Work Is Salvation

A few years ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a story about a growing financial trend known as FIRE, Financial Independence Retire Early, represented in the story by 38-year-old Seattle lawyer Sylvia Hall who wants to retire at age 40. To do that she is trying to amass $2 million in assets by saving about 70% of her after-tax income and setting firm spending limits in every part of her life. “The idea of not having to wait to 65 to start living on my own terms appealed to me,” she said. The idea seems to be that early retirement will lead to fulfillment by giving her more control over her life and how she spends her time. But this idea runs the risk of making work a thing opposed to happiness and fulfillment rather than a part of it.

The Journal story hints at this conflict as it involves “Frugalwoods” author Elizabeth Thames who quit her nonprofit job to concentrate on a blog about life as a rural Vermont homesteader. Her husband earns a six-figure income in addition to what she earns through her blog and book royalties, so to them FIRE was not retirement exactly but a move into another, more fulfilling line of work, one over which she, in particular, could exercise more control. Ms. Thames says she is “transparent about the fact that [her] husband still works a conventional job from home and that [she enjoys] working for [her]self through Frugalwoods.com.” Another author mentioned that she took on more freelance work because she “got a lot more meaning from [her] work than [she] had realized. [And] it is a lot harder to find meaning than to save 70% of your income.”

Opposing work to fulfillment and meaning began in earnest during the industrial revolution as craftsmen began to be separated from the product of their work, becoming a cog in an assembly line rather than an artisan who turned raw material into a finished product. But it certainly didn’t begin then. We can see some of this thinking evidenced in the behavior of the Rich Man in this Sunday’s Gospel who, like the FIRE advocates, saw an opportunity to turn a financial advantage into a life of ease and self-determination. Neither he nor they, however, know what the future holds. Even before he could begin his retirement his soul was required of him, and he died.

It isn’t just in Jesus’ day that early retirement seems to shorten one’s life, it is an observable phenomenon in today’s world as well. One study of Shell Oil workers found workers who retire at age 55 were 89% more likely to die during the 10 years after retirement than their co-workers who stayed at work until they were 65. And it isn’t only Americans. A study of Greek participants by the American Journal of Epidemiology analyzed the relation between retirement age and mortality and found that retirees were 51% more likely to die than employees in their age group who continued to work. Clearly work isn’t as bad for us as we like to think.

The key is making your work, whatever it may be, a calling. Marcus Aurelius famously said that “Work itself is but what you deem it,” but we tend to dismiss such advice, certain that he never had to do what we do every day. But Jonathon Haidt, professor of psychology at UVA, reports that a study of hospital workers “found that the janitors who cleaned bed pans and mopped up vomit—perhaps the lowest-ranking job in a hospital—sometimes saw themselves as part of a team whose goal was to heal people. They went beyond the minimum requirements of their job description, for example, by trying to brighten up the rooms of very sick patients or anticipating the needs of the doctors and nurses rather than waiting for orders. Those janitors who worked this way saw their work as a calling and enjoyed it far more than those who saw it as a job.” By viewing themselves as part of a team and what they did as contributing to healing—by connecting with others through their work—they made cleaning up vomit a calling.

St Paul has something to say about “callings” when he told the Ephesians: “Brethren, I, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Through our work, if we do it right, we can connect with others and share common purpose and commitment, thereby establishing and maintaining the “unity of the Spirit.” Moreover, we will manifest the truth aptly stated by the poet Kahlil Gibran that “Work is love made visible.” The poet writes.

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,

And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

On Work
Kahlil Gibran

It’s okay to work for retirement, but if that is our only goal and we expect self-actualization to come through acquisition of wealth and self-autonomy, then we are forgetting the lesson of this Rich Man who had no answer for the question “whose will they be?” But if we make our work itself an end, rather than making it a means to achieve a goal, then we can leave an eternal legacy written on the hearts of the people with whom, for whom, and through whom our work is realized. Shakespeare was right when he wrote that “Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.”

This is also why what we are doing right now—worship—really matters. When we do this work of the Divine Liturgy on behalf of ourselves and of the entire world we join ourselves to the work of Jesus who began this work by becoming Incarnate, leaving his home in heaven to put his hand to the plow in the fields of His creation. Like him we must leave our home, our comfort, and lean into the task that we have each been given to cultivate our corner of creation as coworkers with Christ. This is how we should see our work whether we clean bedpans or do neurosurgery, sweep the assembly plant floor or design the new line of fuel-efficient cars.

We should be recognizable to others as Christians because of our love for each other and our neighbors. Like love, work is crucial for human happiness because, when done well, just like love it draws us out of ourselves and into connection with people and projects beyond ourselves, and meaning comes from getting these connections right. Whatever we do, we can find meaning in it by joining it to the work of others, and ultimately to the work of Christ on whose behalf we are—or at least should be—working. So how we work should also distinguish us. Are we faithful to our callings, doing our work as if we were doing it for God? Or are we like the rich man and the advocates of FIRE who place their satisfaction in what he’d do tomorrow? Or are we finding meaning in the connections we make now, today, in our work and in our community—our communion—with our neighbors?

If we seek only our own self-actualization and self-fulfillment, we might find happiness, but even if we do, happiness is transient and fleeting. If, rather, we get to work and pursue meaning, we will find purpose, and that—because it is found it Christ—it will endure forever. That is work well worth the effort.