Great Quote on Work and the Christian
ByI will be sure to get my second group of observations concerning the OTL piece up soon. Until then, here is a great (and needed) quote from Dorothy Sayers. I am not sure who originally posted this quote, but I saw it at both my man Larry Lazarus’ blog and at Justin Taylor’s.
The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.
. . . Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade—not outside of it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meant they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meant for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.
The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work—by which she means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is Church embroidery or sewage-farming.
2 Comments
January 21st, 2010 at 10:57 pm
You know JT stole it from me, right!
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:09 am
Honestly I can’t understand what a Christian work is and what it means. I think the matter should be what is meant by good work well done for any worker: can it be considered as a work whether full compliant to the objective or even exceeding the target? Probably yes; furthermore it makes sense to me to consider the statement above as a global statement, valid for any people, any kind of work and any company.
Having said that, I propose a step ahead: what about the principles behind the motive of doing a work? I take now into account workers joining global companies; normally the objective assignment process is driven by financial targets (e.g.: productivity improvement, cost reduction) and it might be that they move to the opposite way of the Christian set of moral principles or values. To give you an example of what I mean, let’s see a manager working for a company who has had the objective to fire some associates; moreover, let’s take care of that: he’s a Christian, fully convinced of the Christian set of principles or values. What about this guy and his work? For sure he does a good well done work for its company just firing a certain number of people; but due to his role he’s also aware in advance of many information that he cannot make known to his associates although it could be help people being fired; and once again this is well done as it’s compliant to the company policy. Indeed a company is made by people (fathers and mothers) even when it’s hold whether by banks or equity funds; furthermore paying attention to or taking care of people close to you is one of the most significant value for a Christian. Finally, my question is: is a good worker for ever a good Christian too?