We Are Made to Work

“What do you do?” If you are like me, this is one of the first questions I ask or get asked when I first meet someone. We seem to be obsessed with this question, and perhaps we don’t even know we are or why we are. But more than being obsessed with the question, we are obsessed with what the question assumes—our identity is wrapped up in the things we do. Our culture attaches our identity to what we do, to our vocation. “I am a doctor” or “I am a teacher” or “I am a stay at home mom.” Further, these answers are immediately processed within the framework of our cultural value system based particularly on money. We think—“A doctor is a really important job, and it must be nice to make that kind of money” or “teaching is a noble profession, and it must be nice to have summers off, but I hear it doesn’t pay much” or “what do moms who stay at home all day actually do?” Our culture assigns worth and value differently and inconsistently to varying vocations. However, the Bible thinks differently about not only the relationship of our identity to our vocation but also the value of our vocation.

Biblically our identity as co-labors with God shapes our vocation. Instead of our vocation defining our identity, our identity defines our vocation. Genesis 1.27-28—

                So God created man in his own image,

                                in the image of God he created him;

                                male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

God is a worker. The curtain is pulled back on the opening scene of the biblical drama’s first act, and we meet God at work creating, forming and shaping. Therefore, intrinsic to our identity as creators created in the image of God is that we too are workers. God’s gifting mankind with His image precedes and defines God’s calling mankind to work. Our identity precedes our work, but our identity as imager bearers of the Great Worker means that we are necessarily and inescapably called to co-labor with Him in every sphere of His creation through an array of vocations—doctors, teachers and stay at home moms alike. Therefore, all work is dignified and meaningful as it images God, the Great Worker, and participates in God’s work. Therefore, if we are to connect our work in whatever vocation we find ourselves, we must understand that God is at work to imprint the hope of the gospel of Jesus—that all things broken will be restored and all things wrong will be set right—on every sphere of creation. As our vocations participate in this work—by applying the grace of medicine to cure illnesses or forming minds to more fully and accurately perceive the world or devoting your days to the care of your home and children—they are equally and infinitely valuable.