Labor Day Redux: Why do we work?

September 14, 7:34 AMSt. Louis Reformed Christian ExaminerBrad Edwards

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Clearly, this lolcat is not too conerned about working for his identity...

The most important theological question one can ever ask is, simply… “why?”  No other question will as effectively address the heart.  No other question will peel away the symptoms to reveal our true sickness, nor fully reveal the grace of God.  Giving to charity for a tax break and giving to charity from a heart of love cause the same tangible results, but they are far from equal.  Serving at a soup kitchen for the sake of being a ‘good person’ and serving at a soup kitchen from a heart of humbled grace will both result in the feeding of the needy, but one is thinly veiled selfishness and the other an act of worship.  So when we ask the question “why do we work,” we are really cutting to the core of what truly matters.

The short answer to this question is, “identity.”  Identity is a powerful thing.  It has the ability to assure or distress, to comfort or devastate, to love or condemn.  Our culture defines us by what we do.  We are first and foremost a lawyer, an artist, a nurse, a barista, etc.  Those identities change.  If we fail in them, we are shaken at best, and devastated at worst.  The Bible defines us by what has been done on our behalf.  No matter what happens to our job or our ability to work, who we are as a person, as a human being, is secure.  Let’s unpack this a bit…

If we work for our identity, we are merely consuming.  Look at the American Dream.  It is the quintessential example of what it means to work for your identity.  We have been led to believe that if we just work hard enough, we can be wealthy and successful with 2.54 kids, a white picket fence, and a dog.  Those are not necessarily bad things, but do we sing the praises of those who tried and failed? Do we sing the praises of those who are content with their standard of living? Do we make movies or write books about them? The American Dream is less of a statement of HOW to be successful, and more of statement of what is ultimately valuable.

But it doesn’t have to be all about wealth, either.  This idea of working for your identity can extend into any vocation where you define yourself by what you do.  If you work in a soup kitchen and look down on others because they don’t, you work for your identity.  If I preach this sermon and react defensively to legitimate critique… it will be because I heard it as a critique against my very person, my identity, and will have proven that I worked for my identity.  So if you have a critique when I’m done… please… be kind.  I’d rather not eat these words!

If we work from our identity as jacked up but infinitely loved children of God, we create instead of consume.  We are freed from our inability to ever do enough, and enabled to truly live.  I had a professor tell my class once that he stopped telling his wife he loved her and started asking her if she felt loved by him.  Guys, I wouldn’t recommend this for everyone, especially since he has had a few decades of marriage under his belt.  He demonstrated that his identity was secure in the gospel… it was secure in the knowledge that God loves him know matter what his wife’s answer was.  He was freed to actually love her even better.  When we work from our identity, we can try and fail.  When we work form our identity, we are most bearing God’s image as co-creators.
If we are defined by what we do instead of who we are, we are either destined for despair or bound to arrogance.  We can only be either painfully aware of our failures, or fooled into believing that we have none.  Or I guess we can throw our hands up and say “well, nobody’s perfect,” but that just lowers the standard to what we can achieve… which is just another way of saying “I don’t have any real failures, so I’m good.” 

This traps us in our work.  It binds us to an anxious pursuit of identity that is sadly comparable to a hamster running in his wheel: constantly striving but never really getting anywhere.  It doesn’t matter what good we’ve done, what status we’ve attained, what awards we’ve received, what standard of living we’ve reached, what discoveries we’ve made, what foundations we’ve laid… If we ask the all-important question of “why,” and find that the answer is that we’ve been working to consume for our identity, it all matters for naught.  We are still running in the same wheel, in the same cage, with the same results.

The Gospel, the good news that we are more jacked up than we could possible imagine, yet simultaneously more loved and adored than we dared to hope, frees us from this prison.  It frees us to work to create from an identity that is eternally secure and never in danger of being lost.  We have the freedom to fail.  The Gospel enables is to take huge risks in creating a world worth living in, to create peace from chaos, to create culture from nothing (ex nihilo), to create love where there was only hate, to create peace where there was only anxiety.  When we work to create from our identity as image bearers of a Creator God, we worship.

If you are a Christian, remind yourself of this unchanging truth.  Preach this to yourself daily.  If we do not actively work from this identity, we will forget and fall into futility.   You are forgiven, and therefore have nothing to hide.  You are blameless, and therefore have nothing to prove.  You are completely and unconditionally loved, and therefore have nothing to hide.  No matter what you do, no matter how distant your Father in heaven might feel, He will never not love you.  You will always be His son or daughter.  You don’t have to work for this identity because Christ’s work accomplished this on your behalf.  It is complete.  It is finished.  Fin.  Caput.  D. U. N. Done.  There is no more need to work for your identity.  That’s it! Get excited! Get over it!   Live from it!

If you are not a Christian, know that your work can also be complete.  The bill has been paid in full.  My hope and goal in saying all this is not to condemn you, but to encourage you and present you with a compelling alternative vision of true life.  Life freed from the hamster wheel of despair or arrogance.  Life freed from comparatively fruitless and futile labor.