Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do Americans Work Too Hard? Or Not Hard Enough?

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

Is hard work a thing of the past for Americans? Should we enjoy our jobs? Why is unemployment so high? Listen to https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastors Keith Simon) andhttps://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ ( Patrick Miller) as they investigate these questions in this discussion on work ethic.  Interested in more content like this? Scroll down for more resources and related episodes, including https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-to-love-your-neighbor-an-interview-with-chris-and-elizabeth-mckinney/ (How to Love Your Neighbor) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/why-im-not-going-to-heaven-my-favorite-verses-acts-3-21/ (Why I’m Not Going to Heaven).  Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit ourhttps://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ ( website) and follow us onhttps://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks ( Facebook),https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ ( Instagram), andhttps://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast ( Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT Podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, AskT, TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. Keith, do you know who that is? Well, uh, no. No, I can act like I do.

That's Rihanna. Mm-hmm. And, you know, we're listening to Rihanna because today's topic of conversation is she clearly understood is work, work, work, work. Okay, so I have a hard time understanding song lyrics, like when they're being sung. This is like last week when you told me you couldn't understand British TV shows. Right? I can't. And so I used to be a big police fan and one of their hit songs.

I thought it said pool hall ace. And really it said, my poor heart aches. So I have no idea what she just said, but I assume it means work. As a kid, I used to think that song, She's Got a Ticket to Ride. I heard it as She's Got a Chicken to Ride. I don't know why. Oh, chicken.

Yeah, I had this image of this woman writing a chicken, and it was a song about writing a chicken, which I guess as a kid makes a lot of sense. But today, we are going to be talking about work, and it's actually really interesting because right now, culturally, we almost see two polarities being discussed at the exact same time, and we want to talk about both of them. But we've got one half of our country saying that American work ethic is dying.

And then we have another side saying that the American work ethic is defining us. It's become our identity. And I think both are actually true at the same time, which makes work an incredibly interesting topic. Yeah, so we're going to look at both angles plus see what the Bible has to say, because I think the Bible has something to say to the work ethic is declining, but also to the defining part. Keith, have you ever been fired? Yeah.

Really more than once, I think. No, more than once. Well, I got fired once too. My stories are kind of like, I quit before I get fired on one of them. But the other one, I think I legitimately got fired. It was sleeping in the dorm. I was a security person in the dorm in college. I wasn't sleeping at all.

I fell asleep like at three in the morning. And, you know, I mean, that's a fireable offense. I'm not judging them for it. So you're supposed to be running security, but you fell asleep. Well, running security makes it sound a lot. How did you get caught? Like your supervisor walks in and you're just snoozing? I think I woke up groggy and I didn't fill out the forms correctly. And, you know, they're not dumb. They figured out what was happening. I probably admitted it. I don't remember it a long time.

It's honestly genius, getting paid to sleep. Where'd you get fired from? I got fired from Barnes & Noble. We're reading too many books while you were working. Just so much reading. It's just a private school job. I actually worked in the CD department. Well, I got a job. CDs. This is a long time ago. No, but I actually got a job when they were building the Barnes & Noble, and so they needed people to come in and basically build the shelves and put in all the stock. And so I did that over the summer. Then the store opened when school started, and they started scheduling me when I was supposed to be in high school. And I told them, like, I'm in high school. I can't be here. And so they fired me for missing my... That's not as bad as mine. I got fired from poor job performance. But we do have an interesting relationship with a

work. I used to do ministry with people in their 20s, and that was a big focus, was talking about work. And I discovered that a lot of undergrads, they'd graduate and they'd go get their first job. And it was just a guarantee that they would hate it. They would be convinced that their boss was Satan or Hitler or something in between those two. In between? Yeah. Not much space. And that the organization that they worked for was hell on earth and that there couldn't be a worse place to work. And I would always just kind of be empathetic and walk with them through it because I knew once I got their second job, they would realize, oh, I was just used to hanging out with my friends all the time, and then I had to get a job, and that was just a culture shock, you know, and that's what I hated?

So you're talking about people's first job? What was your first job? That Barnes & Noble job was my first job. Really? And you were in high school? And like senior? No, I think I was a freshman. I think maybe it was after my freshman year. I mean, I did like mowing, that kind of stuff before. And that was my first job where I had to sign a paperwork like you. Like you had a W-2. Yeah, that kind of thing. And what was your worst job? I guess you haven't had many. Well, okay, I'm making myself look better than I said. The worst job I ever had, this one's bad. The worst job I ever had was I got a job at Adventure Club. So it's like this before school program.

They have those here. Yeah. Well, so I was out of school here in Columbia when I was in college. And you didn't show up for your shift, just like Barnes & Noble. Yeah. Well, okay, so here's what happened. I had to get there, I think, at six or five, four, very early in the morning for a college student. And I think I could have done it. And this isn't going to be making my excuse. My roommate. would stay up until midnight being super loud. I couldn't fall asleep. So I was getting exhausted, and I just one day stopped showing up. I can't even say I got fired because I didn't take the call. No, no, no, I just stopped showing up. They were probably used to that with college students, right? But I'm glad it wasn't your fault. It was your dang roommates. You're right. It was my fault. So there was an article in the Wall Street Journal by a guy named Daniel Hinginger, and it was titled, Is American Work ethic Dying? So let's look for a moment at this

idea that he presents in this article that people don't want to work anymore. Jesus said the laborers are few. Now, he was talking about Christian ministry, but it turned out he was... He's just prophesying in 2021. Yeah, he was ahead of his time. Imagine that. Eight million fewer Americans are working today than before COVID. That's one of the things that Henninger points out in the Wall Street Journal article. So one of the points of the article is that it seems like fewer and fewer Americans are working. Now, on one level, I don't find this surprising. I know a lot of people who sincerely hate working. I remember a few years ago, maybe even 10 years ago now, a guy named Tim Ferriss. I don't if you've ever listened to any of his stuff. He wrote a book called The Four Hour Workweek.

Yeah, come on. I know I saw it, but it seemed like a gimmick. I never actually clicked on it because I thought the exact same thing. I'm like, what kind of idiocy is this? He has this approach to life. Basically what happens. He's running his own company and he is overworked. He works constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly. And finally decides he's going to take a three-week sabbatical to Europe. And while he's in Europe, he begins to answer and respond to emails and do a few other things and kind of realizes that if he streamlines his life, he can work only four hours a week while running his company and keep his company running basically by hiring assistance to do his job for him. He can still make a lot of money. And all he has to do is work four hours a week.

And this became a total phenomenon of people trying to grow passive income, do things so they can minimize the amount of hours that they were working. Yeah, I mean, that seems legitimate if you can pull it off, if you can figure out a way to orchestrate your life so that you can support yourself on less work. But I think it's going to miss something we're going to get to later, and that the Bible says that work is good for us, that our approach to life shouldn't be to try to minimize the amount of work we do. Because when we think of it that way, work is this burden that I've got to somehow endure. I don't think that's at all the biblical approach. And that's one of the perspectives that I think a lot of people take on work. Work is a burden. It's a problem that I need

to avoid. And what's been interesting during the COVID era is, I think rightly, when the government saw that there's probably going to be layoffs as a result of the pandemic, that they started giving increased unemployment benefits. And in the article, you just referenced, his point is that because these benefits didn't require people to be searching for jobs, which is the way it used to be. it's allowing people to essentially pull a paycheck from the government. And enough some people will hear this and think, oh my gosh, we're getting political. This is ridiculous. But it's really not ridiculous.

I right when the pandemic started, I had a friend who lost his job. And I actually think it was great that he was able to not just fall flat on his butt and have no way to pay his rent or anything else. He got unemployment. But he quickly discovered that he was making more on unemployment than he was making in his previous work. And he just looked at me and he said, well, why would I want to? to go work. I can sit at home and play video games and study crypto. Why? I'm going to do that instead. Maybe he should advise me on my cryptocurrency right now. It's not going very well. Yeah, this isn't political at all because, so I don't think anybody was arguing that we shouldn't

provide unemployment benefits in the middle of a pandemic. Absolutely. I mean, of course you had to do that. And President Biden said that people will come back to work if they're paid a decent wage. So the way he sees it, the way he's framing it, is the reason people aren't going back to work is because the wages aren't high enough. So there's a local restaurant here that put on their Facebook page that they were going to be closed some days because they couldn't find enough workers. And they had kind of a little bit of a snide comment. I mean, most of it was just kind of explaining the situation, but there was a little bit of a snide comment about the high unemployment benefits. And people just pounded that restaurant. So they had to come out and apologize

and they blamed their advertising agency for writing a copy. I mean, they were doing like, you were doing to your roommates. They were doing that too. They were blaming everybody they could. Well, it's fun because the owners of that particular restaurant are actually very progressive in their politics. Are they? Yeah, I mean, it might have been very sincere that a marketing agency wrote it.

But it was just amazing how many people said, look, if you guys paid more money that you'd get more workers, I don't know. I mean, I'm not a business owner, but you don't just. print more money. I mean, it's got to come from somewhere. And that's not the only restaurant, by the way. I actually know multiple restaurants in town who are unable currently to open their doors because they don't have enough workers. And some of these are actually some of the best restaurants in our town. And so those are waiters and waitresses who are making a pretty good wage. If they take that job, they're going to get high tips. It's not low wages. Again, in that article

we referenced, you know, he was talking about many places that were offering around $30 an hour, which is good wages. I mean, that's well above the... $30 an hour? It's well. above the proposed minimum wage. You know, and so he's simply making the point that is the issue here when we're looking at people who are choosing to stay at home and to draw unemployment, is the issue that they've made an economic calculation and they're simply saying, well, I make more money doing this. And if you just pay me better wages, then I would leave? Obviously, maybe that's part of it.

Why would someone take a job when they can make more money elsewhere? But I think the other part of it is that we have a really unhealthy relationship with work. Yeah, but one more story. So I have a friend who was going through the McDonald's drive-thru, and he just got a couple burgers and so does, you know, just standard stuff. And he was asked to pull up and wait for, you know, like they bring your food out if it's not ready so you don't clog up the drive-thru line. And he sees the owner of several McDonald's franchise in the area running food out to the cars. And he's like, dude, what are you doing the other friend? What are you doing?

This isn't normal to see you doing this. He was, I can't get anybody to work. We're having to close early most nights because I can't get enough people to fill out my shift. And he tells them the story. He says, I had three guys on break the other day. They saw the stimulus check, hit their bank account on their phone, and they just walked off. It was kind of like the old song, take this job and shove it. You know, I'm not working here anymore.

And so you've got this predicament where businesses are now seeing customers coming back. The pandemic is tailing off a little bit. People are getting out. but they don't have the workers to staff all their positions. Well, and it's interesting to think about this from a flourishing of society perspective. What kind of community do you want to live in? Well, we all want to live in a community that has art and restaurants and various opportunities, and that only works if you have people who work.

We have to recognize that this is a little bit more complicated than just a wage issue or a desire to go work issue or even an unemployment benefit issue. Because, you know, with schools were closed down, how are you going to work if you have young kids at home? Absolutely. If your kids are on COVID quarantine or some people have health reasons that they're not able to get out and work. Again, our point isn't to, I know someone's going to say it. They're going to say that we sat on here and contempt social safety nets. That's not our goal. And you and I probably even disagree to some degree on how why those social safety nets should be. We're trying to analyze here is, does this really all come down to economics? Is it really simply an issue of,

I'm going to take where I can get more money? And I think we both want to say, well, yeah, that's part of it. But I think, again, there's a bigger issue, which is that we have an unhealthy relationship with work, that people, lots of them, just sincerely dislike working. And given the opportunity to not work, even if it means making less money, they'd rather make less money than work and make a little more money. There was an episode of This American Life. I went back and looked it up several years ago, where they were talking about how people were leaving the workforce, but they weren't showing up in the unemployment rate because what they're doing is is going on to disability. And in some counties, some states and some counties, this is more

prevalent because a lot of what it comes down to on disability is getting doctors to sign off. And of course, some doctors are more open to doing that. And so if you watch the unemployment rate, that doesn't always tell the whole story. What you have to watch is what percentage of Americans are employed rather than unemployed or on disability or reliable. on other parts of the social welfare system. And again, I think part of this goes back to a unhealthy relationship with work. A different dimension that we could explore too is what I would call the gamification of life. So my friend was a great example.

What did he do when he stopped working? Well, he went home and he played video games all day and checked out cryptocurrency. There's actually been a lot of interesting articles recently that have pointed out that crypto, aside from being incredibly high risk, high reward, it actually mimics a lot of things that casinos do. variable rewards, the dopamine hit of getting a really big high, and then, of course, the fear of a big loss. There are plenty of people in crypto who have jobs like Keith. Yes. So I'm not trying to critique cryptocurrency. That would be a different episode, but it's

fascinating because many of these people who are going on unemployment, they're turning to these kinds of things as justifications for why they should. While I'm investing in crypto, I'm spending my time learning about it, but it's really just a game. Yeah, that's one thing Daniel Henninger does in this article in the Wall Street Journal is the American work ethic dying, is he says it's not so much about work and laziness. At least that's not the direction he takes it. He takes it work and playing games. So what he's saying is not so much that people just want to sit around and do nothing. It's that there are more fun options available to them, and that's what they're pursuing at the expense of work. Well, I think another example of this is the 10.6,000 demonstrations that

happened across our country. And while many of the people in those demonstrations had jobs and are working and adding to society... 10.6,000. Yeah, there are 10.6,000 protests in the last year. Would you count them? I will send you the statistic later. 10.6,000 demonstrations? That actually sounds low to me, but it obviously sounds high to you from what you were saying. I just never heard that before, so that's interesting. But many of the people who are in those demonstrations are actually unemployed. They aren't drawing an income anywhere. And in a sense they've become professional protesters, and they see it as their calling in life to go and fight injustice, organize these rallies, and they're able to do it, in part because they're drawing

on unemployment. You're saying that the protesters... I'm not saying all of them. But a decent portion. I'm saying a portion. You're saying are unemployed. There's a portion of... And are professional protesters who go around protesting.

So maybe you're questioning the sincerity of their beliefs. No, no, no, no. I'm not questioning. I'm actually putting this into the gamification of life. So the protests have become a game. I think on some level the protests have become a game. Because when you get into the world of protesting, the world of politics, it is all about winning and losing. It's all about having fun.

And there is a fun in the righteous anger that comes with protesting. Now again, I know someone's going to hear this and they're going to tell me, oh, you think all protesters are lazy. No, I'm not. I'm not. We're just talking about this phenomenon that's happening. Let's pause. Eight million less Americans are working today than we're working just over a year ago. if you don't find that alarming, if you don't say, huh, well, that's a little bit strange. We have to think about that.

And if you can't look at the patterns that are developing, whether I said it's, like I said, it's the gamification of life, the protest movement, just people who say, hey, why would I work when I don't have to? We have to analyze it. We need to think about it. I think this starts with families and how families raise their kids and what they emphasize, because what I notice is that a lot of kids, and I'm thinking 14, 15, 16, 16, 17-year-olds. They play sports, but they don't work jobs. At least a lot of them don't work much.

And so I think what kids are learning is that my free time is about me doing things that I like to do and playing games and sports versus I've got to learn how to work hard at a job, work for a boss that I probably don't like, and work through some misconceptions that tend to come out in people's first jobs, like you were mentioning earlier. So I don't think it should be a shock when these kids who have played games as sports go to colleges where colleges now have great sports complexes, the recreational centers, things like that. They haven't worked that much. They get out into the workforce, and it's hard, and they don't really like it. You know, one of the things that I thought as a parent is that one of my main responsibilities is to teach my kids to have a work ethic. And I think I thought that because that's what my mom told me. We had resources. It's not like we were poor, not even close. We were probably upper middle class.

But I started working when I was 14. Did your parents ever call you lazy? No, no. I've been called a lot of things, but not lazy. I had a job at bus and tables when I was 15. My mom would come down and pick me up when the restaurant closed like 10, 11 o'clock at night, depending on, you know, weekend or whatever, which was hard for her. but she thought it was her job to teach me to have a strong work ethic.

I'd work 40-hour-a-week jobs every summer. I'd work during football season on the weekends. It's just a mindset that she had, that she passed on to me, and I felt like this is my responsibility to pass it on to my kids. But as I talk to my peers, I think Christine and I, we're the weird ones. We're the ones that are odd, abnormal. Most people don't think like that. I'm just sitting here reflecting because growing up, my parents,

I don't know if they ever actually used the word lazy, but they definitely called me lazy, like regularly. They would point out that I procrastinated, that I wasn't working as hard as I could be working, and it was a critique. And I'm thankful for that, by the way. My parents always said that about school. It was about schools, about other things. But my point there being, I'm just realizing as you're talking, that I think they did work

hard to inculcate some of these values that you're mentioning right now, which is that life is not a game. Life is hard work. and that there's a real pleasure and joy in working hard. Yeah, my parents had a real easy strategy of how to do that, and that is not giving me any money. And so if you wanted to do anything, you had to figure out a way to work and make money.

As long as your parents give you things, why would you work? It just doesn't make sense. That's actually so true, because when I reflect on my own life, you work when you have a necessity to work. That's exactly what I'm thinking. Every time I got a job,

it wasn't actually because my parents said, Patrick, you need to go get a job. It's because they didn't give me a ton of money. My parents didn't give me a car when I was in high school. I wasn't driving around in a car. So I had to figure out, well, how am I going to get around and what's that going to look like? Or I think when I was in college, as stupid as it sounds, you know, I got engaged my last year of college. And knowing that I had to save up for a ring and that that was coming up actually made me start working about two years before I ever had to give that ring to my now wife because I was like,

well, crap, I have to raise this money somewhere. No one's paying for this except for me. and at that time it felt like a ton of money to buy a ring for someone else. So it starts out as you work out of necessity. It turns out that there's something about work that's really good for us, that we enjoy. In fact, when you think about what the new creation, the new heavens and new earth are going to look like, do you have in your mind that you're going to be working, you know, just to use the language that most people would use, in heaven, will you be working? And I think most people would say, gosh, no, that sounds horrible. Of course I won't be working.

Well, and that's really interesting because it actually comes from Greek pagan thinking. Because that's what Plato thought. So Plato had this idea that menial people were people who worked and that to be aristocratic, to live the life of the mind was to work as little as possible. And so in his conception, to live in the ideal, to live in this heavenly realm, was to be in a workless life, which I think is how many Christians think about heaven, which gives us a terrible view of work. Look, in Revelation, it's a city. Cities don't function without people to manage the sewers. Cities don't function without people to drive cars. Cities don't function without electricity and all the things that they need to do to be able to work and exist. We're going to have jobs.

Okay, but in the new heaven and new earth, I really don't want to man the sewers, right? I don't want to work in the sewers. Actually, it's like, do people poop and pee in heaven? I don't know. So maybe, but you still need sewers for water. I guess it smells good, though, in heaven. But when you're talking about Plato, it takes this back to a time not that long ago. You don't have to go all the way back to him where if you had money or if you had achievement or if you were kind of in the upper class, what you did is you avoided work. If you're a philosopher, you have thought that you wouldn't have done manual labor. You would have sat around and had important conversations. It was a sign of aristocracy. If I have the liberty to have free time and to work as little as

possible. It's a sign that I'm wealthy and successful. And that takes us to this other side of work. I think it's a great little setup to think about how that has changed so much today. Because it wasn't that long ago where the more money you had, the less work you did. And it, like you said, was a sign that you had money. And now everything has completely flipped. Yeah. So just back in the 1980s, the highest male earners worked less than middle class and lower class mail workers. Now, the richest 10% in America actually works the most. Yeah, so people used to take their resources and use it to buy time, use it to not work, use it to have leisure free time. And now people with wealth and means use that wealth and means to work more. And this in many ways defies people's

expectations. Back in the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes. Is that a Keynes? We always mess with our names. I'm a Keynesian. I hear people say it different. In 1930, he writes an essay where he predicts that in the 21st century, where we now live, people would only have 15-hour workweek. So this would be the result of good economics, of industrialization. People wouldn't need to work as much. And this is what he wrote. He said, for the first time to his creation, man will be faced with his real problem, his permanent problem, how to occupy the leisure. Isn't that amazing that he thought back in the 1930s that we were going to be working 15 hours a week, have five-day weekends, and the big problem we'd figure out is what did do with all our free time?

In 1957 New York Times article, it said this, the increasingly automatic nature of many jobs, coupled with the shortening work week, leads an increasing number of workers to look, not to work, but to leisure for satisfaction, meaning, and expression. So this is the New York Times prediction of where we're going in the future. More leisure, more time on our hands. So I'm just thinking, it's actually bizarre because in some ways it seems like they got it right, these predictions of five-day weekends, because there is apparently part of our population that does see work as a curse to be avoided. And because they're getting a check in the mail, they've been freed up to not have to work. Yeah, so they got half of it right. Yeah. And half of it really wrong. There is half that's

working less because they've gamified their life, they're looking for fun, they're looking for play. And yet there's another half of America that seems to be working more and more and more. And I would say maybe part of it is precisely because for them, work is fun. Work is the place where they are satisfying those playing needs. In fact, I think you might even go deeper than that and you would say that work is becoming a form of worship. There's an Atlantic writer named Derek Thompson. And in 2019, he wrote an article. So this is pre-pandemic. But, he wrote an article that kind of haven't got a long title, but we'll unpack it here. I think it's all important. He calls it this, workism is making Americans miserable. Now here's the subtitle. For the

college educated elite, work has morphed into a religious identity, promising transcendence and community, but failing to deliver. So let's parse apart that title because he explores it in his article, and I think it's helpful. But let's start with this phrase, workism. Workism is kind of like a religion. It's a way of life. It's a way of worship. In fact, the best example of workism that I know out there is if you meet someone, what's the very first question that you ask them? Yeah, you tend to ask them, what do you do? I hate that question.

Because you're embarrassed to say you're a pastor. You're embarrassed of Jesus? No, no, it's because I know they won't like me once I say I'm a pastor. It's like my personal goal to talk with them for 20 minutes before they realize that I work for a church. Oh, 100%. I mean, because people have so much baggage, right? And as soon as you say that you're a pastor, if somebody introduces you as a pastor, it just kills the conversation, right? Actually, the best is once they realize you're a pastor and then they apologize for how they've

been talking. Because at some point they dropped an F-Bomb. They're like, oh, I'm so sorry. I would have said that if I didn't know you or that. I'm like, okay, whatever. I think another good example is the busyness debates. If you ever knows how people debate about who's the busy is, I'm just so busy. Oh, my.

It's like a religious award. Because people get their importance, their significance from being busy with important stuff. There's a great clip. I hope this plays well on audio by. Trey Kennedy, we actually had him in our last one. He's a comedian, but in the clip, he's playing two characters, and one is telling the other how busy he is. And he's just trying to make sure the other guy knows.

This is just how busy I am. Oh. Oh. How was your day? It was good. It was just busy, busy, busy, man. Yeah, just swamped at work. I had like several client calls.

And they're like, I mean, this is the first time I've been home before seven in like weeks. Yeah, that sucks. I'd probably have to answer some more emails tonight. Bummer. You know, I'm just tired. I get up at 6 a.m. for CrossFit. It's just busy, man. Busy with a capital B. It's crazy. You know what? I've actually been really busy lately too. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Busy not caring what you've been saying to me.

What? You know who I was talking to the other day who was really busy? What's his name? What's his name? Everyone! Everyone! Oh, look, look. My to-do list for tomorrow's just stacking right up. Gonna add, don't talk to you. Because I'm so busy. Busy as a B. That's me. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz off. Look, I'm busy for the rest of the night being annoyed with you. So busy. I love that club.

Busy, busy, busy as a bee. Bus, buzz, buzz. Busy not talking to you. But it's so true, because we've all had that conversation when you're talking with someone. And they say, oh, I'm so busy. And then you say, yeah, you know, I've been busy too. And they're like, well, you don't understand how much busier I am. And it's part of the religion of workism.

It's bragging and showing. Look how much work I'm doing. My value is tied up in the fact that I don't have an open block on my calendar and my schedule. Maybe they just tell you that because they don't want to meet with you. Ooh, yeah, right. So Derek Thompson gets that this is a religion. And it's become a religious identity is what he says. And what he's getting at there is that we think of ourselves as people who accomplish, get stuff done,

have important positions, or important meetings. And if that's taken away, then all of a sudden we start asking, like, who am I? What do I have to contribute? Like, think about somebody who's unemployed. When you go through an unwanted stretch where you're unemployed, you start to really doubt yourself. Do I have any worth, any value? Who am I? So, Ronda Rousey, you might remember her.

She's an Olympic judo near champion. I think she got the silver medal. And then she went into the MMA for women. Right. What's that called? I can't think of the name of it. Is it UFC? Yeah, UFC.

I don't know. I'm but it's not because of Ronda Rousey. It's because I don't know. But she lost to Holly Home. I'm pretty sure that's the woman's name she lost to. It was the first time she'd ever lost, and she goes on Ellen. Rhonda Rousey goes on Ellen. And she has this long interview.

And here's just a little clip, but listen to the language that she uses. And we'll come back and talk about it. Yeah, so she's describing how she felt after she lost that game the next morning. Well, she didn't lose a game because it's a match. But, you know, sorry, private school. You know, I try here. My honestly like my thought I was like I was like in the medical room and I was like down in the corner I was sitting in the corner and I was like what am I anymore if I'm not this and I was literally sitting there and like thinking about killing myself in that exact second I'm like I'm nothing I'm like what did I do anymore and

and no one gives a shit about me anymore without this and um to be honest I looked up and I saw my man Travis was standing there and I was looked up at him and I was just like, I need to have his babies. I need to stay alive. That is like, really, that was good. You're going to say alive. So I think that is so fascinating. First, your heart goes out to her because she's obviously emotionally traumatized by this loss. But let's think a little bit deeper about it, how it might apply to us.

She said in there that after she lost, she no longer knew who she was. She was sitting there thinking about harming herself because she didn't know who she was. What did she have to offer? Who am I if I'm not a champion? Yeah, I mean, that was her. entire identity. In a different interview, she talks about being 10 years old, and she knew that she wanted to win an Olympic gold medal. She thought this was her purpose, her calling, her everything in life. And that's what she spent her entire life doing. And she also failed to get the gold medal and says

some really similar things there. Who am I? What is my life worth if I am not this thing? And then she looks up and she sees her man, she calls him. I don't know the relationship, Travis. And she said, I need to have his children. So I need to stay alive. Well, I'm glad. that she found something that wanted her to keep going in life. Great. But you see what she's done is she's just exchanged one identity for another. So if my identity of being a champion crumbles, now I've got to find something else to feel like I'm worthwhile and I look and it's going to be as a mother, as a wife. And so obviously that's where she's going now. But before that, she really was, to quote the title of that article again, she was looking for the promise of

transcendence in her work. For her, it was being UFC fighter. But this is something that I think a lot of people work for. So we all seek identity, our transcendence, who we are. We all try to answer that question, who am I in some way? Why do I matter? Why do I value? And a lot of people are answering that through their work. That's what workism is. Workism isn't, I love my job and I work hard at it and I want do it well. Workism is, and this is where it's dangerous, is this is who I am. It defines me and therefore I ride the roller coaster of emotions of how my job is doing and how I'm perceived by my fellow workers, my boss, my company. My success or failure as a person is wrapped up in my job performance. So it's not just a religious identity, though. I want to lean to this idea

of how it promises transcendence and community because it's not merely, hey, this is who I am. I define myself by my job. I think we go further. It's supposed to be the thing that satisfies me most in life. There was a gallop poll, I think, recently that showed that this is crazy to me. 95% of teens said that having a job or career they enjoy would be extremely or very important. Okay. I mean, who doesn't want a job they enjoy? So maybe that's actually not that crazy. It's the next part, though. They valued this more highly than helping other people than getting married. It beat building a family or being a kind person as their top ambition. Now, I find this crazy because when I think about the things that are actually likely to make you,

happy and satisfy in life. Work certainly might be a part of that. I enjoy my job and I'm thankful for that, but it is not the totality. It is not a transcendent thing which can satisfy that deep ache, that deep hole in every person's heart. And yet 95% of our teenagers are going into the workforce looking for it. It's no wonder that when people graduate from college, they're devastated by their job because it turns out sometimes work is hard. Sometimes work isn't the most satisfying. I'm not sure if you were quoting a Gallup survey or not. I think you were, I think this is how it concluded. It said, like all employees, millennials care about their income, but for this generation,

a job is about more than a paycheck. It's about a purpose. So I think that's distinctive to your generation, Patrick, is that people wanted to enjoy their job. Always, right? That's always been true. People saw work as a way to make money. Now, that's not necessarily a great way to think about it. We'll talk about how the Bible thinks about work here in a moment.

It's bigger than just making money. It's more than just a transactional thing that occurs between an employer-employee. But when we're looking for our purpose in our work, now it becomes hard because a lot of jobs don't give you a lot of purpose. If you're a factory worker, are you doing meaningful work? Well, the Bible would say, absolutely. But are you going to find the kind of purpose that most of these millennials are talking about finding? Probably not. To lean it even further, you just have to be pretty privileged to end up in a job that is,

deeply satisfying. Yeah, I was thinking that word about it. One of you the one of you said it, so I'm glad you did, because I agree. It's just true. I think I have a great job, and I'm thankful for it. I have that job because I grew up in a family that gave me the tools to get to go to college and to be successful in my education. I happen to get a job at a great place that gave me opportunity to grow and do new things. That's rare. I mean, it's not just privilege. There's a certain amount of luck. I could have just as easily ended up having to be someone who is flipping burgers for a living. And there's no shame in that kind of work. But I think you would also admit that it might not be the most deeply satisfying work. It's not going to give you transcendence. And by the way, neither would

my job. My job is not a transcendent experience. The less I look to it to satisfy me in my heart's deepest needs, the happier I am in my job. Right. It's not that people are wrong to desire transcendence. And it's not that people are wrong to think that work is meaningful. It's that they're wrong to think that their work is designed to fill that void in their life, that to scratch that itch that they desperately want scratched. But one of the things I took note of when I read Derek Thompson's article in The Atlantic is just how overtly religious he was in his language. In other words, he was driving home Americans think of work in religious categories.

He doesn't think it's healthy, and neither do I. But one of the things he did is he referenced a speech, a graduation, commitment speech, David Foster Wallace is a Kenyan College. It's kind of a well-known thing. If you'd never heard it or read it, you should pay attention to this little clip we're going to play. It's not long, but listen to what David Foster Wallace, he would remember is the famous novelist that took his life early. So he's not alive now, but super sharp, insightful. He wouldn't have called himself a Christian.

Yeah, absolutely important to know. Not a Christian at all, atheist. This is what he says. Because here's something else that's weird but true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing. thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And a compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship, be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother goddess,

or the four noble truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles, is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you a lot. So he goes on from this point to talk about how worshiping wealth will eat you alive, how worshipping your job will eat you alive, how worshipping your appearance will eat you alive. And again, he's trying to make a bigger point. He says that when you worship these things that revolve around self, as opposed to worshipping things outside of yourself, it leads to a death. Now, of course, we'd want to press that further and say, well, no, actually, if you worship anything but Jesus, you will find nothing but a bigger gaping hole in your heart. And this, again, is by an atheist who's saying that we all worship something, and what

Derek Thompson is saying in the Atlantic is a lot of people, not all of us, are worshipping work and finding our identity there and leaving us burned out, empty, and exhausted. Along the same lines, I think it explains why so many families and marriages are strained by work, because we're willing to put almost anything on the back burner in order to keep our work in the front. I'm saying this, by the way, to myself. I don't really struggle with the other side. The American work ethic is dying. If I struggle with anything, it's a temptation to worship my work, to look to my work for transcendence for purpose. In fact, working at a church can sometimes make that even harder because it blurs at times. Am I working for Jesus or am I working for work? And I see it in my own family where me putting

work first causes harm to my children, causes harm to my wife, and a whole slew of other things. Okay, so the Bible, it pushes back against both of these views of work. It pushes back against the people who want to make life a game or lazy, kind of the loss of the American work ethic that we saw on the Wall Street Journal, but it also pushes back against workism as a religion and finding your identity and work, making that number one, and trying to find transcendence and community there found in the Atlantic. And the way it does it is gives us a whole different definition, a whole different way of thinking about our work. And I really think we need to examine our lives, our beliefs, the way we live, our values, and say, do we

approach work in a God-centered way. And I think to do that, we start all the way back in the very beginning of Genesis, because when you start reading Genesis in the first chapters of the Bible, the very first worker is God. God is the first worker. He creates. And then what you find is that God creates human beings, and he tells them that they are supposed to be workers. They are supposed to have dominion over the earth. They are supposed to subdue it. And so that's why, from the very beginning, people have been workers. For example, people have developed tools because they are given the responsibility to subdue or to manage the earth that God created. I might even want to try framing it more around, this is going to sound weird, potentiality,

that God puts us on this planet that has tremendous potential. It's just raw, spring-loaded potential. And he tells humans, I want you to draw the potential out of creation. And that can mean a lot of different things. If you're a mom and you stay at home and you take care of your kids and you're disciplining and caring for this kids, you are drawing out the potentiality of what that child can become. Or if you work at a hospital and you're healing people, you're taking the potentiality of tools and medical technology to bring about healing. This is part of what it means to be a worker.

It's drawing out the potentiality of creation for the sake of loving your neighbor, of loving others. So there's so much really good stuff there. For example, one of the things that you just said, Patrick, that I think we just need to make note of is that Genesis doesn't think of paid versus unpaid work differently. So work is in our mind and our world, the way our culture works, it's what you go to during the day or at night or whatever your shift is and you get a W-2 form. But that's not how God thinks about work. Work is what you give your life to. It's your vocation. It's your calling.

It's what you put your energy into. And that's only natural. I mean, everybody's going to view work and whatever model they've grown up in. If you grew up in a capitalist country like the United States, it's going to be your model. If I get paid, it's work. If I don't get paid, it's not work. But there's nothing to do with the Bible. This might be bizarre. But let's just take the example of slavery.

I hear a lot of people say something is slavery if you don't pay someone for the work. Now, on the one hand, I find that to be a little bit silly because that would suggest that all pro bono work is slavery, not getting paid for the work. But it actually misses the point. slavery is not having control over your work or control over your time. A slave doesn't get to say when I start and when I stop working. A slave doesn't have any freedom to decide if I want to work here or if I want to work there. They've lost control over time, which is why when God frees the people from Egypt, one of the first things he does is he gives them a Sabbath. He says, there's a day where no one tells you what to do except for me. You are not a slave to anyone. In fact, your servants,

your animals, everybody, no one's a slave because they all have this freedom over their time. Again, it has nothing to do with paid and unpaid. Now, my point here isn't that we should leave people unpaid. That would be missing the point. I'm just trying to make the point that work is not attached to payment. Yeah, and another thing when you go back to Genesis, is we see that work is something people did before sin ever entered into the world. So God created human beings to work, to have something to give their time to, to, like Patrick said, love your neighbor by making the world a better place, producing a product or taking care of. of a family, whatever it is. And that all was in place before sin ever enters into the world. So I think

sometimes we believe that work is the product of the fall. It's not. No, it's not. Again, like Keith already said, Genesis 2-2, God finished the work. So one, God doesn't sin. If God does work, according to the Bible, work can't be a part of sin. But then the second thing you need to know is that God in Genesis 2 calls Adam to, quote, work the garden and take care of it. God's first command to Adam in the garden is actually to work it, to take care of it. Work is a part of our human calling. In other words, I think we actually degrade ourselves. We make ourselves subhuman if we give into the play and the gamification of life. It's not that playing is wrong. It's that you were made for more than play. You were made to work. When you aren't drawing out the potentiality of creation for the

sake of others and for the sake of your neighbor, you will always feel like something is missing in your image bearing, in your God-likeness. There's going to be something that's left out. And then when sin does enter into the world in Genesis 3, that's when work becomes hard and difficult. It's when part of the curse of sin is that Adam is told that his work will now be more than the sweat of his brow, right? It's going to be tough. And so, yes, some of the things that you experience in your work life that are hardships and hassles and difficult, and trials, that comes from the fall. But the idea that we are workers, that is how God made us. Yeah, and that little phrase by the sweat of the brow was actually a Hebrew cliché.

It was a Hebrew cliche. It was a Hebrew idiom for anxiety. Was it? Yeah. And so, well, it was. And so it's really interesting because it's not merely that work becomes more laborious and difficult after the fall. It's that work isn't just producing the potentiality for others. it's also producing sometimes anxiety and worry and hardship in your life. And so on the one hand, we have to be able to say, work is good. God gave it to us. It is not a bad thing. And yet, this side of the fall, work has been corrupted.

Work has been shaded by human sin. And no one gets to escape that either. A quick example from biblical history is you've got Daniel. You're probably familiar with him. And he is working in a pagan government, King Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, super pagan. Daniel has a high-ranking position. And that's how he serves God is by working in a pagan government. So Daniel will do these incredible things with the Lions Den or his friends will do things in the fiery furnace. And you're familiar with those stories. But what Daniel did day to day in his life to serve God was to work inside of this pagan government.

And I think that gives us a sense of hope and encouragement that we can serve God. inside of whatever company it is that we are working for. If Daniel can serve God, the true and only God, Yahweh, while working for the pagan King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, then whatever job you have, whatever company, whatever government, whatever, I'm pretty sure you can serve God there too. Around the same time, the prophet Jeremiah wrote letters to the exiles in Babylon where Daniel was already at, and he said this. He said, seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you into exile.

Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you will prosper to. And part of how they do that, according to Jeremiah, he says, build houses, settle down, plant gardens, and eat what they produce. Now, here's what this tells me. We are all, in a sense, in exile. We are all in a sense living in Babylon. Just like Daniel, we have to navigate tricky waters of what it looks like to be faithful to God when you're working with people who have interests that are opposed to God's kingdom and God's purposes. That's always going to happen in our work. It's always going to be something that we wrestle with. And yet, when Christians come into a workplace, they should see themselves as little atoms and Eve's who are planting new gardens of Eden right there in that work spot.

Your job is to come in and to draw out the potential good for the sake of others. And if you start seeing that, you'll be like these people who are in exile and you'll say, you know what, I'm going to seek the peace and prosperity of the city. I'm going to make the Garden of Eden in my Babylon. And that's God's calling for my life. Just one more little thing on that, Patrick's. I think it's a great point is that one of the ways we love our neighbor is, by working in our job. So let's say you are a server at a restaurant and you just do a great job. You

have a great attitude. You take care of your customers. You get along with the other employees and you're good at what you do. That's a way to love your neighbor because it is providing great service to somebody who wanted to go out to eat and enjoy a conversation with their spouse or their friend or whatever. So you can take that and apply it to what you do. If you're a factory worker helping to build cars. You're making something that people need and want reliable transportation. If you're an engineer and you're designing bridges, that is very valuable work. It's the way you love your neighbor. One way, not the only way, but one important way to love your neighbor. And I think we just think, well, it's if I take them a meal when they're sick. Well, that's true. Or if I just serve

in the Children's Ministry of Church, yeah, that's true. But also your vocation is a way to love your neighbor. It's so true. And you actually need to sit down and think through how your vocation. loves others. It was one thing I find is that people think, well, yeah, that's true of other jobs, not mine. I remember talking to people who work in the financial field, helping closing out home loans. And they're like, well, you know, other people help others, but I'm just an underwriter. I just sign papers and do number. And that's all that I do. So what I do doesn't help anyone. And I say, well, hold on, you are making it possible so that someone who doesn't have enough money right now can in the present buy a house, which they cannot pay for and pay off that house and

eventually own that house in the present. They don't have money for it. You're going to give them a home. And you don't understand how you're part of the process of making sure that this is happening in a legitimate way in the right financial process. You don't understand that guess what? You are loving people. You are caring for people. You're making things possible. You're drawing out potentiality. They couldn't own that house without you. Yeah. And you're not just helping them get into a house, but you're helping them get into a house that they can afford. You as an underwriter are making sure this makes financial sense. So you're doing this person a lot of good. but that's why they're there, so of course it matters. And then when you look into the New Testament,

what you see is there's some pretty strong warnings about work. Paul writes this in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 3. He said, for even when we were with you, we gave you this rule. The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat. Wow. I tell that's my daughter every night. Now, I think the key word there, and Patrick kind of points it out, that is unwilling to work. Not unable to work, like your daughter, right, who just hasn't matured to the point where she's able to pull her fair share around the house, but unwilling to work. It's not talking about somebody who has a disability or can't work for some reason. You're talking about someone who is unwilling to work. That person should not eat. That's a pretty strong

call that whatever abilities that you have, you're responsible to use to take care of yourself and your family. In fact, if you go earlier than that, Paul specifically warns against B. idol, not being a idol, but not doing things. And so there's a warning, we might say, in the Bible, against the gamification of life, against allowing yourself to be taken up into idle fancies. And he says, part of the reason why this is a problem is that it just creates messes in other people's lives. One final verse, 1 Timothy 5.8 says this, anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Now, I find this interesting, but remember, if the goal of work is to draw out the potentiality

of creation for the sake of others, Paul is saying here that the others you should care the most about, at least first and foremost, are your own relatives. In other words, part of how God has designed his creation to work is that people work and they care for their own. And if people are caring for their own, then people are cared for. You ever seen the movie Cherries of Fire? I've actually never watched it all the way through. Oh, wow. So this is going to be the time where I've seen something and you haven't seen it. I tried to watch it. It's so slow. It's like, why am I not surprised it's this ancient movie. I don't know. I'm surprised it's not black and white. When was it made? I don't know. I have no idea. But it is so slow if you try to watch it. But it's the story of, well, I'm not going to tell you the whole thing, right? But you got a guy named Eric Liddell who's competing for Scotland. Is that how you say his name? Little Liddle, I don't know. He's competing for Scotland in the Olympics. And kind of his counterpart in the movie is a guy named Harold Abrams. Now, this is a true story. These are real people. Eric Lidel is a fantastic runner. And so is Harold Abrams. But Liddell's a Christian, and he won't run on the Sabbath.

And that's where a lot of this controversy comes down to in the film and how it plays out in the 1924 Olympics, I think. So Eric Liddle is trying to figure out, do I run in the Olympics and train for that, or do I go be a missionary to China? Now, the way the story plays out, he ends up doing both. So here's a little clip from the film when he's talking about it with his sister. So listen to how he thinks about running, which, remember, is part of his vocation. It's calling his work. I've decided. I'm going back to China.

The missionary service have accepted. Oh, I'm so pleased. I've got a lot of running to do first. Jenny. Jenny, you've got to understand. I believe that God made me for a purpose. For China. But he also made me fat.

And when I run, I feel his pleasure. To give it up would be to hold. him in contempt, you were right. It's not just fun. To win, it's to honor him. So this guy, he's a fantastic guy. Super interesting. I did a biographical sermon on him a few years ago. He ends up going to China, ends up dying there for his faith in a prison camp. Anyway, but did you hear that in that clip? What he says is that he feels God's pleasure when he does his work, what he's called to do. And I wonder if you went to work and thought,

I want to be aware of God's pleasure in me. Okay, so let's contrast Eric Little in another clip from Chariots of Fire. This is from Harold Abrams. He's also a fantastic runner. He's not a Christian. He is explaining how he's getting ready to go out and run this Olympic race. And listen to how he talks about running that race,

which again, remember, is analogous to our work. Now in one hour's time I'll be out there again. I'll raise my eyes and look down that corridor, four feet wide with ten lonely seconds to justify my whole existence. But will I? Yeah, so in the scene, he's getting a massage from his trainer, and he says, I've got ten seconds to justify my existence. Because he sees running, his vocation is calling his work,

not as something from God that he can glorify God with, but something he can use to justify that, he's a valuable person, that his life has meaning and purpose. So he looks to his work to be something it can never be to justify his existence as opposed to saying, no, I'm created to work. I'm a worker and I love my neighbor and I serve God and I feel his pleasure in doing my work. So how do you think about your work? Do you put too much of a burden on it to look to define you in your life? Or do you shirk your work. Rhymed, I didn't mean to. You shirk your work in a sense of, I'm just going to do as little

as possible, kind of the laziness, the gamification of life. How do you think about your work? You've got to wrestle with this because you're made in the image of God. You're created to be a worker. And this is what you're going to do for your life. So you have to have a right attitude about it. Not just for your life, but for eternity. And you should have red flags go up. if you find your work ethic dying or if you find that your work ethic is defining, that's a problem. The only way to have a healthy relationship with work is exactly what he's been talking about is to do it for the pleasure of God. You might not be like Eric Liddell who he says, look, I was made fast.

And some of us get to do work that we feel like we were just made for. Many of us, most of us, in fact, that won't be the kind of work that we do, but that doesn't mean that we can't find God's pleasure in it, that we can't drop the potentiality of creation for the sake of others. And the more we do that, and the more we honor God and our work, the healthier relationship we're going to have to work. And dare I say, the more we will actually enjoy the work itself. Thanks for listening.

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