(upbeat music) - We're back with Tim Keller, author of the book titled Every Good Endeavor, Connecting Your Work to God's Work. We talked yesterday on the important topics of business vocation and calling. Along the way we talked to college graduates and we talked to parents, we talked to Christians who feel stuck, stuck in their jobs.

Let's move forward and discuss a young man or a young woman who is deciding on a career now. I mean, one of the things you say in the book is that in New York City, a number of sharp young adults graduate from college and then they select a career as a form of identity.

The career becomes for them a status symbol. Explain that. - Well, there's been a lot of great books written recently on this idea that we live in a consumeristic age in which your identity is seen in the products you consume. I'm the kind of person that wears this kind of clothing, owns this kind of, these electronics, I, you know, these are the accessories I use.

So you actually get your identity from the brands that you use. And I'm afraid that what's happened here is that jobs are like that too. And there's just no doubt, I see plenty of people taking jobs that really don't fit, A, it doesn't fit their talents very well, and B, very often the jobs don't necessarily fulfill them because the jobs aren't really maybe helping people very much, but the jobs are high status.

And because they're high status, people feel like I need to be in that job so I can feel good about myself, so it's an identity marker. So people are very often not choosing jobs on the basis of vocation, not saying what gifts do I have and how can I be useful to other people through my work, but how do I take a job that gives me the same kind of sense of self-worth I get when I'm driving a particular kind of car.

- Yeah, fascinating. All right, here's a hypothetical question, but I think it gets a modern business ethics question that we get a lot in the inbox. Let's pretend in ancient Babylon, there's a God-fearing man who grows straw. He's good at it, he works hard, he serves his buyer well, he always delivers his straw on time, he's joyful, humble, people like him.

But his straw is then used to create reinforced, baked bricks that are stacked one on top of each other into the Tower of Babel. I mean, the question is this, at one point, is the straw grower's vocation virtuous or not virtuous? Or to put this in other terms, how far is the Christian accountable to the ultimate ends of company that he or she works for, which may exist only to create a name for itself?

- Well, I mean, I think you have to be very directly collaborating with evil before you start to try to get that. See, the trouble with the purest impulse is this. If I make bread and I know that there are criminals in town eating that bread and staying alive because of my bread making, should I really get out of that?

Should I say, okay, well, only a certain percentage of the criminal, but I mean, I'm helping them live. I mean, you actually, Luther would laugh at the idea that you, in some pure way, have to make sure that your work only furthers godly ends. He says, your job is there to, God feeds everything that has breath.

Luther expounds the Psalms, especially Psalms 145 and 146 and 147, where it talks about God feeds everything that has breath. He loves everything that he's made. And Luther then says, okay, well, how does God feed everybody? Well, he feeds them through the farmer. He feeds them through the milkmaid, who's milking the cow.

He feeds it through the truck driver who's bringing the things to market. That's really God's work then. If you're just farming, you're doing God's work. It doesn't have to be a Christian farmer. You just do it, and it's God's work. But then at a certain point, I do believe, 'cause I'm Reformed, and I believe in world view, importance of world view, that work also does need to have, it has to be done from a Christian perspective.

But I also think that Luther's got something to say, that all work is good work if it's done well. And that if you actually try to say, well, this work is actually helping someone who's furthering evil ends, at a certain point, you'd be completely paralyzed. You couldn't do anything.

- Yeah, that's really good. One final question, Tim, and then I'll let you go. What would you say to a Christian who does not have a lot of options? They have a job that was available, not because they chose it from 12 different options. Speak to a Christian who is, or who feels like they are vocationally stuck.

How does the doctrine of vocation work in their situation? - So Luther's understanding of calling is that the farm girl who's milking the cows needs to, even if it's the only job available to her and she'd like to go somewhere else, she needs to see what she's doing is God's calling.

She needs to say that this isn't just milking cows, this is my way of participating in God's care for creation. Because he has decided this is how I'm going to do it. There's a place where Luther takes, I forget what psalm, where he says, "God strengthens the bars of the city gates." In other words, he gives you security.

And then Luther says, "But how does God strengthen the bar of your city gates?" He does it with good governors and good policemen and good soldiers. And what he's trying to get across is that all good work done well is God's calling. And that aspect, see, I actually do think that the Calvinist understanding of calling, which is doing God's work from a Christian worldview, and the Lutheran understanding of calling, which is simply caring for creation, being useful to other people through the work you do, I do think they're complementary.

I really do. And I think it's something of a, that's a very big part of the book, is to bring out the fact that I think they're complementary. You've got to use them both. So seeing your work as a calling is not a problem if you're stuck in a job you don't like.

You need to say that right now, it's still God's calling. And that gives me, I think that gives you a lot of peace to say, "Hey, I can still answer God's calling in this job, even when I am looking for a job that I think fits my gifts better." - Yeah, thank you.

That was Timothy Keller from his office in New York City. Keller serves as the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. And he is the author of a wheelbarrow full of great books, including "Every Good Endeavor, Connecting Your Work to God's Work." Check it out. This week's episodes were pulled from my 2012 interview with him.

While atheism is not an ignorance problem, atheism is a preference problem. And John Piper will explain the difference tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)