He meant that some people are not as capable of higher rational thought and therefore should do the work that frees the more talented and brilliant to pursue a life of honor and culture. “Aristotle very famously said in his Politics I.V.8 that some people are born to be slaves. I just said, “If you know all this.” In order to work in this way-to get the consolation and freedom that Tolkien received from his Christian faith for his work-you need to know the Bible’s answers to three questions: Why do you want to work? (That is, why do we need to work in order to lead a fulfilled life?) Why is it so hard to work? (That is, why is it so often fruitless, pointless, and difficult?) How can we overcome the difficulties and find satisfaction in our work through the gospel? The rest of this book will seek to answer those three questions in its three sections, respectively.”Įvery Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work You will not be puffed up by success or devastated by setbacks. If you know all this, you won’t be despondent because you can get only a leaf or two out in this life. But inevitably the whole tree that you seek-the beauty, harmony, justice, comfort, joy, and community-will come to fruition. Your work will be only partially successful, on your best days, in bringing that world about. There is a God, there is a future healed world that he will bring about, and your work is showing it (in part) to others. Whatever you are seeking in your work-the city of justice and peace, the world of brilliance and beauty, the story, the order, the healing-it is there. Once or twice in your life you may feel like you have finally “gotten a leaf out.” Whatever your work, you need to know this: There really is a tree. In ten years you will be deeply disillusioned because you will find that as much as you are trying to work on important things, so much of what you do is minutiae. Or let’s say you are a lawyer, and you go into law because you have a vision for justice and a vision for a flourishing society ruled by equity and peace. But there really is a New Jerusalem, a heavenly city, which will come down to earth like a bride dressed for her husband (Revelation 21–22). You are likely to be discouraged because throughout your life you probably will not get more than a leaf or a branch done. Why? You are excited about cities, and you have a vision about how a real city ought to be. (The irony is that he produced something so many people consider a work of genius that it is one of the bestselling books in the history of the world.) What about you? Let’s say that you go into city planning as a young person. Tolkien had readied himself, through Christian truth, for very modest accomplishment in the eyes of this world. He was speaking of Christian ministry, but Tolkien’s story shows how this can ultimately be true of all work. “In the Lord, your labor is not in vain,” writes Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 58. That is what the Christian faith promises. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever. Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught. If this life is all there is, then everything will eventually burn up in the death of the sun and no one will even be around to remember anything that has ever happened. But that is beyond the control of any of us. “Everyone wants to be successful rather than forgotten, and everyone wants to make a difference in life.
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