Selected Scriptures

March 17, 2019

Evening Service

Sean Higgins

Download the Kid’s Korner.

Or, An Inquiry into the Blessing on Humanity that Are Thumbs

We’re starting another mini series tonight on the subject of work. Similar to Downhill Apologetics, we received ideas for possible seminar topics after the 2017 seminar and work was recommended. We decided that we’d tackle said subject on Sunday evenings instead of covering it in a one-day seminar, but each pastor will take his stick to the labor piñata before we have a Q&A, where maybe this time we’ll actually let you ask questions, though that is scheduled to be a number of months from now. I get the first whack, and I have a variety of candy I hope you take with you tonight, while still leaving plenty of hull for the other guys to hit.

It may seem like a vocational pastor–one who gets paid to read the Bible, pray, talk with people, and preach sermons–should not get to speak about any other kind of work, because, what are his qualifications? I don’t think that is true by definition, but it is sadly true by experience, including my own. Some of that testimony might be a good way to punch the timecard and get us started.

My dad was a self-employed draftsman. I do not know what either of my grandfathers did for work, either because I forgot, or because I wasn’t that close to them, or because they were both past working age by the time I knew them. We weren’t continuing a family business and I don’t remember any family lessons about work. My dad held a couple jobs for construction companies prior to going out on his own, but from the time I was eight until he died he worked from our converted living room into office, with no door, and with country music playing on 104.5 WQKT whenever he was working.

There were only a couple worldview stories that my dad told me, not that he used that vocabulary, but as I would interpret what little he said to me growing up. The main story, the one he repeated most often, the one with expectations attached to it, and the one he was willing to sacrifice for, was that I was going to and graduation from college. He had not done either. And in his line of work that lack of having a degree kept him from charging as much as an architect could, and it kept him dependent on architects to “approve” his plans. Especially the latter stuck in his craw such that whatever I did, I would be getting a college diploma.

What he wanted for me was not necessarily the opportunity to be more independent, the reason for going to and graduating from college was so that I could get a job that paid me more money. And the reason that I would want more money was so that I could provide for a family and have it be more comfortable.

I saw him being generous, but I don’t even remember him telling me that I should be. I saw him being diligent, but he never said that diligence was virtuous by itself apart from enabling you to pay your bills. From the time I started school he repeatedly told me his expectations and committed himself to helping me pay for the first year of college, but he expected me to do whatever it took to finish.

I guess this seemed fine, especially since I wanted to be a baseball player. Getting drafted by a professional team straight out of high school was never my aspiration, so playing baseball in college and then going pro seemed great. The summer before my senior year of high school I started to desire to be a pastor, which is its own story, and one that my dad hated at least for a while before he settled into a longer disappointment, but at least for me, I was satisfied going to Bible college and playing baseball before going pro.

Work was only a way to pay bills and buy toys. While growing up I mowed yards in our neighborhood, I worked for an independent painter cleaning up after him, I worked at TCBY for a while, but none of that was what I thought brought glory to God. When[...]