Thank you for this. I have deep sympathy for men who seek to support their family and use their talents for God's kingdom in a world that opposes both. It's rough. That people are willing to pay big bucks for materialistic and soulless “content” and political gossip but not for beautiful poetry and soul-care is a travesty. People put their treasure where their heart is, and by that test, America definitely serves Mammon.
In addition to Wendell Berry, I recommend perusing Dorothy Sayers' essay “Why Work?” She writes in the wake of WWII urging people to think of work in terms of the objective goodness it produces, instead of in terms of its monetary value. She rightly insists that “Unless we do not change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon Envy and Avarice.” As writers, there's nothing we want more than to produce quality with our words. The tragedy is that the world often passes up quality work to wallow in its own filth. The system's broken. Ugh.
Although the system is broken, I hope God uses business owners and other economically influential Christians to create bright spots of reform, in the spirit of Isaiah 58, "to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke." Why else are we here than to resist the principalities of this present darkness? And this essay is part of that resistance. It looks like the Spirit has alchemized even your less-than-fulfilling job into a brick for God's kingdom.
Thank you for writing this. I think you've touched on a deep ache, in my soul at least. Somewhat ironically, part of my job as a freelance writer requires me to write blogs for a financial planner, so I have been exposed to much of the content and thinking you allude to. Most of it never goes deeper than the assumption that money and the goals it allows you to reach are good, just because (typically, buying a house, saving for retirement, etc.). And a lot of that has to do with, like you said, this grim, materialistic idea of "security."
Absent is any talk of meaning or purpose beyond self-serving ends (as much as that content might try to dress things up with the propagandistic language of "family," "the American Dream," etc.). My frustration is that of course people need access to basic living (survival) but surely there must be more than that? And even if you accept that idea has some merit, surely there must come a point at which survival/security cannot be your primary or only rationale?
That seems to me an affront towards Jesus command to, "Seek first the Kingdom and righteousness, and everything else will be added to you as well." It seems we have got it backwards: start with security/survival, then maybe worry about a greater purpose later. I'm sorry, but it sounds more like we're sitting at the feet of Rabbi Maslow than Rabbi Jesus at that point (or Rabbi Ramsey, for that matter).
And let me be clear: I don't think any one individual is to blame for that, either. Where is the teaching in that vacuum on how to do what Jesus asks us to? The teaching that emphasises serving others, caring for the poor, finding meaning in the other-oriented Gospel of the Kingdom? And, more importantly, where is that teaching in a contextualized sense? Contextualized to the workplace, I mean.
If the best we can offer is, "Silently read your Bible in a quasi-public space." Then our culture is doomed. Faithful Christians will either replace Jesus with the false god of security or they will (wrongly) assume that the only way to fill the ache in their soul is to enter "full-time ministry" (another phrase that makes me feel ill).
As I have thought, prayed and wrestled with this tension, I have found that the only way out for me is to listen daily, weekly, monthly to the still, small voice of the Father, revealed in Jesus, by the Spirit, for direction and guidance. The hints and whispers that come from those times have led to a very different life than I expected when I left university.
All of which is to say: thank you for writing this and sharing it here. I appreciate you speaking into the void, especially from a fellow Pittsburgh-adjacent resident! (My wife and I live on the other side of the city).
And as an aside, one book that has opened my eyes to the cognitive dissonance between Western Christianity and the Gospel of the Kingdom is Douglas Meeks' "God the Economist." If you haven't read it, I highly, highly recommend it.
Appreciate this. I often think about how Mammon is the one deity that Jesus namechecks in his Sermon on the Mount, and how the implications of this aren't taken very seriously in the cultural West.
If you haven’t read it already, Berkeley sociologist Carolyn Chen’s Work Pray Code gave a 5 year study of how people’s interactions with affluence and the tech industry reformed their beliefs, moving them away from whatever religious tradition they had come from—Christian, Buddhist, Hindu—and towards a life built around service to capital. One of the conclusions she draws is that fervor of religious belief doesn’t save people from the impulse to amass capital at any cost: the sole differentiator between people who remained devout vs. people who ultimately abandoned their faith is their proximity to a physical community of fellow believers.
It is a fantastic ethnography, and, real talk, made me serious about finding more believers who share a commitment to discipleship around Jesus’ teachings on money 👀 thanks for adding to the much needed awareness that our conception of wealth needs to be continuously interrogated by the Gospel.
Thank you for putting this out into the world, really. I’ve been aflicted by the idea that I’m not ‘maximizing my potential’ either..It’s genuinely a been a pain for me in the past several months.
So I was really happy to see someone who shares my faith explore this idea today.
These are some wonderful thoughts. We as Christians need to reimagine what flourishing looks like, because for so many it does mean simply material comfort.
My wife and I have had many conversations about this, and we feel a tension. On the one hand, we see so many around us who have made decisions based on earning the money that will buy them the home, cars, lifestyle, etc. they want. When it feels like everyone is going that way, it's easy to wonder if that's just how it's supposed to be. On the other hand, we have always known that making choices based on what will bring in the most money is not how we want to operate.
When my wife made the decision to stay home with our first child, we knew that transitioning from two incomes to one would be difficult, but we made it work. Now, as the sole earner in our household, I struggle with the tension between needing to make enough money to pay the bills and doing the work I feel called to. Much like you, the job that pays the bills right now is not the work I feel called to, so I have to find other ways to engage in that work.
Sometimes we feel trapped in a broken system that will not allow us to fully live into the things we value. We don't want much—just to be able to live simply in loving community. We are finding ways to do this even with the little we have now, but it's hard to swim against the current.
Your words touch on some very important ideas. Now I would love to hear some practical advice for learning to live this way. With bills to pay and a growing number of mouths to feed, how does one make a living doing the kind of truly meaningful work that is so lamentably undervalued by our economy?
Really important. I am so grateful for how God’s grace delivered me from “the primacy of money in [my] understanding of work and vocation” and has given me a life rich in “flourish[ing] according to [my] particular geographies, families, and obligations”. Wish the writer’s style was more accessible, e.g., words like inchoate and mimetic are a hindrance even to someone like me who has spent years in conversation with academics.
Thank you. As a person who feels called but hasn’t found a “ministry” path that could pay the bills and who is also left cold by the prospect of giving myself to what people call the “market place,” this is very encouraging. Too often the pulpit perspective ends up condescending to people in liminal spaces by suggesting all that is needed is an attitude adjustment. While the business people tell you that you must capture every dollar. Living in the in-between is so lonely sometimes.
Wow... I haven't read something so relatable in a while. I feel often that I'm the only one in my (very wealthy) church context that is a little concerned with the dampening of empathy, imagination, trust in God alone, etc. that money puts on the Church. I sense it in myself, and I see it all around me. I also was seeking a corporate job for a while, but I couldn't do it with good mind. Something within me wouldn't budge. Now, I realize how important it can be to be in those spaces and do that well, but at the same time, I'm so thankful not to be in those spaces. The only full-time artists I know have spouses with very lucrative careers, since this work is very rarely valued enough to make a real living. Since my husband is a pastor, I'm still trying to figure out how to 1. be content with what we have while 2. contributing to our income in the ways I can 3. without giving into the capitalistic anxiety I have when I see all our friends buying houses and going on fancy vacations. It's very hard! Thank you for putting words to this tension, and the disappointing hypocrisy we see from other people who claim to be people of God. From a person who did not put that pressure on my husband to make a lot of money, but who felt it on myself my whole life, it's so nice to hear that I'm not alone in trying to take the narrower path.
One of my sons is happily married, 3 kids, and lots of money as a business lawyer, while the other in, ahem, academia, as a white male with 7 children is......wait for it, living a rich spiritual and social life, but really struggling in the material world. I have been contemplating their different circumstances and needed your essay as a corrective to depression. However, you jumped out of the academia ship and I wonder if my son may have to follow you!
Thank you for this. I have deep sympathy for men who seek to support their family and use their talents for God's kingdom in a world that opposes both. It's rough. That people are willing to pay big bucks for materialistic and soulless “content” and political gossip but not for beautiful poetry and soul-care is a travesty. People put their treasure where their heart is, and by that test, America definitely serves Mammon.
In addition to Wendell Berry, I recommend perusing Dorothy Sayers' essay “Why Work?” She writes in the wake of WWII urging people to think of work in terms of the objective goodness it produces, instead of in terms of its monetary value. She rightly insists that “Unless we do not change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon Envy and Avarice.” As writers, there's nothing we want more than to produce quality with our words. The tragedy is that the world often passes up quality work to wallow in its own filth. The system's broken. Ugh.
Although the system is broken, I hope God uses business owners and other economically influential Christians to create bright spots of reform, in the spirit of Isaiah 58, "to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke." Why else are we here than to resist the principalities of this present darkness? And this essay is part of that resistance. It looks like the Spirit has alchemized even your less-than-fulfilling job into a brick for God's kingdom.
Thank you for writing this. I think you've touched on a deep ache, in my soul at least. Somewhat ironically, part of my job as a freelance writer requires me to write blogs for a financial planner, so I have been exposed to much of the content and thinking you allude to. Most of it never goes deeper than the assumption that money and the goals it allows you to reach are good, just because (typically, buying a house, saving for retirement, etc.). And a lot of that has to do with, like you said, this grim, materialistic idea of "security."
Absent is any talk of meaning or purpose beyond self-serving ends (as much as that content might try to dress things up with the propagandistic language of "family," "the American Dream," etc.). My frustration is that of course people need access to basic living (survival) but surely there must be more than that? And even if you accept that idea has some merit, surely there must come a point at which survival/security cannot be your primary or only rationale?
That seems to me an affront towards Jesus command to, "Seek first the Kingdom and righteousness, and everything else will be added to you as well." It seems we have got it backwards: start with security/survival, then maybe worry about a greater purpose later. I'm sorry, but it sounds more like we're sitting at the feet of Rabbi Maslow than Rabbi Jesus at that point (or Rabbi Ramsey, for that matter).
And let me be clear: I don't think any one individual is to blame for that, either. Where is the teaching in that vacuum on how to do what Jesus asks us to? The teaching that emphasises serving others, caring for the poor, finding meaning in the other-oriented Gospel of the Kingdom? And, more importantly, where is that teaching in a contextualized sense? Contextualized to the workplace, I mean.
If the best we can offer is, "Silently read your Bible in a quasi-public space." Then our culture is doomed. Faithful Christians will either replace Jesus with the false god of security or they will (wrongly) assume that the only way to fill the ache in their soul is to enter "full-time ministry" (another phrase that makes me feel ill).
As I have thought, prayed and wrestled with this tension, I have found that the only way out for me is to listen daily, weekly, monthly to the still, small voice of the Father, revealed in Jesus, by the Spirit, for direction and guidance. The hints and whispers that come from those times have led to a very different life than I expected when I left university.
All of which is to say: thank you for writing this and sharing it here. I appreciate you speaking into the void, especially from a fellow Pittsburgh-adjacent resident! (My wife and I live on the other side of the city).
And as an aside, one book that has opened my eyes to the cognitive dissonance between Western Christianity and the Gospel of the Kingdom is Douglas Meeks' "God the Economist." If you haven't read it, I highly, highly recommend it.
Appreciate this. I often think about how Mammon is the one deity that Jesus namechecks in his Sermon on the Mount, and how the implications of this aren't taken very seriously in the cultural West.
If you haven’t read it already, Berkeley sociologist Carolyn Chen’s Work Pray Code gave a 5 year study of how people’s interactions with affluence and the tech industry reformed their beliefs, moving them away from whatever religious tradition they had come from—Christian, Buddhist, Hindu—and towards a life built around service to capital. One of the conclusions she draws is that fervor of religious belief doesn’t save people from the impulse to amass capital at any cost: the sole differentiator between people who remained devout vs. people who ultimately abandoned their faith is their proximity to a physical community of fellow believers.
It is a fantastic ethnography, and, real talk, made me serious about finding more believers who share a commitment to discipleship around Jesus’ teachings on money 👀 thanks for adding to the much needed awareness that our conception of wealth needs to be continuously interrogated by the Gospel.
Thank you for putting this out into the world, really. I’ve been aflicted by the idea that I’m not ‘maximizing my potential’ either..It’s genuinely a been a pain for me in the past several months.
So I was really happy to see someone who shares my faith explore this idea today.
These are some wonderful thoughts. We as Christians need to reimagine what flourishing looks like, because for so many it does mean simply material comfort.
My wife and I have had many conversations about this, and we feel a tension. On the one hand, we see so many around us who have made decisions based on earning the money that will buy them the home, cars, lifestyle, etc. they want. When it feels like everyone is going that way, it's easy to wonder if that's just how it's supposed to be. On the other hand, we have always known that making choices based on what will bring in the most money is not how we want to operate.
When my wife made the decision to stay home with our first child, we knew that transitioning from two incomes to one would be difficult, but we made it work. Now, as the sole earner in our household, I struggle with the tension between needing to make enough money to pay the bills and doing the work I feel called to. Much like you, the job that pays the bills right now is not the work I feel called to, so I have to find other ways to engage in that work.
Sometimes we feel trapped in a broken system that will not allow us to fully live into the things we value. We don't want much—just to be able to live simply in loving community. We are finding ways to do this even with the little we have now, but it's hard to swim against the current.
Your words touch on some very important ideas. Now I would love to hear some practical advice for learning to live this way. With bills to pay and a growing number of mouths to feed, how does one make a living doing the kind of truly meaningful work that is so lamentably undervalued by our economy?
Really important. I am so grateful for how God’s grace delivered me from “the primacy of money in [my] understanding of work and vocation” and has given me a life rich in “flourish[ing] according to [my] particular geographies, families, and obligations”. Wish the writer’s style was more accessible, e.g., words like inchoate and mimetic are a hindrance even to someone like me who has spent years in conversation with academics.
Really well written and thought provoking. Thank you for sharing!
I so needed to hear this. Thank you!
Thank you. As a person who feels called but hasn’t found a “ministry” path that could pay the bills and who is also left cold by the prospect of giving myself to what people call the “market place,” this is very encouraging. Too often the pulpit perspective ends up condescending to people in liminal spaces by suggesting all that is needed is an attitude adjustment. While the business people tell you that you must capture every dollar. Living in the in-between is so lonely sometimes.
🔥🔥
Wow... I haven't read something so relatable in a while. I feel often that I'm the only one in my (very wealthy) church context that is a little concerned with the dampening of empathy, imagination, trust in God alone, etc. that money puts on the Church. I sense it in myself, and I see it all around me. I also was seeking a corporate job for a while, but I couldn't do it with good mind. Something within me wouldn't budge. Now, I realize how important it can be to be in those spaces and do that well, but at the same time, I'm so thankful not to be in those spaces. The only full-time artists I know have spouses with very lucrative careers, since this work is very rarely valued enough to make a real living. Since my husband is a pastor, I'm still trying to figure out how to 1. be content with what we have while 2. contributing to our income in the ways I can 3. without giving into the capitalistic anxiety I have when I see all our friends buying houses and going on fancy vacations. It's very hard! Thank you for putting words to this tension, and the disappointing hypocrisy we see from other people who claim to be people of God. From a person who did not put that pressure on my husband to make a lot of money, but who felt it on myself my whole life, it's so nice to hear that I'm not alone in trying to take the narrower path.
One of my sons is happily married, 3 kids, and lots of money as a business lawyer, while the other in, ahem, academia, as a white male with 7 children is......wait for it, living a rich spiritual and social life, but really struggling in the material world. I have been contemplating their different circumstances and needed your essay as a corrective to depression. However, you jumped out of the academia ship and I wonder if my son may have to follow you!