Ok now to answer the question:
I believe to decide what one must do it should align with three categories: Belief, behave, belong.
Belief-- Does your career align with what you believe to be valuable, beautiful, and true?
Behave-- is it a company culture/atmosphere in which you can thrive, grow, and develop as a moral being who exercises integrity, justice, and compassion to those around you?
Belong-- do you enjoy the people around you? Is this a community into which you can add creative ideas, purposeful dialogue, and increase others' capacity to learn and improve? Is this a community that will help you grow as well into a person you desire to be? Do you like the types of people this company/institution creates? Are they whole people who care for others? Or are they selfish, nasty people who pick their nose all the time?
All in all: Choose a career path that best aligns you with the purpose you are created to fulfill as a human being--which is a soul, who has a body, that believes something about God and the world around them; behaves in a morally good or corrupt way in the world around them; and belongs to a community of people in which you can thrive or un-thrive.
Now here is the tricky part of this. With this question we are already getting into the realm of worldview and matters of faith. EVERYTHING COMES DOWN TO WORLDVIEW. Not faith in an abstract, blind leap into the great unknown. (That is foolishness). Faith in a system of thought that makes satisfactory sense of God and the world he rules. It is clear that I possess a worldview that believes God to be not a distant deity but a powerful, just, holy, compassionate, loving Creator and sustainer of what he has made.
Additionally, we must recognize that the Bible has something very significant to say about the topic you raise: Vocation. In many ways, we could read the Bible as a book all about Life and Vocation. Here is what I mean:
In the beginning of the Christian story-- God set out to fulfill a JOB of creating the world and creating humans. He worked for 6 days and then rested on the 7th. (There is much debate whether or not it is literal day or is it a million years according to science..... not the topic we will discuss right now).
God created Adam, the first human, to work a job that involved both production and upkeep. His life was to find purpose and meaning by aligning himself with God's idea of life and work and career. By this work he would actually show the world what God is like through his work and creative ability. Just like God worked the world in creation and sustains this world in love, so also Adam was called to work in the garden and keep it from decay. This is the reason why human beings love to make culture---art, movies, music, theology, poetry, scientific discovery, medicine, buildings, gardens, writing books, reading, etc... The Christian worldview sees the different jobs/work that humans do and says-- "Look! That is exactly what Adam was doing in the garden!". Part of being human is to work and keep... work and keep. Why? Because God has designed us with those amazing capacities.
The problem is sin. Satan comes in chapter 3 of the Christian story and tempts Adam and Eve to no longer submit themselves under God's loving leadership. They listen to Satan and try to become their own gods. The result was disastrous. one of the results was this: HARD, PAINFUL WORK! Now our lives our filled with boredom, angry bosses, getting fired, living without a job, the sadness that comes form not receiving a paycheck, disgruntled employees, unjust labor laws, disgusting labor conditions in poor countries, greedy CEO's, people trying to find ultimate satisfaciton in long hours, perfectionism, etc., etc. Something has gone horribly wrong with our understanding of Work and Career.
The Christian worldview sees all the sadness of those who struggle to find jobs and hate their work and says, "Look! This is exactly what happened when sin came into the world through Adam. God said that our work would be toilsome and hard and filled with unrest."
So what am I saying? Our generation needs to find a worldview that satisfies their longing to discover a life, career, and network that aligns them with how they have been wired.
Does that make sense?
I just spent WAY too much time on this!! I gotta go write my paper now.
By the way, I never got to the good news of how Jesus has come to redeem work and give us a beautiful and just way to go about living life and discovering what type of work is really best for us as humans.
What do you think, Noah? How should our generation decide what to do with their life and work?
2 questions
ReplyDelete1) Can you incorporate section headings where appropriate? Helps keep my attention focused.
2) Would Jesus take a job w his friends or w sinners?
Yes I will do section headings. Sometimes it is more difficult when I vomit my thoughts on a blog. I need to try to be focus and concise.
ReplyDeleteHave you changed the blog name yet?!?! Wade and Noah.
2) Jesus would take a job with both. Why? Because Jesus is the friend of sinners. His friends were sinners (a.k.a his disciples) AND he spent time with the hookers, whores, gambling addicts, theives, AND religious hypocrites. Everybody is sinful, Jesus loves us and forgives us for being horrible friends toward Him (his closet friend betrayed him and all his homies betrayed him before He went to the cross).
Good news: Jesus wants to befriend us, the people who betrayed him. Amazing. God wants to be friends with his enemies. That is a crazy thought.
What are your thoughts about work and calling and vocation?
How would Buddha think about these things?
My thoughts on work/calling/vocation:
ReplyDeleteIt seems that many people settle for a "calling" not because they feel a strong desire to work in a certain field, but rather arrive after following the path of least resistance. For example, I was considering grad studies in biology because I would basically be paid to go to school. However, I realized that I may not put 100% of myself into my studies if the material itself was only the secondary reason for attending school (the primary being easy money).
Buddha's thoughts on work/calling/vocation:
Buddha would probably advocate a career that helps others find the path to enlightenment. This could be nearly anything if approached with this goal in mind. Since Buddha was considered a teacher himself, I would say that he would advocate a calling to teach.