If someone sees their job as Groundhog Day, what encouragement is offered them by seeing their work as an opportunity for sanctification? It can seem like a stretch, but Bacote voiced his confidence on how we can find hope in this idea: “Sanctification is a great lens for our view of work when the job (or dimensions thereof) seems meaningless because our encounter with doldrums brings us face to face with how we think about and pursue life.” Living the same day over and over gives Conners the chance to evaluate his behavior and priorities. Bacote shared that we’re afforded a similar opportunity.

It’s considered the most spiritual film of all-time, the king of “divine comedies”. Watching it on a regular basis is thought to be a key to enduring happiness as it speaks about the importance of life and work.
By “it” I mean Groundhog Day, the 1993 comedy starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, in which, in Charles Murray’s concise synopsis:
An egocentric TV weatherman played by Bill Murray is sent to Punxsutawney, Pa., to cover Groundhog Day. He hates the assignment, disdains the town and its people, and can’t wait to get back to Pittsburgh. But a snowstorm strikes, he’s stuck in Punxsutawney, and when he wakes up the next morning, it is Groundhog Day again. And again and again and again.
When watching the film one weekend, I was struck by a conversation that Murray’s character, Phil Conners, has with another character named Ralph:
Phil: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?”
Ralph: “That about sums it up for me.”
“That about sums it up” for a lot of us when we’re at work. We often feel stuck, like none of the work we do matters – to God or anyone else.
We may not live the same day over and over again like Conners. For us, time marches on. But, like Conners, we do wake up each day with the opportunity to grow in grace and maturity.
Though work sometimes feels like Groundhog Day, endlessly meaningless, it’s still an opportunity to grow in sanctification.
Work Is an Arena for Sanctification
I once explored this idea over e-mail with Dr. Vincent Bacote, a professor of theology at Wheaton College and an IFWE guest contributor who has written about work as an arena for sanctification.
Read More
Related Posts:

Twenty-five years ago, evangelicals were outside the religious establishment. That establishment was made up principally of the mainline denominations. But today evangelicals have become the religious establishments, however informally. But despite this, I believe that today we are in some peril. We have a fight on our hands and what we’re fighting for is our evangelical soul, for it is possible for us to gain the whole religious world while losing our own souls. I do not say this because I am one of those who thinks that the best is always what is in the past, that we are always in a state of decline, and that if we want to think of a golden age we have to think of something that is behind us. I do not think that way at all. In some ways we, today, are better off than we were twenty-five years ago. Perhaps a lot better off. And yet in spite of that, I believe there are matters within the evangelical world today which are seriously amiss.

Written by Guy M. Richard |
Sunday, March 19, 2023
All of us struggle with pride to one degree or another, and we bring it into every relationship that we have. Sometimes our pride manifests itself in an over-sensitivity to criticism, and we get our feelings hurt far too easily. More frequently it manifests itself in a resistance to forgiveness. Pride makes it unlikely that we will humble ourselves and seek the forgiveness of others whom we have hurt and even more unlikely that we will let go of the perceived wrongs that are committed against us.

In my last article, I explored two potential factors that make forgiving someone who has hurt us so incredibly difficult. I argued, first, that forgiveness is a relational category in the Bible, which means that it is always unto the restoration of a relationship; and I said, second, that forgiveness is costly, insofar as it always involves the incurring of a debt that must be absolved. No doubt these two factors have raised several questions in your minds. Two stand out in my mind: “Do Christians have to forgive one another?” and, along with that, “Do Christians have to forgive non-Christians?” In what follows, I will add a third potential factor that can so often make forgiving other people difficult, and, after that, I will try to provide some answers to questions like the two I just raised.
Forgiveness is Humbling
A third reason why forgiveness can be so challenging for us is because it is inherently humbling (and maybe even humiliating) work. It involves laying aside our pride, which is extremely hard for us to do, first, because we are all prideful people and, second, because pride is, as CS Lewis has so helpfully articulated, the “great sin” and the “essential vice.” It is the root sin that undergirds and leads to every other sin in our lives. Ever since the beginning it has expressed itself in the desire to “be like God” in determining for ourselves what is right and wrong (Gen. 3:5).
Pride affects each of us in different ways, to be sure, but the common denominator in all of our experiences is the “essentially competitive” nature of pride. It “gets no pleasure out of having something,” Lewis writes, “only out of having more of it than the next man.”* If everyone in the world is equally rich, beautiful, intelligent, or talented, then there is nothing for any of us to feel prideful about. We are not proud of being rich, beautiful, intelligent, or talented; we are proud of being richer, more beautiful, more intelligent, or more talented than someone else.
All of us struggle with pride to one degree or another, and we bring it into every relationship that we have. Sometimes our pride manifests itself in an over-sensitivity to criticism, and we get our feelings hurt far too easily. More frequently it manifests itself in a resistance to forgiveness. Pride makes it unlikely that we will humble ourselves and seek the forgiveness of others whom we have hurt and even more unlikely that we will let go of the perceived wrongs that are committed against us.
My mother used to always tell me that it takes two to fight. I remember not believing her as a child, because I was convinced that I was always in the right. No matter what the disagreement was—inevitably with my brother or my sister—it was always the other person’s fault. My actions, whatever they may have been, were justified because the other party was to blame. Looking back now, it is easy to see that I was motivated by pride, but it was not so easy to see in the moment. The point I am trying to make here is that, in most disagreements, the break in relationship is a two-way street. Both parties are usually to blame to some degree. Rarely do we get attacked for no reason whatsoever. Rarely does someone with whom we have a relationship hurt us without any provocation of any kind. It does happen. But the more common scenario is that we typically respond in kind. When we are hurt by someone, we usually strike back returning hurt for hurt and insult for insult. That kind of response is motivated by the competitiveness of our pride. We don’t want anyone to get the better of us; we don’t want to lose face. That is why pride makes the process of forgiveness and reconciliation so difficult. It makes it unlikely that we will walk away, allow someone else to have the last word, or let go of the anger we feel. It makes it unlikely that we will admit blame and humble ourselves, that we will let the other person win.
But pride also works against forgiveness and reconciliation in two other important ways. It makes it tough for us to confront someone Christianly when that person has hurt us, and it makes it tough to apologize and seek forgiveness from others when we have hurt them. The competitiveness of pride leads us to want to have the upper hand.
Read More
Related Posts: