Work for What?

You can work for anything you crave to achieve. And you can keep moving onto the next object or objective of aspiration. Better to be engaged in good works than to get bored to death. Only avoid to drain your life away working for finite aspirations.

Delusional Work

Don't think you'll get fulfilled by work on account of virtuousness, knowledge, richness, recognition, family, relations, self-esteem, lifestyle, sex or other desires effected or financed through work.

Because at the end of the day… Morality subverts. Wisdom puffs. Loftiness annoys. Remembrance fades. Offsprings depart. Relationships deceive. Self-love enslaves. Bohemia depresses. Libido withers. Desire addicts. And you die.

King Solomon, widely recognized amongst the wisest of humans, attained supreme distinction, understanding, prosperity, fame, heirs, alliances, self-pride, luxuriousness, women and anything he wanted really. In circa 1000 BC he penned in the scriptures of Ecclesiastes: “I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”

Solomon adds, as if writing to any person today absorbed in surviving or self-indulging: “there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, 'For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?' This also is vanity and an unhappy business.” The "pleasure" he longs for is an inward and unending one in a joyful heart and peaceful mind.

The king continues: “As he came from his mother’s womb he shall go again, naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand. This also is a grievous evil: just as he came, so shall he go, and what gain is there to him who toils for the wind?”

But work is not a drag. Neither should it be correlated to humanity’s state of sin: a tale wrongly inferred from the Bible. In fact, work existed in Eden before the advent of sin and the Bible never shames work in paradise if you read it well, on the contrary.

The issue then is not work itself, but our approach to self-fulfillment and self-servicing desires. Our desires are deceitful and laboring to reach them is delusional. Would you want to keep fooling or inebriating yourself with busyness for the sake of intermittent sparks of pleasure while insatiably parading yourself to death? Get off this life trap!

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

Philosophy, above represented in the words of French mathematician Blaise Pascal, has long understood our inherent pursuit of happiness. Hope and pursuit themselves keep us happy as we exploit personal talents and gifts to reach our valued excellence. But joy for work and life plummets when there's no hope and pursuit ends. Pursuit also ends when "excellence" is finite or arrives to a point of just getting more of the same things listed in the second paragraph and exemplified back-to-back in the fourth one. Sooner or later these aspirations lead to the respective outcomes in the third paragraph anyways bringing “nothing to be gained under the sun” as Solomon concluded. As you ponder, read again those three paragraphs above noticing the nine elements list of desires in corresponding order.

So, work for what? Could we ever unearth anything in or by ourselves that could always take us from one degree of glory to another? Anything that could keep elevating us in unbounded pleasure towards unfathomable excellence and joy? Is there a way to reach fulfillment in a career of everlasting satisfaction? Should we keep peddling the hamster wheel of trivial lives no matter how much we achieve as king Solomon inferred with all his human magnificence?

Work that fulfills

In his wisdom and experience, Solomon yet came to realize that “there is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” He realized that this happens when “God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.” Solomon is saying that enjoyment from work comes from God’s hands, when we’re one with Him. He is saying that we rest in joy when we’re kept busy by God, with God.

We can continue chasing after stuff or pleasure, ideals or knowledge. But chasing after these things would never ultimately satisfy us. Our "Tower of Babel" will never reach heavens of fulfillment where only the glory of God abides. Yet this is the glory to be pursued. We are fulfilled in joy when we engage in work focused on nothing less than God’s excellency, in God himself.

Divinely gifted skills enable us to administer the Earth through work. Work, in fact, was conceived to tender the original paradise garden before it was lost to sin which brought with it hardship, pain and death. In that original conception, muscles and intellect were used to fulfill the divine purpose of enjoying the Creator. This joy was expressed through strength, ingenuity and beauty applied in the order of creation.

When Adam and Eve walked with the Creator they enjoyed the water of life flowing from an endless spring. But, as prophet Jeremiah puts, we lost access to this spring when we turned our back to God to build broken cisterns of our own which are only capable of holding water for a limited amount and limited time.

We can only understand this if we realize, and release ourselves from, our slavery of self-love and addiction to self-desires. This implies getting to know God first, surrendering ourselves to Him and accepting His hand, as Solomon shared three thousand years ago. What does this really mean and how to approach it? Back to biblical scriptures. 

First, it is necessary to acknowledge the Bible’s apologetics. It is corroborated by the accomplished prophecies that it revealed outwardly through its protagonists and by the ensued experiences that it reveals inwardly to its believers (who look forward to other promises yet to be consummated after the “last days” we live in). These God-inspired scriptures were penned by over 40 men throughout 1500 years in a consistent story throughout different literary ages and styles. It is unnecessary to justify the inerrancy and truthfulness of their oracles which have since ever been under attack but never demonstrably disproven through any science. It would have taken only one proof of untruth to definitively condemn those sacred scriptures to universal disdain together with the only true God it portrays. Therefore, don’t bamboozle yourself with all the noise trying to decry the Bible or to detract, distract or depart from it with further scriptures, decrees, traditions or myths. In fact, this last point is condemned upfront in the Bible by Moses, Agur, Jesus, and the apostles Peter, Paul and John who repeatedly emphasized that these scriptures are God’s only written revelations and instructions to humanity.

A glimpse of the power in the Bible is given in the beginning of the gospel of John. It recalls that God spoke the world into existence with His Word (as a verb) alluding that that same Word (as a noun) was God Himself made flesh through Whom and to Whom creation came about. The letter to the Hebrews further states that the universe is also sustained through that godly incarnated Word (which is Jesus Christ, “the last Adam”) which (Who) purges us from spiritual obtuseness. This same epistle goes on to affirm that the Word of God is living and powerful to pierce division of soul and spirit. All old and new testaments attest the power in the spiritual regeneration of born-again believers which Jesus affirms has greater value than the sum of all the world's assets combined when he says: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” reasserting that He Himself is the enabler of a fulfilling life: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”.

The power of Scriptures is manifested to those who believe and follow them through the conduit of our faith in Jesus Christ and his Gospel. This means having faith in God and His Word, which starts by recognizing our state of sin, being declared right by God “once and for all” as we trust and commit to Him as Saviour and Lord - therefore redeemed into renovated lives away from the penalty and power of sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The premise is that this path needs to be approached in genuine humbleness, yielding to God, admitting that His thoughts and ways are higher than ours, as prophet Isaiah reminds us. The apostle Paul complemented “How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!” and ironically in his letter to the Romans: “who are you, o man, to question God?”. Psalms and Proverbs reinforces that "His understanding is beyond measure” and that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. If you happen to still have your head buried in sand - either in the atheistic belief that matter and energy created themselves, or in any religious (or irreligious) indoctrination of misled sympathy, - it’s time to stick it out. Or you can keep struggling with, and unfruitfully rebutting, the message of the Gospel as much as you want and keep relying on your own thoughts, judgements and ways, never grasping why everything you do never becomes fulfilling...

Once you humbly realize the power of the Word and faith, you will also convene that there is no work in and of ourselves that can convey us towards godly glory. We can achieve no fulfillment out of self-righteousness or by any law or by any scientific or social standard of our own. The ultimate law and standard is God Himself and His Word through which the universe came to being and is sustained. The whole Old Testament of the Bible demonstrates it while pointing to the New Testament’s central point of our justification only by grace only through faith in Jesus Christ. It is the assimilation of this utmost and un-extendable testament that leads to fruitful and fulfilling work. Scriptures again beautifully fills us in: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Once graced with faith, and only as a result of it, can we enjoy “good works”, the kind that keeps us satiated in the endlessly prolific quest for satisfaction and brilliance only found in godliness. Working with and towards godliness requires conforming to God’s character. Listen to what Paul said, and remember that he was a former persecutor of early Christians: “But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” Also writing to the Europeans in Corinth, the apostle Paul quoted other ancient Middle East scriptures from Isaiah to remind us that we cannot even imagine how great is the glory for which we can endlessly rejoice as we live faith in our daily activities: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him”.

While glancing at this godly hope and reflecting it through love and faith, Jesus tells his believers to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”. The apostle Paul taught the Corinthians to “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord”. Writing to the Colossians in Asia Minor he recommends to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God”. To the Europeans in Thessalonica he even commended to keep away from those in idleness or busybodies, later reinforcing to the Ephesians in Asia Minor to rise and shine in wisdom and best use of time.

We conclude that it is when we submit ourselves to God’s grace and sovereignty that we are able to reckon our ultimate sense of purpose and satisfaction so that we can fruitfully convey our talents and gifts through work in a fulfilling way. Work objectives and sense of accomplishment, therefore, have nothing to do with self-referenced desires or self-defined undertakings, nor with the type or environment of work. You can triumph in aspiration and fulfillment even in the same job and place you’ve been involved with for years. You get satisfied with your work when you understand who really is the Master to whom you submit your life anew through His living Word. It is by trusting and pleasing God -as explained in scriptures- that you bear fruit in every good work increasing in the knowledge of Him as your Saviour and Lord. Another passage in the epistle to the Colossians in Asia Minor says: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord”, which implies embracing your job role with grandness, out of the box of your job description and aspirations. Go get your Bible -read it; get changed -from within; and go to work -for the glory of God enjoying Him forever. 

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

Unclutter your Christmases. Gaze beyond the manger of little baby Jesus and of the presents under the Christmas tree. Gaze beyond the twinkling Christmas season. Realize that, while Jesus was fully human, He is fully God. Realize that He Himself is the biggest present you and each and every one of us could ever have. Realize that He is the only power able to enlighten your life and your work to fulfilment.

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

As we close this year in the appreciation of the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther's Reformation, I wish you an ongoing merry Christmas and fulfilled newness of life in every new year.