I Don’t Like My Job — Now What?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - We're back with Tim Keller, author of the book
00:00:07.120 | titled Every Good Endeavor,
00:00:08.680 | Connecting Your Work to God's Work.
00:00:10.660 | We talked yesterday on the important topics
00:00:12.760 | of business vocation and calling.
00:00:14.160 | Along the way we talked to college graduates
00:00:15.960 | and we talked to parents, we talked to Christians
00:00:17.880 | who feel stuck, stuck in their jobs.
00:00:20.300 | Let's move forward and discuss a young man
00:00:22.440 | or a young woman who is deciding on a career now.
00:00:25.240 | I mean, one of the things you say in the book
00:00:26.460 | is that in New York City, a number of sharp young adults
00:00:29.160 | graduate from college and then they select a career
00:00:31.640 | as a form of identity.
00:00:33.960 | The career becomes for them a status symbol.
00:00:37.700 | Explain that.
00:00:38.800 | - Well, there's been a lot of great books written recently
00:00:43.240 | on this idea that we live in a consumeristic age
00:00:46.080 | in which your identity is seen in the products you consume.
00:00:49.860 | I'm the kind of person that wears this kind of clothing,
00:00:53.920 | owns this kind of, these electronics,
00:00:58.020 | I, you know, these are the accessories I use.
00:01:01.620 | So you actually get your identity
00:01:02.900 | from the brands that you use.
00:01:05.460 | And I'm afraid that what's happened here
00:01:08.380 | is that jobs are like that too.
00:01:11.500 | And there's just no doubt, I see plenty of people
00:01:13.220 | taking jobs that really don't fit,
00:01:15.380 | A, it doesn't fit their talents very well,
00:01:18.540 | and B, very often the jobs don't necessarily fulfill them
00:01:22.820 | because the jobs aren't really maybe helping people
00:01:25.340 | very much, but the jobs are high status.
00:01:27.860 | And because they're high status,
00:01:29.460 | people feel like I need to be in that job
00:01:30.960 | so I can feel good about myself, so it's an identity marker.
00:01:33.340 | So people are very often not choosing jobs
00:01:36.500 | on the basis of vocation, not saying what gifts do I have
00:01:39.860 | and how can I be useful to other people through my work,
00:01:42.140 | but how do I take a job that gives me
00:01:45.460 | the same kind of sense of self-worth I get
00:01:48.740 | when I'm driving a particular kind of car.
00:01:50.900 | - Yeah, fascinating.
00:01:51.940 | All right, here's a hypothetical question,
00:01:53.980 | but I think it gets a modern business ethics question
00:01:57.060 | that we get a lot in the inbox.
00:01:59.260 | Let's pretend in ancient Babylon,
00:02:01.460 | there's a God-fearing man who grows straw.
00:02:03.780 | He's good at it, he works hard, he serves his buyer well,
00:02:07.260 | he always delivers his straw on time,
00:02:10.100 | he's joyful, humble, people like him.
00:02:11.980 | But his straw is then used to create reinforced,
00:02:16.260 | baked bricks that are stacked one on top of each other
00:02:20.100 | into the Tower of Babel.
00:02:22.060 | I mean, the question is this, at one point,
00:02:24.540 | is the straw grower's vocation virtuous or not virtuous?
00:02:28.580 | Or to put this in other terms,
00:02:30.940 | how far is the Christian accountable
00:02:32.460 | to the ultimate ends of company that he or she works for,
00:02:35.380 | which may exist only to create a name for itself?
00:02:38.240 | - Well, I mean, I think you have to be very directly
00:02:42.500 | collaborating with evil before you start to try to get that.
00:02:46.820 | See, the trouble with the purest impulse is this.
00:02:50.940 | If I make bread and I know that there are criminals
00:02:54.180 | in town eating that bread and staying alive
00:02:56.140 | because of my bread making, should I really get out of that?
00:02:59.660 | Should I say, okay, well, only a certain percentage
00:03:02.300 | of the criminal, but I mean, I'm helping them live.
00:03:04.260 | I mean, you actually, Luther would laugh at the idea
00:03:09.260 | that you, in some pure way, have to make sure
00:03:12.060 | that your work only furthers godly ends.
00:03:15.780 | He says, your job is there to,
00:03:17.920 | God feeds everything that has breath.
00:03:23.220 | Luther expounds the Psalms, especially Psalms 145
00:03:26.940 | and 146 and 147, where it talks about God feeds everything
00:03:31.940 | that has breath.
00:03:33.340 | He loves everything that he's made.
00:03:35.140 | And Luther then says, okay, well,
00:03:36.280 | how does God feed everybody?
00:03:37.620 | Well, he feeds them through the farmer.
00:03:38.860 | He feeds them through the milkmaid,
00:03:41.460 | who's milking the cow.
00:03:42.420 | He feeds it through the truck driver
00:03:43.500 | who's bringing the things to market.
00:03:45.380 | That's really God's work then.
00:03:46.820 | If you're just farming, you're doing God's work.
00:03:48.940 | It doesn't have to be a Christian farmer.
00:03:51.020 | You just do it, and it's God's work.
00:03:53.420 | But then at a certain point,
00:03:55.060 | I do believe, 'cause I'm Reformed,
00:03:58.700 | and I believe in world view, importance of world view,
00:04:01.580 | that work also does need to have,
00:04:03.740 | it has to be done from a Christian perspective.
00:04:06.740 | But I also think that Luther's got something to say,
00:04:09.460 | that all work is good work if it's done well.
00:04:11.660 | And that if you actually try to say,
00:04:13.540 | well, this work is actually helping someone
00:04:15.780 | who's furthering evil ends, at a certain point,
00:04:17.620 | you'd be completely paralyzed.
00:04:19.060 | You couldn't do anything.
00:04:20.300 | - Yeah, that's really good.
00:04:22.020 | One final question, Tim, and then I'll let you go.
00:04:24.980 | What would you say to a Christian
00:04:26.700 | who does not have a lot of options?
00:04:28.460 | They have a job that was available,
00:04:30.460 | not because they chose it from 12 different options.
00:04:32.960 | Speak to a Christian who is,
00:04:34.900 | or who feels like they are vocationally stuck.
00:04:38.940 | How does the doctrine of vocation work in their situation?
00:04:42.460 | - So Luther's understanding of calling
00:04:44.940 | is that the farm girl who's milking the cows
00:04:50.340 | needs to, even if it's the only job available to her
00:04:52.780 | and she'd like to go somewhere else,
00:04:53.820 | she needs to see what she's doing is God's calling.
00:04:56.860 | She needs to say that this isn't just milking cows,
00:04:59.020 | this is my way of participating in God's care for creation.
00:05:03.220 | Because he has decided this is how I'm going to do it.
00:05:06.220 | There's a place where Luther takes,
00:05:09.100 | I forget what psalm, where he says,
00:05:11.260 | "God strengthens the bars of the city gates."
00:05:13.860 | In other words, he gives you security.
00:05:15.240 | And then Luther says,
00:05:16.080 | "But how does God strengthen the bar of your city gates?"
00:05:18.660 | He does it with good governors
00:05:20.300 | and good policemen and good soldiers.
00:05:22.480 | And what he's trying to get across
00:05:24.140 | is that all good work done well is God's calling.
00:05:29.140 | And that aspect, see,
00:05:31.740 | I actually do think that the Calvinist understanding
00:05:33.860 | of calling, which is doing God's work
00:05:37.260 | from a Christian worldview,
00:05:38.840 | and the Lutheran understanding of calling,
00:05:41.080 | which is simply caring for creation,
00:05:43.740 | being useful to other people through the work you do,
00:05:46.340 | I do think they're complementary.
00:05:47.780 | I really do.
00:05:49.460 | And I think it's something of a,
00:05:51.460 | that's a very big part of the book,
00:05:53.300 | is to bring out the fact that I think they're complementary.
00:05:55.600 | You've got to use them both.
00:05:57.000 | So seeing your work as a calling is not a problem
00:06:01.200 | if you're stuck in a job you don't like.
00:06:03.360 | You need to say that right now, it's still God's calling.
00:06:05.460 | And that gives me,
00:06:07.260 | I think that gives you a lot of peace to say,
00:06:09.220 | "Hey, I can still answer God's calling in this job,
00:06:14.220 | even when I am looking for a job
00:06:16.580 | that I think fits my gifts better."
00:06:18.580 | - Yeah, thank you.
00:06:19.500 | That was Timothy Keller from his office in New York City.
00:06:21.660 | Keller serves as the pastor
00:06:22.940 | of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.
00:06:25.580 | And he is the author of a wheelbarrow full of great books,
00:06:28.660 | including "Every Good Endeavor,
00:06:29.900 | Connecting Your Work to God's Work."
00:06:31.700 | Check it out.
00:06:32.820 | This week's episodes were pulled
00:06:34.300 | from my 2012 interview with him.
00:06:37.580 | While atheism is not an ignorance problem,
00:06:40.300 | atheism is a preference problem.
00:06:42.580 | And John Piper will explain the difference tomorrow.
00:06:45.360 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:06:46.200 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:06:48.700 | (upbeat music)
00:06:51.280 | (upbeat music)
00:06:53.860 | [BLANK_AUDIO]