My apologies for invoking the Christian marketing strategy of the 1990's, but I'm sure you can forgive me.
As I return to work today (and to blogging-had a fulfilling week long vacation devoted to writing and research) I am pondering how Christians view vocation. From a 'Total Truth' worldview perspective, we as a church need to ask ourselves what worldview steers our perspective on work.
It seems to me that it is the worldview of Darwinism, philosophical materialism...whatever you choose to call it, in is the basis for the cut-throat mentality people have about careers. The best jobs are the highest paying jobs with the most power at the top of the food chain. It isn't so much that there is anything wrong with being the boss...her work should be performed to the glory of God. But what are our attitudes to people in the so-called blue collar jobs? To challenge your thinking on this, would you discourage your son away from career of garbage man? Certainly we need garbage men, we should consider it as the noble task that it is. But I wonder if we have been so subtley influenced by an evolutionary worldview that we fail to see the importance of some jobs. Even worse, we fail to see how pleased God is with those who are willing to humble themselves to work not remotely close to the top of the food chain.
2 comments:
Just thinking today the top level isn't what it is cracked up to be. My husband is in a fairly high level but because this culture is so lateral he doesn't get the same treatment he might have the way things were 25 years ago. Actually he had to suggest raises and some people he manages get paid more than he. He hasn't had the accolades one might expect either.
Catholic thinkers wrote a lot about the dignity of labor back in the days when unions and concepts like socialism were first getting off the ground. It was probably easier to teach the dignity of labor back when people's work had a relatively close connection to an end product - now, when corporations are spread out all over the world and the people in a call center have nothing to do with the making of an actual product, it seems like a far more abstract case to make.
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