Continuing Battle

Try as I may to have a positive attitude, I don't like my job. This is not easy for me given that I just spent my life savings and a whole bunch of time and energy earning a degree that would specifically qualify me for this job. I talk to God about my frustration and disappointment with work a lot, and last night after reading a passage in the beginning of the Old Testament, it hit me again. I don't have to like my job. The idea that we have to like our jobs, in fact, seems to me to be a very recent cultural phenomenom to me. In Biblical times, liking what you do to earn your wages wasn't even addressed. People were either rich or they were laborers, and labor meant hands-on work like carpentry, farming, harvesting, and household servitude. No laborer carried around some sense of entitlement that he should enjoy his labor. Labor was a given, like brushing your teeth in modern society. You don't have to enjoy it, but you do it anyway.

In modern times, people see work as more than just a means of financial provision. Work has become a place where we seek fulfillment. This could be because of higher education. As more and more people earn degrees, they are told at their colleges to follow their hearts/dreams/bliss and study what they are passionate about, regardless of what they think will earn them a substantial income. Furthermore, as more women have leapt into the workforce in the last 40 years, the working population is bigger and people are picking and choosing their jobs more and more based on personal interest. With the genesis of career counseling last century, it's only natural that a sense of entitlement would develop where people think they need a job that fulfills them because they spend so much time there and no one "deserves" to be unhappy or dissatisfied.

But while these ideals are lovely in theory, in actuality, many of us are wrestling with job dissatisfication just because these ideals exist and we think we deserve satisfaction. But job satisifaction is not a Biblical promise. Not that long ago, I wrote about purpose on this site. Let me tell you, recognizing that God cares less about what I do and more about how I do it is only part of the battle for me because I am still fighting against society's idea that I should like what I do, that I deserve to like what I do. God told me again last night, it's not about me. I don't have a "right" to job fulfillment, no matter what my own guidance counselor may have said. It's not about my fulfillment. It's about me going to wherever I work and working my heart out as if God is my boss. In Colossians 3:23, Paul writes, "Work hard and cheerfully at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people." I need to emphasize this to myself--"at whatever you do." Work is another way for me to show my love for and faith in God; it is not a way for me to seek personal fulfillment. If I find personal fulfillment, that's a bonus, but that's not what work is about no matter what our self-seeking culture would try to tell me.

So now that I've had another revelation, is this battle over in my life? Probably not. I still expect to face the daily challenge of overcoming the brainwashing that's been a lifetime in the making. I still think I should not be miserable at work, but Paul tells me that I have a choice about my attitude no matter what my job happens to be. If I am working cheerfully, then my job does not matter because my heart is where it needs to be. My heart is still somewhat wrapped up in the work I do, but it should be entirely wrapped up in whom the work is for rather than what the work is. According to Paul, the work is for God, and as a love and faith offering to Him, I need to do it with a smile even when I'd rather lock myself in my office and weep.

Posted by Kim at January 24, 2006 07:50 AM