How much do we connect our work with God?  In a seminar on faith and work which I attended a few years ago, most of the people in my small group of twelve said that they never thought of their work as having anything to do with God or their faith. 

Our increasingly secular culture would like to keep God and faith confined to Sundays and inside church buildings.  But that was never God’s intention.  He tells us at the beginning of Genesis, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work and take care of it.” (Genesis 2:15, NIV) God created us in his image and likeness and put us in the garden of his creation to “work and take care of it.” 

The Second Vatican Council said, “This split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted as one of the more serious errors of our age.”  In commenting on this condition, St. John Paul II said, “A faith that does not affect a person’s culture is a faith not fully embraced, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived.”

We had a legal secretary where I worked who talked a lot about her Christian faith in the office.  But when she was being counseled about her poor performance in serving the attorneys assigned to her, she indignantly proclaimed, “I don’t serve anyone but God!”  She was obviously confused about what serving God entailed — that we serve God and take care of his creation when we bring his presence into our work, seeking to bring his love, truth and excellence to our jobs and the people and circumstances of our workplaces.

James Hunter, in his book, To Change the World, says that the “great commission” has long been viewed geographically in terms of sending missionaries to faraway places.  But the great commission can also be interpreted in terms of the church going into all realms of social structure, including the workplace in whatever form it takes.  He says, “When the church does not send people out to these realms and when it does not provide the theologies that make sense of work and engagement, the church fails to fulfill the charge to ‘go into all the world.’”   

We serve God and take care of his creation when we do our jobs to the best of our ability no matter how significant or insignificant we may view them.  We are acting in God’s plan for us when we bring his presence, truth, love, and excellence into the conduct of our jobs. 

How do you view your work?