Dear Jo, God calls work good across all our daily tasks. As I travel into London’s financial district today to speak at an investment bank, I am writing to you from the train, giving thanks for the Christians who serve in these spaces. There is often an unhealthy tendency to view “Christian work” as superior to “secular work.” I have met many people who feel disappointed that God did not call them to full-time ministry, a sentiment that largely stems from a misunderstanding of what work truly is.
Simultaneously, the broader cultural narrative subjects us to a different kind of pressure. We often ask: Does my work provide significant financial benefit or confer a level of status according to societal values? Is my career respectable and profitable? Those in full-time Christian ministry will often answer no to these questions. Whether we feel we are missing out because we are doing “secular work” or because we are in “Christian ministry,” most of us will encounter feelings of inadequacy.
To overcome these comparisons, we must realign our perspective with a biblical theology of labor. Work is not merely a means to an end or a secondary calling; it is a primary way we reflect the image of God in the world. By recognizing that every honest vocation holds intrinsic value, we can find purpose in our professional lives regardless of the sector. This shift allows us to move past the secular-sacred divide and embrace the dignity of our daily contributions.
I believe this uncertainty about the value of our work is a profound question of our age, because it strikes at the heart of human purpose and identity. On a practical level, our work is what we will spend a very large number of waking hours doing. It really matters. Scripture speaks to the ache within each of us, wherever we find ourselves, with regard to our work.
Genesis 1:27 states that the first man and woman were made in the image of God. In that chapter, the primary revelation of God is as Creator, and so we see woven into the earliest account of what it means to be human this idea of creative work. The theological implication of this is that all human work begins primarily in the creative rather than the economic sphere. Humanity created in the image of a creative God images God by working and creating. From a biblical perspective, a common misconception about work is that it is a result of the fall. But even before the fall, Genesis envisages work not merely as utilitarian or even economic but as glorious creativity outworking a divine pattern.
It is of course true that the first Adam was cursed with labor and suffering: “through painful toil you will eat” (Gen. 3:17). The difficulty and economic necessity of work were new and ominous things resulting from sin. Work must now pay. Viewing a person and their work through an economic lens is part of the curse of the first Adam. When Jesus comes as the second Adam, hope and redemption come on many levels. One of those levels is human vocation. Our work can be redeemed, and our sense of purpose and creative potential and vision can be set free from the reductive lens of money and profit.
A biblical perspective on work calls for a whole new way of thinking so that work is not merely something people have to endure to make money but something that can be humane, creative, and life-giving. This means we approach work not with the question “How much does it pay?” but with the question “Is the work good, beautiful, and true?” We can look at a worker and ask not “How much do they earn?” but “What is the worth of their work— does it have integrity, coherence, dignity, and creative or beneficial use?”
This sounds highly impracticable and perhaps even naive. But the work of our hands, minds, and bodies needs to be considered at a much deeper level than merely the economic. Work is a moral question, a matter of human value and divine image. And it sits within our mandate to steward God’s creation well, meaning that the environmental impact of our work matters.
Can we begin to work in such a way that we honor the image of God in other human beings, steward well the creation God has entrusted to us, reflect the image of a Creator God, and reject the need to pursue consumption and status?
Our work might also be a means of worship—if we pursue quality, beauty, truth, and integrity in what we make, write, and build. Dorothy Sayers writes, “Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God.” We can live out our Christian calling in our work by being authentic and truthful in our dealings with others.
All this means you are not a “lesser” Christian if you work outside a church or ministry context. Far from it. You are living out the creation mandate of Genesis to reflect the Creator in whose image we are made. And if the work you spend your time and labor on does not pay much, or anything at all, your value and the value of your work are not reduced. This includes charitable, domestic, or mothering work. The true value of your work lies in its relationship to the Creator you reflect. Does your work carry the integrity, truth, beauty, and authenticity of God? Is your work coherent, true, loving, beneficial, creative, just, or good? These are the questions that should concern us and that will lead to healthy stewardship of the natural world entrusted to us and will point to the redemptive power of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, as a beacon of hope.
Don’t lose heart, and may God free you from an oppressive or reductive vision of work.
With love,
Amy
Content taken from Lead Like the Real You by Amy Orr-Ewing, ©2024. Used by permission of Brazos Press.