http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15732733/the-sacred-call-to-normal-work
The Protestant Reformation in sixteenth-century England transformed the theological landscape of Christianity in the commonwealth, but it was not solely a reform of theology and doctrine. The English Reformation permeated every facet of society, including the theology of work and one’s vocation. The English evangelical clergy reiterated two primary arguments regarding work and vocation, arguments that were transferred to the Puritan work ethic in the seventeenth century, both in England and in its American colonies: (1) all space is sacred space, and (2) diligence is an essential Christian virtue.
All Space Is Sacred Space
The Reformation principle that all space is sacred space was one application of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, a doctrine that affirmed that every Christian is accountable to God and has equal access to him and to the Scriptures. The doctrine stressed that all Christians have equal value and dignity in the sight of God. As a result, evangelical clergy during the Protestant Reformation consistently preached that all geographical and material spaces, all vocations, all roles, and all spheres in which believers operated were sacred and mattered to God.
“Even the most seemingly menial task could be holy to God and was to be performed with a holy attitude.”
Ultimately, no work or vocation for believers was mundane or insignificant. Even the most seemingly menial task could be holy to God and was to be performed with a holy attitude. All vocations, insofar that they were tethered to biblical principles and had moral value, had equal dignity and value in the sight of God.
This teaching was a seismic shift away from late medieval Roman Catholic teaching that stressed the disparity of the clergy and the laity. From the Protestant perspective, work as a cobbler could be just as godly as a preacher’s vocation. Serving one’s children as a mother could be just as noble as prosecuting criminals as a lawyer. The evangelical clergy taught their respective congregations that the barrier between the “sacred” and the “secular,” which the medieval church had erected, was nonexistent.
No Vocation Too Humble
The evangelicals submitted and taught two practical applications from the principle of the sacredness of all work and vocations. First, all Christians were to “walk in” or “answer to their vocation.”1 “Walking in” one’s vocation encompassed faithfulness to one’s employer and attendant duties in the place of employment. Faithful labor was to be done for the Lord’s sake primarily, but the evangelical ministers also reiterated the principle of working for the love of one’s neighbor. They contended that one’s vocation, whatever it was, served and benefitted the commonwealth both socially and economically.2 Additionally, ministers reminded congregants to be content with their vocation and the work that God provided them.3
The evangelicals made another application of the principle “all space is sacred space” in regards to one’s labor and vocation. They argued that since God was deeply concerned about all vocations, and since all work and vocations were sacred, prayer should be made for all people in their respective vocations. Many Reformation prayer books, like Thomas Becon’s A flour of godly praiers (1550), contained prayers for magistrates, soldiers, mariners, travelers by land, lawyers, merchants, landlords, and mothers.
Within his prayer book, Becon offers a general prayer for all Christians to pray, that they all would “walke accordinge to [their] vocacion in thy feare.”4 In these prayer books, the evangelicals gave special attention to mothers. Mothers were encouraged both through sermons and implicitly through the wording of the prayers that their domestic work was “godly.” These evangelical prayer books implicitly taught English society that all spheres were sacred and were worthy of prayer to God. No vocation was too humble to petition his blessing for the work.
Call to ‘Earnest Diligence’
The English evangelicals reasoned that since all vocations and activities were holy in God’s sight, it was incumbent on believers to pursue their vocation with diligence. Industriousness, with it is corresponding virtues — self-discipline, self-governance, and perseverance — constituted an indispensable Christian virtue in the English Reformation ethos. There was no space for idleness in the Christian ethic.
In fact, the sin of idleness was perpetually condemned in evangelical printed sermons and tracts. It was considered a “fleshly and perverse” sin.5 It was the “wel[l] spring and ro[o]te of al[l] vice.”6 For those enslaved to idleness, their sin was tantamount to “offer[ing] themselves a sacrifice, not to God but to the devill.”7 A pattern of idleness in a professing Christian’s life brought into serious doubt his conversion. Laziness was incompatible with biblical Christianity. It was consistently included with lists of other sins that incurred the wrath and judgment of God — murder, adultery, theft, treason, witchcraft, blasphemy.8
One reason why diligence and idleness were addressed so frequently and zealously in evangelical catechisms and sermons was the context of increasing poverty in urban areas in England, particularly in London. The evangelicals observed that much of that poverty was due to idleness among men.
Diligence stood as a prominent theme in English evangelical print, and it was stressed to all audiences, regardless of age or status. Children were taught the value and benefits of diligence from their parents at a young age through catechesis in the household. The earliest evangelical catechisms and manuals of virtue emphatically encouraged youth to pursue diligence, “takynge payne with all thyne industry,” while also fleeing “slouthe and over much sle[e]pe.”9 In his catechism, William Perkins exhorted children and adults alike to “labour and toyle,” but also reminded Christians that diligence was “nothing and availes not, unlesse God still give his blessing.”10
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, in his definition of true preaching, explained that the evangelical preacher’s aim was in part to teach his parishioners “to honor and worshippe almighty God, and diligently to serve hym, every one accordynge to their degre[e], state, and vocacion.”11 English ministers regularly made biblical applications in their sermons to those of specific vocations. “Earnest diligence” about one’s “business” was the call and mindset for all genuine Christians.12
Early American Work Ethic
How did the Reformation view of vocation influence future generations of Protestants? The seventeenth-century English Puritans were the inheritors of the Reformation and imbibed the intellectual and practical theology of their Reformation forbears. The Puritans and Pilgrims who crossed the Atlantic to the New World transported with them the Reformation view of work as a sacred trust and holy privilege. Cotton Mather (1663–1728), for example, articulated the Puritan ethic of responsibility and self-governance, that all men should “love” and “like” their vocation, because it is “a blessing to have a calling [vocation].”13
John Cotton (1585–1652) elevated all vocations as equally glorifying to God, encouraging his fellow colonists in Boston to “embrace” and perform even what might be considered the most mundane or menial of tasks.14 True faith, he contended, was not ashamed of accomplishing such work, because that work was sanctioned and given by God. Cotton posited the biblical model of Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet.
The early American colonists applied these biblical principles to their respective jobs, establishing what would be known for generations as a sturdy work ethic and a high level of individual responsibility. This, in part, contributed to the flourishing of American colonial society, particularly in its economy and education.
Establish the Work of Our Hands
The English Reformation view of work and vocation can serve as a healthy model for us today. Persistent, disciplined, excellent work for the glory of God is noble and virtuous. There is dignity in any vocation and in performing one’s task, no matter how seemingly mundane or menial, while depending upon God to bless the outcome. God calls us to do all things, including our work, with excellence and joy for his glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). Idleness, laziness, and lack of responsibility are sins to be confessed and repented of.
“All is futile without God and his blessing. But when God blesses our labor and vocation, it will not be in vain.”
Moses petitioned God on behalf of the congregation of Israel in Psalm 90:17 to “establish the work of our hands.” This statement humbly acknowledges utter dependence on God for any success in work. Unless he blesses and uses our skills, time management, education, and job opportunities, we will not prosper in them (Psalm 127:1). All is futile without God and his blessing. But when God blesses our labor and vocation, it will not be in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). In fact, the work we do for God’s sake will have spiritual and eternal value (Matthew 25:14–30).
As with the evangelicals in Reformation England, we too can cultivate a disposition of doing all things heartily for our Lord (Colossians 3:23), asking him to “make us diligent & happy in the workes of our vocation.”15
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Don’t Check the Boxes: My Breakthrough in Morning Devotions
I’ve been doing the same Bible-reading plan for years.
Quite simply, nothing has shaped me these last two decades like learning (and re-learning) to slowly work through the day’s assigned readings morning after morning, month after month, year after year. This particular plan has four short readings per day, and 25 days per month. It moves a reader through the full terrain of Scripture in twelve months. That makes for about fifteen minutes per day, at an average reading pace — which is too fast for Bible reading (more on that below).
Not that this habit of starting each day with open Bible (and coffee) is always clean and easy, but it’s far more automatic and enjoyable and fruitful now, twenty years later, than at the beginning. It’s amazing how a longstanding, daily habit can change you — not just in terms of psychological pathways and external actions, but also how a soul can be formed and conditioned.
We tend to overestimate how much we can change in the short run, and underestimate how much we can change in the long run.
Condition the Soul
Souls really can be conditioned, like bodies can be conditioned. In fact, our souls are perhaps all the more “conditionable” than our stubborn bodies (“brother ass,” as C.S. Lewis called the body). God made our minds and hearts to be trained and retrained. They are plastic, to borrow the term from neurology. You can train them in greed (2 Peter 2:14) or train them in godliness (1 Timothy 4:7).
“Souls really can be conditioned, like bodies can be conditioned.”
Among many profound benefits of starting each day with God’s voice is how this first-thing encounter with God through his word shapes, trains, and conditions our inner man. After years of Bible reading, I know I have a painfully long way to go, yet I don’t want to overlook the deep blessings and joys of early-morning soul-steeping in the word of God.
Why Not Check the Box?
Over the years, as far as I can tell, perhaps the single most significant “breakthrough” for me in daily Bible intake was learning to ignore those little boxes next to each of the daily readings. If you’re a box-checker, I cast no stones. I simply share my own weaknesses and flaws by testifying to the breakthrough. Silly as it may sound, when I stopped checking the boxes, something started to change in my attitude toward God’s word.
Why would I not check the boxes? There they sat, immediately to the left of each assigned passage — conspicuously empty, practically calling out to me to fill them. But what I began to own in my own soul is that ending each reading by checking a box was promoting or reinforcing the wrong approach in me. When the arc of my “time alone with Jesus” was moving ever toward checking a box, I was orienting on the wrong end. I needed to retrain myself, by omitting that final step, to reinforce in my soul that I wasn’t sitting in front of Scripture to accomplish the day’s first to-do. I wasn’t here to achieve. This was not labor but devotions.
“When I stopped checking the boxes, something started to change in my attitude toward God’s word.”
Later in the day, I might do the hard work of studying the Bible or working to produce some article or sermon. But for now, first thing in the morning, I had God’s word open first and foremost to receive, to see Jesus, to feed my soul on him. What my soul really needed to start the day was him, not some small sense of accomplishment. I needed to encounter and enjoy the risen Jesus, not cross off the day’s first task.
I know now that there is a little hit of dopamine in checking boxes and crossing items off a list. But in time, I grew unsatisfied with that. I didn’t want to confuse the joy of completing a task with the enduring depth and riches of finding my soul being fed, being genuinely made happy in Christ through his word.
In retrospect, I can see that learning not to check the boxes then led to several other dominoes falling.
Slow Way Down
At an average reading pace, it takes about 70 hours to read through the whole Bible. Break that up into 300 days (25 days per month), and you have less than fifteen minutes per day. When I was pressing to check boxes, I could knock out the day’s readings in ten or twelve minutes. And by the end of the fourth reading, I hardly could remember what I had read in the first or second, or even fourth, passage.
When I stopped checking the boxes, it helped me to remember that I wasn’t there to finish the readings but to feed my soul. This freed me to slow way down in my reading speed. I could read at the slowest, most deliberate pace I found enjoyable, and stop to re-read any sentence or paragraph that was particularly unclear, or especially sweet — and still the full time elapsed would be less than half an hour.
In the book Meditation and Communion with God, longtime seminary professor Jack Davis waves the flag for “a more reflective and leisurely engagement with Scripture” in our day (20). According to Davis, the nature of modern life, and the “information overload” we have through television, smartphones, and endless new media “makes a slow, unhurried, and reflective reading of Scripture more vital than ever” (22).
Off the Clock Devotions
Another domino that soon fell was learning to set aside enough time to be able to lose track of time. What some in the work world call “flow” I found to be immensely helpful for morning devotions. I needed to sit where I wasn’t staring at a clock, or hearing one tick, or checking the time every few minutes. The rest of my day so often seemed timed and on the clock. In these morning moments before the risen Christ, I needed to lose consciousness of time, to read slowly and re-read, to explore cross-references and rabbit trails across the canon.
Some days the first assigned reading met and fed me. Other days little to nothing struck me in the four short readings, and I would review them to find somewhere to linger and feed. But neither happened well “on the clock.” There was no reliable timeframe I could assign to genuine soul feeding. So I needed enough space to linger before God without rushing off to the next part of the day.
For starters, I’d recommend half an hour, with the glad expectation that it will grow over time as your appreciation deepens for these quiet, unrushed, morning moments over God’s word.
Move into Meditation
Finally, and most significantly, not checking the boxes freed me to move from slow, unhurried reading into meditation, and then from meditation into prayer.
As I would move through the day’s readings, I was on the lookout for some patch to pause and feed, to really press into my soul, a place to meditate over some particular word from Christ to me that morning. Such meditation is a lost art in our day — not Eastern meditation in which you empty the head, but biblical meditation in which you seek to fill your mind with God-revealed truth and seek to press it into the heart.
Meditation, then, can serve as a kind of “bridge discipline” between Bible reading and prayer. I used to finish reading the passages, check the boxes, and then pivot pretty unnaturally to praying through lists, for myself, my family, friends, ministry partners, and missionaries. Learning to move from unhurried Bible reading into a few minutes meditating on a particular paragraph or verse helped me to focus and feed on a specific divine glory for the morning, and then make that the springboard into and theme for my prayers.
Enough for Today
I won’t pretend that not checking the boxes is for everyone, but maybe like me you’d be helped to take some defiant step to remind your soul, “I’m here to enjoy Jesus.”
One last note: when I stopped checking the boxes, I no longer felt the pressure to “go back” and make up any readings I hadn’t completed the day before. This freed me to really focus on feeding my soul today, to “gather a day’s portion,” rather than try to make up for yesterday, or last week. I realize that for new Bible readers, it may not be quite so easy. You need context to understand verses aright. That’s important. But I would have you take heart that getting a more intuitive sense of the context grows tremendously over time, as you make the annual journey through Scripture, and supplement your reading with various studies.
As George Mueller (1805–1898) so memorably said, his first business every day was to have his soul happy in God.
Leaving the boxes empty has helped me with that.
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Justice for Tormentors, Relief for Tormented: 2 Thessalonians 1:5–8, Part 3
http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15885304/justice-for-tormentors-relief-for-tormented
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What Is Peculiar About Married Love? Ephesians 5:25–31, Part 3
John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.
