Theology of WorkFinishing Strong

Session Eight

Whether it is a surgical procedure, a mathematical formula, an architectural blueprint made into a building, a programmer’s installation, or a scientist’s discovery, each of these efforts can be accomplished with diligence, detail and excellence to the glory of God. Each task done well earns credibility for the next, until influence and freedom allow for greater and greater opportunities to impact positively both the workplace and beyond.

This concluding session celebrates work well done and puts it in the context of glorifying God. Mother Teresa helps us with her perspective:

Completing the Task

God does not judge us on “success” as the world measures it, but on our faithfulness to our calling.

When Mother Teresa was asked if she felt like she failed when she was unable to rescue all the children on the streets of Calcutta, she said:

“No, I have been called to be faithful. This is all I have been called to do.”

The Reward of the Master’s Joy

Please read the carefully transcript of the 1989 Time Magazine interview with Mother Teresa.

It can be found on the internet at http://

www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,959149,00.html

1. Did she understand her vocation?

2. Did she see her work as tedious?

3. Did she experience joy?

Interview with Mother Teresa

It is so easy to start ambitiously, idealistically about how one will enter into the world to transform it.

The danger is that over time, we allow the institutional pressures to finally conform us to their culture.

We need to remind ourselves of Rom 12:1-2 (NIV): “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God---which is your spiritual worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is---his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Finishing Well

“Work” in the systems of the world needs to be anchored in a theology that engages body, mind and practice in humble service to God, fulfilling His purposes , “growing wherever we are planted.”

Finishing Well

The danger is that one enters into the workaday world with great enthusiasm to be a transformative agent, a representative of Jesus Christ but, over time, become compressed by the cultural or institutional habits and values, until no lasting legacy is left. Yes, unfortunately the Christian at times plays one or a variety of four inferior parts:

Finishing Well, Cont’d

That of a “mole”: seeking to identify and slander all of the sins of the institution.

That of a “witness”: seeking to obsessively compel people to accept Christ

That of a “persuader”: seeking to push people into Church

That of a “tentmaker”: seeking to earn enough to justify Churchwork

These all are beneath the calling of the Christian!

Finishing Well, Cont’d

But the business, or the institution, itself is not impacted or transformed or changed. Nor has there been a significant change in the “systems” that it represents.

God’s calling for all Christians is more than these noble and good tasks. We persist until the end to be transformative agents to “grow wherever we are planted” and to embellish the world that God has called us to serve.

Finishing Well, Cont’d

A fitting conclusion to this course is given in the film clip from “Chariots of Fire”, an Oscar-award true story about the Scottish track-star and Olympic gold-medal winner of 1924.

The story of the two different motivations of two men to excell is given in this documentary. Please watch this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvPEpIRd284

Though called to be a missionary to China (where he died in 1944), he recognized his extraordinary gifting in running sprints. Despite peer jealousy, physical ailments, family pressures, and ethical challenges, he persisted to utilize his speed to witness to the nation and the world, his single-minded commitment to Christ.

Closing Clip: Eric Liddell

Eric Liddell: “You came to see a race today. To see someone win. It happened to be me. But I want you to do more than just watch a race. I want you to take part in it. I want to compare faith to running in a race. It's hard. It requires concentration of will, energy of soul. You experience elation when the winner breaks the tape - especially if you've got a bet on it. But how long does that last? You go home. Maybe you're dinner's burnt. Maybe you haven't got a job. So who am I to say, "Believe, have faith," in the face of life's realities?

“I would like to give you something more permanent, but I can only point the way. I have no formula for winning the race. Everyone runs in her own way, or his own way. And where does the power come from, to see the race to its end? From within. Jesus said, "Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you. If with all your hearts, you truly seek me, you shall ever surely find me." If you commit yourself to the love of Christ, then that is how you run a straight race.”

Eric Liddell: His Motivation

“I believe God made me for a purpose. God also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

Another quotation by his dad:

“Compromise is a language of the devil. Run in God’s name and let the world stand back and wonder.”

Eric Liddell: His Motivation

What is not generally known, is that Eric’s final days showed the same incredible integrity, transformative spirit, and love of God and others, that impacted a secular journalist, Langdon Gilkey, confined with him in a Japanese concentration camp at the end of World War II.

The End of the Story

In a book entitled, Shantung Compound, journalist Gilkey, recalling the intricacies of desperate life in the camp where teenagers ran amok because of boredom and uncertainty, he writes of fellow prisoner Eric Liddell (he calls him by the code name of “Ridley):

“The man who more than anyone brought about the solution of the teen-age problem was Eric Ridley. It is rare indeed when a person has the good fortune to meet a saint, but he came as close to it as anyone I have ever known.

The End of the Story, cont’d

“Often in an evening of that last year I (headed for some pleasant rendezvous with my girl friend) would pass the game room and peer in to see what the missionaries had cooking for the teen-agers. As often as not Eric Ridley would be bent over a chessboard or a model boat, or directing some sort of square dance---absorbed, warm, and interested, pouring all of himself into this effort to capture the minds and imaginations of those penned-up youths.

Shantung Compound, cont’d

“If anyone could have done it, he could. A track man, he had won the 440 in the Olympics for England in the twenties, and then had come to China as a missionary. In camp he was in his middle forties, lithe and spring of step and, above all, overflowing with good humor and love of life. He was aided by others, to be sure. But it was Eric’s enthusiasm and charm that carried the day with the whole effort.

Shantung Compound, cont’d

“Shortly before the camp ended, he was stricken suddenly with a brain tumor and died the same day. The entire camp, especially its youth, was stunned for days, so great was the vacuum that Eric’s death had left.”

A question: When you die, what vacuum will you leave in the places where hopelessness and distress, competition and abuse reign? Will anything be transformed?

Shantung Compound, cont’d

Gilkey, in a later reflection, on Eric’s influence, says this:

“I was continually reminded of Reinhold Niebuhr’s remark that religion is not the place where the problem of man’s egotism is automatically solved. Rather, it is there that the ultimate battle between human pride and God’s grace takes place. Insofar as human pride may win that battle, religion can and does become one of the instruments of human sin.

Concluding Reflection

“But insofar as there the self does meet God and so can surrender to something beyond its own self-interest, religion may provide the one possibility for a much needed and very rare release from our common self-concern.”

It is in the world beyond, that Christianity finds its truest expression when it can “surrender to something beyond its own self-interest”, and seek to become a transformative influence in the world beyond the four walls of the Church.

Concluding Reflection, Cont’d

Because the STEM professions offer such hope and influence, there is the danger that they can be self-serving at best, and perverse, at worse---a place where human hubris reigns and Babel is recreated again.

Yet, the STEM professions more than any other can take us into the world of discovery, of miracles, of beauty and utility that will either enhance human life or blight it. Only with a sense of accountability before God and man, will its true purpose be served.

The Challenge for the STEM Professions

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Your Questions and Comments

This concludes the Powerpoint Lecture Sessions of the course. We trust that it has been informative, instructive and meaningful to your pursuit in the STEM professions as your vocation seeks to honor God.