine named him the “Greatest Self-Promoter of 2008.”

There is a huge hunger for books and blogs about how to design your life so that you don’t have to work very much.  Apparently, PEOPLE HATE THEIR JOBS!!!

I have a friend in Connecticut who works as a welder for the defense contractor Sikorski – they manufacture the Blackhawk helicopter.  It was difficult work, and he had a very demanding boss.  But he endured, because he has five kids and needed to provide for them.  There was constant threat of layoffs.  And during one of those periods, his boss came to him and told him that to keep his job he would need to stay after work every day, off the clock, and clean the bathrooms.  And while he wanted to tell his boss to take the job and shove it where the sun don’t shine, he didn’t.  He stayed and cleaned bathrooms every day.

On the topic of work, the Genesis account tells us two things.  First, that work is good.  God gives Adam and Eve work to do in tilling and keeping the garden.  They are to cooperate in God’s project of helping the world flourish.  So work isn’t punishment.  It’s part of God’s design for all humans. 

Second, Scripture teaches that all our work will be difficult, frustrating, and stressful.  After the story of Adam and Eve’s sinful rebellion against God, their work takes on the character of punishment.  God lays a curse upon the humans with these words, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food” (Gen. 3:19).

Yet if you look at books, magazines and blogs that offer career advice to young people, there is a clear thread that runs through it all:  “follow your passion.” 

This emphasis on “passion” is a kind of rebellion against the boring tedious work done by our parents and grandparents.  “Don’t be a cog in a big corporate machine!  Don’t sit in a cubicle with a spreadsheet!  Don’t file any boring reports!  Instead – follow your passion!   Your job shouldn’t be tedious, or stressful, or boring.  Instead, your job should provide your life with pizzazz.  It should allow you to fully express yourself.  Your job shouldn’t even feel like work at all, because when you clock in you’re doing something you’re ‘passionate’ about.”

In his book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton writes: “the most remarkable feature of the modern working world . . . is the widely held belief that our work should make us happy” (p. 106).  Maybe that’s why we daydream about paths not taken, or about the business we would like to start.

Our reading from Jeremiah reminds us that even good things, like work, can become an idol.  Here God is frustrated with his people because they have abandoned and forgotten the God who delivered them from Egypt; the God who protected them through the wilderness; the God who gave them a place to live and a way of life that profited and blessed them.

This judgment is seen most clearly in verse 13:

“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.”

This is an excellent description of what we have done as a culture, and what many of us have done personally.  We have invested our work, our job, our career, with idolatrous value.  We look to our work to make us happy.  And expecting life’s happiness from our job is like a cracked cistern that holds no water.  It is God, and God alone, who provides our lives with meaning and joy. 

Statistically speaking, most people don’t have successful careers.  And even those who succeed in doing what they want and making good money at it wind up finding those achievements disappointing.  So if you have pinned your hopes to having a successful career, you are in for a whopping disappointment. 

We’ve been taught that success and importance in life is measured by your job and your income.  That’s why we so often meet someone new and want to know what they “do.”  So the next time you’re in a situation where someone asks you what you do, lie to them.  Make something up.  Tell them you’re a professional kazooist or that you’ve started a website for haiku poems and it’s absolutely blowing up.

One of the most basic things to learn as we grow in our faith is that Scripture provides us with an alternative success story.  In God’s kingdom, all people are equally valuable.  All people are to be treated with respect and dignity.  And it doesn’t matter whether they work in a hospital or a truck, outside or inside, do computer work or manual labor. 

In God’s kingdom, success isn’t measured in money or status or titles.  Our reading from Hebrews 13 provides practical instructions for us. 

Notice what it says: “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have” (v. 5).

It is perfectly fine to be wise about how the economy works – what kinds of skills get paid well and what kinds don’t.  We probably ought to help our kids be aware of these things.  But that’s different than “the love of money.”  The love of money is a way of life that will make you stingy, rarely sharing with others.  It will make you excessively competitive.  It will lead you to cut corners, to cheat to get ahead, and to mistreat others by paying them too little so you can have more.  Those things are contrary to the life God has called us to.

And then again, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (v. 16).

Of course all of us have to work hard to earn a living.  But we should take care that our jobs don’t consume every bit of our lives and energy.  Make sure there is time to notice the needs of others, to show compassion by helping when you can, and to share your life with others.  There are clear examples listed right here in Hebrews: reaching out to strangers, showing hospitality, and visiting those in prison.

Now I don’t really want to be in the business of offering job advice to young people.  But I’m going to do it anyway.  And while I’m speaking to young people, those of you already grown up and working might listen in as well.

It’s great if you have passion in life.  But eventually you’ll need to do something someone will pay you for!  And the reason someone is going to pay you to do something is likely because it’s hard work, and requires a certain amount of training.

It’s not very helpful to approach your work life and your career choices in individualistic terms like “passion” and “self-expression.”  It will be much more helpful to approach your choice of work in terms of creativity and problem-solving.

The work that gets paid is always a form of problem solving.  That’s why Frederick Beuchner says our “calling” is where our great passion meets the world’s great need.

In this fast-changing economy, you have to be able to solve problems that matter to other people.  That’s what work is.  Their problem might be wanting a big mac, or a new app on their phone, a pilates class offered at the right time, for their toilets to be unclogged, or for good leadership for an organization.  But if you’re not able to help someone solve a problem, it will be difficult to earn a living. 

But here’s the good news: God has designed you in God’s own image, so you have creativity woven into your bones!  Human beings are problem solvers by design.  And if you pay attention to your gifts, skill sets, natural inclinations, the tone of your affections, and yes, your passion – you will find some problems to solve that will bring you both a paycheck and some modest satisfaction.

I have been talking mostly about jobs, work that gets paid.  But I want to end by moving in a different direction.  Scripture doesn’t emphasize your job.  It emphasizes your calling.  Just like we don’t often read the fine print on our car leases or our itunes agreements, we Presbyterians don’t often read from our Constitution, the Book of Order.  But this section is really helpful.

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Book of Order, W – 5.6000 Christian Vocation

God calls a people:

a. to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior;

b. to follow Jesus Christ in obedient discipleship;

c. to use the gifts and abilities God has given, honoring and serving God

(1) in personal life,

(2) in household and families,

(3) in daily occupations,

(4) in community, nation, and the world.

Persons respond to God’s call to honor and serve God in every aspect of human life

            a.         in their work and in their play,

b.         in their thought and in their action,

c.          in their private and in their public relationships.

God hallows daily life, and daily life provides opportunity for holy living. As Christians honor and serve God in daily life, they worship God. For Christians, work and worship cannot be separated.

This week’s recommended practice:

You probably know someone who is unemployed and looking for work, or someone frustrated and discouraged with their current work.  Find a way to encourage them.