The Heavenly Good of Earth Work (3)
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
OK, back to Darrell Cosden’s book. The last section works toward building a ‘spirituality of work’ and the impact of the preceding discussion on missions. Let’s try for the first of those here.
He starts by looking at the problems surrounding work and our perspectives. An particularly interesting quote is…
A bad theology of work(s), therefore leads to a failure to enter genuinely into our salvation/justification. There are complex reasons for this, but part of it is that our work(s) are part of who we are, and they cannot help but seek some kind of spiritual home. If we don’t find an appropriate spiritual category for our work, then it takes over our lives and becomes alien to us. It begins to dominate us as we become dis-integrated people.
As we have seen, our work finds its spiritual justification, its alternate home and value, through out justification. Our work is an outworking and expression of who we are. Thus, our justification becomes our work’s justification too. through our freedom in Christ, our work(s) becomes set free so that it has a genuine earthly usefulness now, but also a continued existence, like we do, in heaven.
That triggers all sorts of thoughts and discussions. Not least the thought that in (rightly) guarding against work for our justification, we can throw away too much and find a part of our life that never really gets fitted into God’s plan. Cosden’s argument is that, if we dont’ consciously fit it in to our spirituality, then it takes a distorted place and causes problems. For instance, we subconsciously try to use working hard as a way to pay God back. On the other hand
The fact that God in ‘making all things new’ chooses to incorporate our work(s) moitivates us but does not crush us. It fills our work with meaning and purpose — but not more than we as humans can bear.
In addition, with this perspective we start to have a basis for making real judgments about our work — how does what I do fit in with ‘new creation’?
Tags: books, eschatology, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, theology, work
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