Workplace as formation
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I wrote this back in October, but forgot to post it. It follows on from the post about Miroslav Volf’s book Work in the Spirit and connects into James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom (the intro is downloadable from the Baker website) The two spark interestingly off each other. Let’s start with Volf’s observation:
Economic alienation … often directly or indirectly causes alienation from God. We read in Exodus, for instance, that the oppressed and exploited Israelite slaves “did not listen to Moses on account of their … cruel bondage” (Exod 6:9). Economic alienation hindered their believing God and grasping the promise of liberation.
Smith’s point is that we are not just formed intellectually, via worldviews and ideas, but we are formed by practices. Using generalised liturgy as his focus, he suggests
…we are the sorts of animals whose orientation to the world is shaped from the body up more than from the head down. Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies. They prime us to approach the world in a certain way, to value certain things, to aim for certain goals, to pursue certain dreams, to work together on certain projects. In short, every liturgy constitutes a pedagogy that teaches us, in all sorts of precognitive ways, to be a certain kind of person.
But if we bring these two observations together, I think we are led to conclude that our work, employment, daily activities become part of our formation. They are not simply value-free actions, but they change our underlying perspective of the world. In the case of the Exodus story, the oppressive work formed the Israelites in such a way that they could not hear the message of liberation. Which brings up all sorts of questions: how does our workplace form us? Can we operate in a way that makes it positive rather than negative? Etc.
Tags: formation, Miroslav Volf, work
the gospel and economic liberation
Posted by Paul | Filed under work
I’ve been reading Miroslav Volf’s Work in the Spirit. Hard work to read (at least on the train), but interesting. One side point that stood out was this…
Economic alienation … often directly or indirectly causes alienation from God. We read in Exodus, for instance, that the oppressed and exploited Israelite slaves “did not listen to Moses on account of their … cruel bondage” (Exod 6:9). Economic alienation hindered their believing God and grasping the promise of liberation.
I found this fascinating and it brings out something that I’d never heard anywhere else. (Oh, I’m sure someone has covered it, probably in one of the books on my shelf, but I wasn’t paying attention…)
In the frequent discussions of the relationship between the gospel and social justice, I’ve seen few, if any, consider the possibility that social justice might, in some cases, be an important first step for people to hear the good news. We discuss whether social justice might be a significant consequence of the gospel or whether it provides some demonstration of God’s liberation, but we don’t consider that it might need to come first in some situations, that people might need to be helped at a more basic level before they can hear what we have to say.
But if we truly believe that life is not divided into the material/secular and the spiritual, is it so unreasonable that alienation in economics, work or daily life can make it hard for us to grasp the deeper ‘promise of liberation’?
And if we take serious what we see in the story of the Moses, then how should this affect our actions? Perhaps it should make us re-consider our attitude to third-world debt or fair trading or oppressive work environments…
Tags: justice, Miroslav Volf, work
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...