"Shovel That Manure For The Glory Of God"

God used a bull-headed former monk with a red-hot pen to quash the "Sacred-Secular Divide" by putting farming on the same level with the priesthood.

Martin Luther, in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, wrote:

"Therefore I advise no one to enter any religious order or the priesthood, indeed, I advise everyone against it--unless he is forearmed with this knowledge and understands that the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks, but that all works are measured before God by faith alone."

He also said:

“The idea that the service to God should have only to do with a church altar, singing, reading, sacrifice, and the like is without doubt but the worst trick of the devil. How could the devil have led us more effectively astray than by the narrow conception that service to God takes place only in church and by works done therein… The whole world could abound with services to the Lord ['Gottesdienste']…not only in churches but also in the home, kitchen, workshop, field.”

Luther declared, “A dairymaid can milk cows to the glory of God. If your job is shoveling manure, then do your best and shovel that manure for the glory of God.”

It’s hard for us to fully appreciate how radical these words were in Luther's time. The “Sacred-Secular Divide” was deeply entrenched, and God raised up a bull-headed former monk with a red-hot pen to quash it by putting farming on the same level with the priesthood. 

Luther understood we are not only saved by faith, but we also work by faith, both priest and shoemaker. Followers of Christ live by faith. Any work done by faith, for the glory of the Lord, is Gottesdienste, “service of God.”

Luther further declared: “The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., stood on his namesake’s shoulders when he said this about a person's calling:

“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”

Christianity gives labor dignity.

Martin Luther King's ideals were based upon Christian principles.

Photo by Nobel Foundation (http://nobelprize.org/) [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

What Success Looks Like

For the past 10 years, I have blogged about how we can approach human labor in the larger context of the biblical worldview. Yet, to the best of my recollection, I have never addressed the question of what success looks like when it comes to our state of mind at work.

I will do this today. 

However, as I do this, I am reminded of Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist of Jewish descent who spent two-and-a-half years in four Nazi concentration camps, penning these words in his great book, Man's Search for Meaning: 

"Don't aim at success," advised Frankl, "the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself."

This is excellent advice. "Success" (like "happiness") is not the target. Rather, it is the by-product of surrender to a cause much greater than ourselves (the Kingdom of God), and to the most important Person in the universe. 

To see what success looks like, with respect to a biblical state of mind at work, click here. 

As with the list of "Juicy Questions" I provided last week, the list of mental attitudes I am sharing today is not intended for ingestion all at once. You'll choke on it. Focus on one state of mind per week, and it will  keep you occupied for nearly a year. 

Onward and upward.

Juicy Questions

[Photo used by permission of Crosstown Church of Christ.]

When I think of John Calvin working in the broken city of Geneva to renew it, in the 1500s, one word comes to my mind: intentionality. 

When Calvin taught the believers how to connect their faith with their "station in life," he was intentional and specific. As I mentioned last week, he advised bankers to not charge more than 4% interest, lest they fall into the sin of what the Bible calls "usury."

For Calvin, getting people "saved" was not the end game. It was a necessary first step, and Calvin knew there was a second and a third and a fourth. He understood believers are called to observe all that Christ commanded, and he recognized that this observation was to fully occupy our lives after we say "I do" to the Lord. 

Leading people to say "the prayer" is great. But teaching them to observe [practice] Christ's commands is a big part of the Great Commission of Matthew 28 as well, and intentionality is needed.  
 
May I encourage you to be more intentional about observing Christ's commands in your workplace today?

I will provide you with some thought-provoking questions to "get the juices going." Glance through the list provided below, and see if one or two questions resonate with you.  Think about these questions as you approach your work today, whether your work is in the home or in the marketplace. Try a couple more questions tomorrow, and the next day, etc.  

For my list of juicy questions, click here.

Three Essentials

Corruption in the church was no stranger to Calvin.

[Photo formerly attributed to Hans Holbein (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.]

A low point of my summer came when I heard about the child sexual abuse by 300+ priests involving 1,000+ victims over 70 years in Pennsylvania. The scope of the scandal stunned me. 

The problem is not limited to the church. In our nation's schools, 25% of US school districts reported incidents of sexual abuse over the past 10 years. In 2014 alone, roughly 800 school employees were prosecuted for sex crimes with students. These were caught. Imagine 70 years.

Yet, non-believers will add the latest church scandal to their justifications for rejecting Christianity (of any stripe) altogether. 

Corruption in the church is not new. I think of the priests who operated houses of prostitution in Geneva, in the 1500's. 

The people ran the bishop out of town in 1530. William Farel, a French evangelist, came in 1531. His co-worker, Antoine Froment cried in the markeplace, "We must reform the church in order to reform the nation!" 

Farel sought John Calvin, demanding he come to Geneva to apply the theology he was writing about. Calvin came at the age of 27, and rebuilt this broken city on three essentials:

1. Preaching the Gospel: "...so that people would be saved and start to be transformed and the church would be restored to biblical purity."

2. Teaching: "...so that people would know how to live, the authorities would know how to govern, and all would know how to work in their different spheres." 

3. Accountability: "...so that the teaching would not just be theoretical but applied in all areas of life."

Calvin had no room for a Sacred-Secular Divide. He believed "holy vocations" included the work of the banker as well as the pastor, and advised bankers to not charge high interest rates, identifying this as the sin of "usury" in the Bible. Calvin understood that Jesus is the Lord of all banks.

Geneva became "a city on a hill," where a healthy church of transformed people engaging in God-glorifying work throughout every sphere of life in the city brought righteous commerce and just governance to the public square from the inside out, not the outside in.  

John Knox came to Geneva and took what he learned to Scotland. English believers were influenced by Geneva, and later brought the so-called "Protestant Work Ethic" to North America.  

See Thomas Bloomer's, "Calvin and Geneva: Nation-Building Missions." Click here. 

There's hope. If...