Work to Do
Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.
Good evening. Well, if you pin me down and try to give you a title for tonight's message, and I did think about it, but I hadn't really settled on one. But you can summarize it as our culture's attitude towards work is messed up, just across the board. And frankly, guess what? It's been messed up for thousands of years, at least in Western civilization's history. I must confess that my understanding of work as a young man was seriously lacking. Like many others, my motivation for going to work could be summed up like this. I owe, I owe, so off to work I go. I actually would actually sometimes hum that to my head as I was heading off to work.
Culturally, we tend to think of work in negative terms. One proof of this is when we speak about work-life balance issues. Have you heard that phrase used before? We're trying to always figure out work-life balance issues and in the workplace, they're trying to really help people deal with those issues. They're trying to be more accommodating in the workplace to make it easier for people to have a life. But just think what's embedded in that phrase. The term work-life balance implies that work is somehow not a part of life. Even though we spend a lot of our life doing work. I mean, you think about it, we spend about a third of our life sleeping.
We probably spend about at least a third of our life working. So if work and life are opposite of each other, then guess what? Only about a third of your life is actually life. Because you're sleeping for a third, you're working for a third, and then you have life for a third. So work-life balance is just one evidence of our cultural attitude towards work. That somehow it's something to avoid. There's lots of ways that we try to minimize work so that we can get on with our life. Common synonyms that we use for work are the rat race, the salt mine, the plantation, the daily grind, the treadmill, all those are terms and attitudes that we have used as we thought about our jobs and the work that we had to do.
Many workers are content to do the minimum amount of work required so as not to get fired and require some kind of an incentive program to go above and beyond. In many cases, overachieving is actually discouraged by the rank and file because it would cause management's productivity expectations to rise. You get the eager beaver that comes in and he starts the job and he's just going gun ho and he's moving more boxes per hour, whatever he's doing. And the older, more savvy worker say, hey, slow down, you're gonna make the rest of us look bad, the boss is gonna start to expect this to raise our output. So you gotta tone it down.
I can see from some of your smiles and nods that you've worked in places like that. The end of the work week is greeted with, thank God it's Friday. Wednesdays are called hump day because this is the point in the week where most of the work is behind us and we just have the weekend to look forward to. The bottom line is that for most people, work is a necessary evil that interrupts their life. It's true, there are some people who buck the anti-work sentiment and they're tweeting out exhortations get after it at 3 a.m. but generally these folks are the exception and not the rule. And even some of those eager beavers in many cases miss the purpose of work and are primarily motivated by personal gain.
A Pew Research Center study a few years ago found that anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of workers in America saw their jobs simply as a way of making a buck. They found absolutely no meaning in their work beyond getting a paycheck. That was the only motivation to get up and go. As we'll see, work has been viewed negatively throughout much of human history. This includes during the Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and medieval cultures. It wasn't actually until the Reformation came around that Western civilization's attitude about work even began to change. So in the time remaining tonight, I want to explore then a little bit of the history of work in Western civilization, how attitudes about work evolved over time.
I want to look at God's intentions, or look at attitudes today about work, look at God's intention in work, and then I want to throw a few random thoughts at the end about work such as is retirement biblical, how to cultivate a love for work in our children, and then for you business guys out there, I want to throw out some thoughts about a different way to think about the profit motive. So first, let's talk a little bit about the history of work in the Western civilization. Part of Western civilization's ancestry traces back to the Old Testament and God's dealings with the nation of Israel. The Hebrew culture understood the necessity of work going all the way back to the creation story.
They understood that God had told Adam that there's work to do. But they linked it more to the curse resulting from Adam and Eve's original sin. They saw work as necessary in order to prevent poverty, or in some cases as a deterrent to sin stemming from idleness. Hey, you know, if you don't got nothing to do and you're just sitting around then the sin nature will take over. So work was a good way to help offset the tendency towards sin, keep yourself busy. But the idea of work is inherently good, or even as a source of joy was foreign to their thinking. Numerous writings by various rabbis reveal their belief in the superiority of spending one's time studying the Torah versus work.
One rabbi in the Talmud, he declared that he personally set aside all trades and taught his son only the Torah. Other rabbis took a more moderate view and taught their sons trades, but only if those trades were clean and easy. They really would have a problem with Mike Rowe's Dirty Jobs Show, I guess. One rabbi, after observing the animals foraging for food, wrote, if these who were created only to serve me earn their livelihood without anguish, then is it not right that I, who was created to serve the one who formed me, should earn my livelihood without anguish? This bias against temporal work in favor of devotion to the study of the Torah is revealed in the fact that even today, upwards of 50% of the modern day ultra-Orthodox Jews are actually unemployed.
They live in poverty because they see the priority of just studying the Torah is so important, they won't work. So imagine that today, 50% of Orthodox Jews actually are unemployed. Next in line in the Western civilizations ancestry are the Greek and Roman cultures. The Greeks, like the Hebrews, also viewed work as a curse. They're actually, their word for work, and I'm sorry if I don't pronounce these quite right, but their word was panos. Anybody here know Greek enough? Panos sound right? Is that a Greek word? Huh? Evil. Evil. And then another translation they came across was for sorrow. They borrowed it from the Latin word for sorrow.
So there they equated work with evil or with sorrow was their concept. To them manual labor was always something slaves did. Acceptable pursuits for the free men were things like making war, commerce, and art. So if you were a free man, that's what you spent your time doing. But the work manual labor, that was slave work. Even the kind of mental thinking that was required for the mechanical arts was frowned upon, because in their view, quote, it brutalized the mind until it was no longer useful for thinking about higher concepts like truth. So ECS students, you know, the next time you're working on your math, you probably feel like it's brutalizing your mind, right?
But those kind of mechanical arts, those works are something that we're supposed to be doing. in the Greeks thinking, no, no, no, don't be spending any gray matter on that because that's going to brutalize your brain and you can't think those big thoughts. Notice how both the Hebrews and the Greeks separated life into the sacred and the secular. You can see how that attitude, that thought then began to work its way down into our modern times and the way we think. Now the Greeks understood that manual work was necessary, But their philosophers, including guys like Plato and Aristotle, felt that the reason the masses needed to work was so that the elite could pursue the loftier ideals of art, philosophy, and politics.
They just wanted to sit around and think good thoughts while the common people did all the work work. They believed that the more that a person worked, the more he was behaving like a slave and thus was unsuitable for more noble purposes. the Greeks, the Romans adopted a very similar attitude regarding work. They too relied on slaves because most manual work was again regarded as beneath the dignity of a Roman citizen. Well the end of the Greco-Roman era marked in the beginnings of what we call the medieval ages. Christian influence then began to become on the rise, was starting to have more influence primarily through the agency of the Catholic Church at this point in history.
Greek and Roman ideas of work still influenced attitudes about work, although manual labor was not quite as disdained as it had been under the Greco-Roman eras. The Catholic Church coming on board was starting to make manual work more acceptable, but still not on a par with higher activities. Thinkers within the church, such as Thomas Aquinas, he actually attempted to outline categories of work and place them in priorities of importance. And not surprisingly, being a good Catholic, he put the monastic life where one could spend all day in prayer and meditation. That was kind of like at the top of the pecking order.
If you could do that, that was the most noble thing. And then following in his pecking order underneath the work of the church, in order of value, he had agriculture next, then the handicrafts, and then finally commerce. He saw that as the order of value or importance in work. The church still carried forward the notion that work was a part of the curse, and thus the further one can move away from manual labor, the less affected by the curse one would be. When you think about it though, it's kind of crazy that at this point the church kind of didn't realize the fact that God had actually assigned work to Adam before the fall.
So the fact that they kept tying it back to the curse, it was like, hello, he was given the job before the curse, he was given work to do before the curse, but for some reason, they didn't connect the dots there, and they still viewed as connected to the curse. The fall, as we know, made work hard. It did not make work evil. So at this point in Western civilization's development, work still has no intrinsic value. It was simply a matter, a part of the curse, but necessary to meet one's physical needs, as well as try to curtail sin. You probably have heard the expression, idle hands of the devil's workshop. I certainly heard that a lot from nuns when I was being raised in the Catholic schools along with that and empty vessels make the most sound.
Still hear it whenever we'd be talking in the back of the class, Jimmy Martin, empty vessels make the most sound. But idle hands are the devil's work shot. That quote goes back to the 17th century, variations of it. So that notion again, that we have to keep people busy, that's one of the value added propositions was work was just simply so people wouldn't go off and sin. It wasn't until the Reformation that attitudes towards work began to fundamentally change Luther and Calvin then as we know were instrumental in changing those or challenging those old assumptions. Pre-Reformation society was divided at that time into basically three groups. You had the clergy, those who prayed, you had the nobility, those who went off to war or ruled, that was their two main functions, and then you had the commoners who did the The clergy, they were thought to have a quote, vocation, or a distinct calling from God to pursue those spiritual things, the spiritual life apart from the world.
Devoting oneself completely to prayer and spiritual exercises was considered to be a far greater merit than what could be found in quote, unquote, secular pursuits. Luther opposed this distinction between sacred and secular. He was the first one to challenge, one of the main players to challenge the sacred-secular divide, because he argued that the realms of family work and government were valid Christian vocations just as well. He said that all forms of work were in fact callings from God. This is when we began to see the notion that, hey, what the common man was doing was also calling, was vocation. It wasn't just that nasty thing people have to do because of the curse.
He took this idea of calling actually so far that he actually frowned upon it. If you had a common worker in one particular trade, he frowned on that person actually changing trades because he felt like they were then abandoning the calling that God had given them. So if they had learned one particular craft had been raised that way, he felt they should stay in that trade for life because that was their calling. He disagreed with those who placed the monastic life on a pedestal and viewed it as, and those who viewed it as more virtuous than any other calling. The only line of work that Luther didn't particularly like was commerce because he thought it was wrong to make profit.
He felt that, you know, work should basically be enough to provide for your needs and maybe a little bit extra to help the poor, but the thought of just making abundant profit was something Luther was opposed to. It reminded me of a situation, Miguel and I, a number of years ago, I think it may be getting close to 20 now, we were in Ukraine doing some missionary work and one day we were out to sightseeing with our Ukrainian friends and we were passing under this major highway, a tunnel, and inside the tunnel all these street vendors had lined up all their wares and they were trying to sell stuff and I started kind of, oh that's kind of cool, so I want to order.
And our Ukrainian friend actually physically got in front of me and just kind of like, sort of like half pushing me back away. He says, no, no, no, no, stay away. They're bad people. I go, really? You know, look like they're just guys trying to sell stuff. He says, you don't understand. They go and buy that stuff, and they mark it up, and then they try to sell it to you. And I just had to chuckle at the time, and I thought, well, you're getting introduced to capitalism, so welcome to the real world.
But even then, I could see that cultural fact, that influence in his head, that how dare you try to make a profit off of me. Calvin expanded on Luther's ideas then and began to develop more clearly and distinctly the theology of work. He believed like Luther that any work that did not violate the word of God was sacred. He taught that all men, regardless of station, should work because work was the will of God. Calvin firmly believed in the sovereignty of God, which meant, as John Piper puts it, that God's sovereign purpose and purposes govern the simplest occupation because God attends to everyone's work. It doesn't matter what that person is doing, God is in it. This thought alone really imbues occupation with meaning and value, whatever you're doing. It's all a part of God's sovereign plan, whatever we're doing. If you're the guy putting the rivets in the planes, that as a part of God's plan, and as we'll see in a little bit, that actually contributes tremendously to the flourishing of a culture.
Calvin also taught that God not only cares about everyday work, but also the manner in which that work is done. Alistair McGrath, in his essay, Calvin and the Christian Calling, wrote, for Calvin, work was thus seen as an activity by which Christians could deepen their faith, leading it on to new qualities of commitment to God. Calvin clearly tied the work ethic to a manifestation of your Christianity. You're not a good worker, you're not a good Christian. I mean, he really linked it to.
We were called to do anything, and to do it well was a fundamental hallmark of Christian faith. Diligence and dedication in one's everyday life are, Calvin thought, a proper response to God. For Calvin, it is entirely possible maintain integrity of faith while injecting a Christian presence in the world. Calvin's message to us then is to do our work and to do it well knowing we are serving the common good and God's greater purposes for his kingdom. He very much in his theology linked work with worship. That work was basically another expression of worship. I used to have the habit myself I'd be working on jobs with my buddy John.
And you get done with the job and I'd say, well that's good enough for government work. And John would always be faithful to say, hey, but we work for the king. And it reminded me, and I'd say, thanks, that was a good reminder. Because the attitude of our work should be that we're working for the king and not for the government. Calvin believed that godly work was essential to living as an image bearer of God, and that such work would combine with the work of others to cause the flourishing of the world to the glory of God. And we're going to develop that thought a little bit more in a bit, but this idea that all of us doing our pieces, God mysteriously brings it all together to bring about the flourishing of a culture.
Unlike Luther, Calvin was not opposed to profit, but he actually wanted people to make lots of profit and then take that profit and reinvest it in new opportunities. But again, not profit for the sake of profit, but profit for the sake of promoting greater flourishing within the culture. And also unlike Luther, Calvin believed that a man could and should leave his trade he was trained in if he could find a way to make more profit and increase his contribution to the community good. So we see these guys diverging a little bit in their thinking. Well, that's just a real quick, brief survey of attitudes about work during the rise of Western Civilization. I've seen online lots of good articles, some of the stuff I shared with you, can't have some good articles I found, so if you want to research that more deeply, the development of the attitude about work in Western Civilization, there's lots of stuff to read up on that.
Suffice it to say, work is an essential part of what it means to be an image bearer of God. It's not a necessary evil that one should try to avoid. There is no such thing as sacred, secular divide that puts the worth of one person's work above another and if you've been in our church for more than three hours you've heard us beat that drum over and over and over again. So let's talk about attitudes about work today. There's no doubt that the Reformation's influence on the theology of work set the stage for the greatest advancement that mankind has ever seen, first in Europe and then later in America. Now as an aside, I want to give a shout out to a book I highly recommend that's Ben Shapiro's latest book called The Right Side of History.
In it, Shapiro traces how two streams of thought, one flowing out of Athens, that's the Greco-Roman idea, and the other flowing out of Jerusalem merged to bring about what we now call Western civilization. The history that Shapiro reviews is the same history that brought about what one author coined or called the Protestant work ethic. This Protestant work ethic is what those earliest settlers brought to America as they came in and started working the land. They were a hearty bunch who very much saw their work as a vital expression of their faith. It was just part and parcel of who they were. There's some historians I was looking at who said years later, other Europeans that came in later, after America started to take shape cities and towns are being built and they were marveling at how much had been accomplished in such a short amount of time.
But again, we see when we have the right kind of work ethic, how God brings about that flourishing. And again, the world today still, as much as I like to throw rocks at America, they still admire us. You just don't see a lot of people wanting to leave America. All the ones who are throwing rocks at us are still trying to come here for some mysterious reason. The mindset that work was a calling and not a curse drove these early Christian immigrants to thrive at taking dominion in their adopted homeland. Now, as I say this, I realize there are modern day critics who see the migration of Europeans to America as an embarrassing invasion.
And while some criticism may be fair, these haters ignore the enormous improvements in both spiritual and physical terms, this migration and its attending work ethic brought. the gains of how God just moved all the players and brought about what we call America today. You just can't, there's no rational argument against the fact that God has done a tremendous thing. And again, it's largely because of that Protestant work ethic that God grew up through our culture.
Now, regardless of this history, Ron attitudes about work still persist today. Within the church, we still see work being divided into the sacred and the secular. For some reason, that idea continues to persist down through many churches. We still tend to stratify work. Work outside of the church is often viewed as a necessary evil. Hyper-Calvinist types advise investing as little time and effort in the world as possible because it's all going to burn. We've, in the past, I've been around groups like this who are discouraging young men from getting out and some young man says, hey, I wanna get, become a civic leader, I want to get involved in local government, and they would actually be discouraged from doing that.
Because why do you want to waste your time doing that? That's all going to burn. Go be a missionary. That's a value. Beyond the church, we see a general trend towards finding ways to minimize work time and increase leisure time. Workers are demanding more time off in getting it. There's a constant efforts to reduce the standard 40-hour work week we know today down to 35 hours or less. Many other advanced countries are already doing that. France, for example, already has a 35-hour work week and eight hours of paid vacation, plus all of their numerous holidays. One article I read that said that's actually during the summer, that's when a lot of the French people like to go take all their vacation time.
So basically all their shops shut down. And they said, an American entrepreneur could go over there and make a killing, cuz people want ice cream cones, but all ice cream shops are closed down because everybody's off on their two months of vacation time. But in their culture and increasingly in America, we're trying to figure out how can we get out of work, how can we have more free time. Most modern high tech companies create almost playground like, dare I say Disneyland like atmospheres in order to attract and retain a young workforce. They're competing for the brightest and the best. And so, personal chefs that will dial up whatever menu you want for your lunch and your dinner and all kinds of games and toys and distractions and bring your dogs and on and on it goes in the modern workplace today. All trying to just make work you know more fun more pleasant. Weekends are the highlight of the week for many people. Mondays are greeted with a sense of drudgery. Our culture lives for the weekend, the vacation and ultimately the retirement.
The reality is that the majority look at work as a necessary evil rather than a gift and a calling from God. Another problem that seems to be on the rise today is just sheer laziness. I think Jonathan was mentioning this last time. You would be amazed how many employers these days would be happy if their employees would show up to work, or would be there on time, or be willing to stay for two minutes later, if at all. The bar, young people get this, the bar for impressing the boss today is ridiculously low. If you can breathe and do the task he asked you to task and show up to work on time, you are gonna be a star employee, okay?
It's super easy to please the boss today. Related to laziness is the attitude that some work is beneath a person's dignity. And aversion to hard work, manual work, causes many to turn down jobs for which they would otherwise be qualified. Just go drive them down the street. There's lots of help wanted signs, and right next to help wanted sign is the guy saying, you know, need food, and why they don't go knock on her door, I don't know. White collar jobs seem to be more preferred over blue collar jobs because they're perceived to be less work. Again, there's lots of studies on that, and many, many, many jobs in the blue collar industry that are going wanting, And frankly, I'm almost regretting that I'm a white collar guy, blue collar guys these days.
You can pull in 80, 90 grand a year if they're just willing to work hard. So our culture, again, just shies away from work. How many job openings go on fulfilled while adult children live in their parents' basement waiting for the right job to come along? How many choose to live on unemployment because they can't find a job to their liking? Their attitude is welfare is gonna give me 12 bucks an hour, why would I go take that job for 10 bucks an hour? Flippin' burgers, that's beneath me, I can do more. I counseled people saying that to me.
What all these attitudes have in common is the failure to recognize the calling to work God has given every person. If the value of work is limited to personal fulfillment, gain or pleasure, then it is no wonder that culturally we still view work is something that interferes with life. That said, work is personally fulfilling as well as gainful and pleasurable when we elevate it to where God placed it, our calling as His image bearers. It's an essential ingredient to what it means to be a Christian is to go out and work. Any work that is not ultimately for the sake of bringing glory to God is going to be tainted in some way and cause it then, cause us to disdain it.
Let me move on and talk about work and how it's meant for man's flourishing and for God's glory. When we fail to realize God's larger purpose for work, we fall back into ancient thinking that work only serves to keep us out of poverty or out of jail or due to idleness. But work is so much more. It's the means by which we bring God's eternal purposes to bear upon his creation. It's illogical to say that God is sovereign over every square inch of his creation and at the same time argue that we should avoid working in it, avoid contact with it. We must be in contact with creation and that contact takes the form of work in most cases.
Now some will point to the world's hostility towards God and argue that it's a fool's errand to try and take dominion in such a climate. The best that we can be hoped for, they'll argue, is to create Christian parallels that can coexist alongside the world. Some version of in the world but not quite of it. Let's do what the world's doing but we'll do it a Christianly way in parallel next to them. Given the mess our culture is currently in, it's tempting to want to head to the hills and start a Christian commune when we can start over and do things the right way. But that kind of thinking ignores all of human history And it misses the fact that God regularly brings about greater flourishing in the midst of some pretty dire circumstances.
I don't think, would anybody here argue that we in our culture today have it worse than the children of Israel did during the Babylonian exile? Consider what God told Jeremiah to say to the Israelites. They're in captivity, they're feeling pretty bad, pretty lousy.
But in Jeremiah 29, 5-7, speaking through Jeremiah said, say this, woe is you, all is lost, hunker in your bunker and wait for more favorable times. Does that sound familiar? No, that's not what he said. He said, build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce, take wives and have sons and daughters, take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that you may bear sons and daughters, multiply there and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you in exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare, you will find your welfare." I always took that like, it's like, wow.
I mean, about the worst possible situation they could possibly be in, and God says, rise up and go on and live life. And matter of fact, you work hard to help prosper the people who just came in and kicked your tail and took you into captivity. And in so doing, it will go well for you as well. That's like a just mind blowing thought. Israel was captive in a hostile land. They had been conquered, plundered, hauled off into captivity. The temple of Solomon had built and been destroyed. Things could not be any bleaker, yet God tells them to get to work, and in so doing they would bring about the welfare of themselves and their captors.
Christians in America are a long way from conditions as bad as Israel had during the exile. Regardless of whatever your views on end times are, you can't escape the fact that the Bible calls us to imitate him as sub-workers. Rather than humming I O I O so off to work I go, we should be humming I know, I know, knowing that God is at work in us and through us until all creation is once again in full subjection to him. As those who have received God's saving grace, we sometimes forget that God has actually given all men common grace. This means that we can, in many cases, work together to promote the flourishing of all people.
Abraham Kuyper defined common grace as God's preserving work in the created order. And theologian John Murray defined it as every favor of whatever kind or degree falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God. Through common grace, God prevents men from living as wickedly as they otherwise would and grants them a measure of wisdom to discover mysterious mysteries revealed in creation and apply them. This means that God is at work through the combined work efforts of many Christians and non-Christians to bring about greater prosperity. As Christians, we should be quote, in the game, not only for the sake of evangelism, but also for the sake of bringing truth, goodness and beauty to man's collective civilization building.
For his own purposes, God has designed it such that culture can only flourish when thousands upon thousands of individuals fulfill their unique callings. In most cases, those individuals aren't even aware of how God is fitting all those parts together for good. Jonathan made mention of this idea a few weeks ago, and I'm gonna go ahead, and I'd like to just drill down a little bit deeper on this idea of all of these individuals doing their thing, building their widgets, doing whatever bit of work God's given them to do, fulfilling our calling, how God weaves it all together and brings about the flourishing of the culture.
And to illustrate that point, I'm gonna read an essay here. I've actually condensed it, but still a bit lengthy, so I'm gonna ask you to bear with me. It's an essay they showed up in the December issue of The Freeman, written by Leonard E. Reed. The essay's titled I, I, Pencil. And the point of the essay was to show just how much human knowledge and effort go into making a pencil, even when most of the people involved had no intention of making a pencil in the first place. But just showing how God works in his mysterious ways. So again, I'm going to go ahead and just read this to you, and so hopefully you'll enjoy it.
And then take me a few pages to get through, but hopefully it'll be worth it. I pencil. You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. Next, I am a mystery, more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot long too long persist without peril. For the wise G.K. Chesterton observed, we are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.
Eye pencil, simple though I may appear to be, merit your wonder in awe. A claim I shall attempt to prove. Pick me up and look me over, what do you see? Not much meets the eye, there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal and an eraser. My family tree begins with what is, with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and countless other gear used in harvesting and carding the Cedar logs to the railroad siding. The logs are shipped in the mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental here too?
Consider the mill work in San Leandro. The Cedar logs are cut into small pencil length slats less than one fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into making of the tint and the kilns into supplying the heat, the light, the power, the belts, the motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Once in the pencil factory, $4 million in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine. Each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop, a lead sandwich, so to speak.
Seven brothers and I are mechanically from this wood-clinched sandwich. My lead itself, it contains no lead at all, is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon. The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then, wetting agents are added, such as sulfonated tallow, animal fats chemically reacted with the sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixing finally appears as endless extrusions, As from a sausage grinder, cut to size, dried and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness, the leads are then treated with a hot mixture, which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax and hydrogenated natural fats.
Myceder receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are part of it? They are. Why even the process by which the lacquer is made, a beautiful yellow involves the skills of more persons than one can enumerate. Anybody here yet think that you can build a pencil by yourself? My bit of metal, the ferrule, is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as the plug.
The part man uses to erase the errors he's made with me. An ingredient called factus is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rapeseed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber contrary to the common notion is only for binding purposes. Then too there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy and the pigment, which gives the plug its color is cadmium sulfide. Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the face of the earth knows how to make me? Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation.
There isn't a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. There is an astounding fact. absence of a mastermind of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which brings me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead we find the invisible hand at work. This is the mystery to which I referred earlier. It has been said that only God can make a tree. Why do we agree with this? Isn't it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one? Indeed can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in superficial terms. We We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configuration manifests itself as a tree.
But what mind is there among men that could ever record, let it alone direct, the constant changes in molecules that transpire in the lifespan of a tree? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable. I pencil in a complex combination of miracles, a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on.
But to these miracles, which manifest themselves in nature, an even more extraordinary miracle has been added, the configuration of creative human energies, millions of tiny know-how's, configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire, and in the absence of any human masterminding. Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God can make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-how's to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree." And that was the condensed version. I really like that essay because it demonstrates how God uses our work in mysterious ways to bring about the greater flourishing of mankind. When we understand this and start to view our work as a calling, the lives of men are improved and God receives the glory.
It's so tempting for us in our little slice of work that God's given us to do to think, How important is this? What, the miner digging up the copper or whatever, she's like, he never gets to see all the places that copper's used, and yet God then, working in some other part of the world, calls for the copper to be used, and in millions and millions and millions of combinations, we see the flourishing of mankind, and we as Christians then bring in the attitude of knowing that we're doing it for the glory of God. The opportunities for us in our work to really help Marysville and beyond flourish is astronomical if we would start to apply our minds to the opportunities.
So some final thoughts with all of this. As I bring the message to a close, I want to offer a few final thoughts that come to mind as we consider the theology of work as it relates to parenting, retirement, and business' profit motive. So first let me start with retirement. Roughly 72% of all current living retirees retire before the age of 65. It's from like early 50s up to about 64. There's like, you got 72% of the people currently living that are retired, retired in that window of time. That statistic by itself is neither here nor there. The important question has to do with what are they doing with those retirement years?
Our culture generally gears us to think about life in three stages, getting ready to work, working, and done with working. That's kind of how they divide life up. This mindset is counter to a proper theology of work. If work is indeed part of what it means to be an image bearer of God, then how can we limit work to only one season of our life? If we buy into the typical retirement mindset, we end up squandering upwards of 20 years when we could be still having an impact. And Nancy Wilson in her book, Motherhood, Called Arms, speaks to older women along this line and she writes, by the time we are older women, we think we should be set up for retirement so that we can travel and shop and relax.
But we are not created for that. We have not been given strength so that we can relax. We have grown stronger so that we can work harder. We can bear more burdens. We can testify more clearly and boldly to the Lord's faithfulness and grace. And we can apply ourselves to do more kingdom work than ever before. As long as we live, our prayer should be, use me Lord, use me up. Much the same can be said for us older men. Now I'm thankful for the older saints in our church who do continue to work into their quote unquote retirement years, those who come into ECS and help tutor the students and I'm thinking Gail there and she works with Ruth Ann and they do the kinder prep, you know, what lady in her right mind in her, you know, late 60s would say, let's go work with a bunch of, you know, little tots.
Looking at Craig, and Craig just, you know, he's, Craig's going to sing at all of our funerals because he's going to outlive all of us, you know, and how he continues to work. And just in many examples I could point you, there's just two. And that's the way it should be, is to continue to be working and making contribution. What I'm not saying is that we should remain and earn some form of employment for the rest of our lives. And I also recognize that physical strength wanes in the older years, limiting what kind of work we can do. But nevertheless, we must resist the urge to go into extended vacation mode and think to ourselves, I've done my time.
I'm often asked myself personally when I plan on retiring, I'm getting close to that point when people normally retire. And I usually reply that I'm not planning on retiring, I'm just going to retread and see what God has left for me to do for the rest of my days. Other folks have gained a lot of skills in our lifetime, and they should be looking for ways to pass those skills on to the next generation. I'm sitting right here with a young man who's already very gifted with his hands. He needs some older men who know various trades to come alongside and continue to enhance those skill sets he already has. That's the kind of thing we should be doing.
The second closing thought I have is in regard to parenting. Parents need to instill in their children from a young age a proper understanding of work. There are several key concepts our kids need to see and learn. First, work is something we do because we are God's image bearers. It's just automatic. It's just something we do. Second, they need to see that we enjoy our work. They need to see that we enjoy our work. If we're coming home talking about the rat race, if we're making work look like drudgery, why would we be surprised how they approach their chores? Third, they need to understand that work is how they contribute to the benefit of the community, that they have a responsibility to others.
Initially, this will be for the benefit of the immediate family. I recall a time when we had chore day at our house, we were all working around the house and one of my son's friends came over and wanted him to go play. My son said he couldn't because we had work to do. The friend made some comment about how he had mean parents who were making him work and grumbled his way away. My son really didn't understand his comment because my son understood that he was a part of the family and as a result today was chore day and so he didn't have a problem with it but his friend did. As your children get older they can expand their work by doing jobs for neighbors either as a volunteer or to earn some money.
And then of course for this young people school is a huge part of the work they are called to do. I've always made sure my kids understood that your education that is a big part of your job, that is your work, to prepare yourself for life. And I wasn't prepared just for the sake of getting a job, but it was preparation for whatever guy I was going to use them for, but they had to get the education. And then whenever I, the kids would have the attitude of grumbling or complaining or it's hard or it's boring, we would just have to have the talk with them. And again, continue to work to inculcate the love of work, even if it's working on that stupid math problem that they just can't get right.
And then the last application I want to make has to do then with business owners and the making of profit. We've already seen that Calvin was a fan of making profit. I think though that businesses sometimes get the profit motive messed up. What I mean is that when profit is the primary motive for why a business exists, I think it can lead to choices that were contrary to God's purposes for work. I believe it's better to think of profit as the fruit of one's labor rather than the motive for it. I know that sounds a bit odd because you might be saying, well, if I'm laboring in the hopes of getting some fruit, doesn't that make fruit my motive?
I don't think so. It's reasonable to expect fruit or profit from one's labor, but businesses need to enjoy the business for the sake of the business. They should be glad for the benefits they bring to their customers and their employees, the flourishing that they bring about. That means that sometimes profit will be intentionally reduced in order to achieve these higher goals. If maximizing profit is the driver of a business, then that leads towards paying workers. If you follow the reasoning, if you want to maximize profits, here's how you do it. You pay your employees as little as you can pay when they'll still work for you. And you cheapen your product as far as you can cheapen and still have people be willing to pay for it.
That's where more profit motives lead you is to decrease the flourishing of your customers and your employees. Now I'm not arguing for some type of socialistic anti-profit business model. Profit's good and necessary, but be careful lest your profit motive get in the way of bringing about the kind of flourishing that your work is supposed to be creating. I believe this is what Calvin had in mind when he was in favor of making more profit. Contrast this to the foolish man, the foolish rich man in one of Jesus' parables who had profited so much that his barns could hold no more. His only thought, his only idea, the only solution he could think of was, I have to build bigger barns so I can hold all the profits that I'm making.
And we know how that story ended. Profit for profit's sake is not the right motive. Well in summary, let me recap just a few quick key thoughts. One, for most of human history, culture, cultures have had a very messed up understanding of work. Two, work is not a curse, it's a blessing from God to us. and through us to others, we should relish it. Three, our call to work does not have an expiration date. I believe we will still have to work, we still have work to do, we all still have work to do, and we will have work to do once we're in heaven. Have you ever thought about heaven? You think we're gonna sit around and play harps all day?
I believe there's gonna be work to do in heaven. It's just not gonna be as hard as it, the curse will be removed from the work, but there's gonna be work to do. And we must never think of our work or others as meaningless. God mysteriously uses all of our work to bring about the flourishing of a people in ways that we're not even aware of. When I'm popping those rivets, I want the rivet guy on the Boeing plane really paying attention to those, because I don't want those rivets coming out at 30,000 feet, that's bad. He's definitely helping life flourish, if he's putting those rivets in right. We are often guilty of missing the forest for the trees.
We ask what difference this tree makes, and we don't see how it adds to the beauty of the forest, The idea there again is that, yeah, I just put the 10,000th rivet in for today and boy is that boring. And yet, so he's looking at the tree missing the forest and how God uses all of those endeavors, all of that labor to bring about the greater flourishing of the culture. I'm grateful that God has raised our congregation's level of awareness of the sovereignty of God and to talk about every thumbs width belonging to Jesus. It's fun to think about the future and what God might do, but we have to realize that his mysterious ways most often require that his people get their hands dirty.
Let's pray. Well, Vada, as we once again have considered this topic of work, having a mind for work, we must confess that our culture has ingrained in our brain deeply a loathsome, this forework. And in various ways, it just works its way into our thinking, we pray that you would help shake that out of our heads, help us learn to love work, that it's good, that it's a pattern after you yourself as your image bearers, that we would all be considering ways that we can take on work, not necessarily for a paycheck, but just for the sake of flourishing, bringing about flourishing our culture, but that we as Christians would not only be known by our love, but we would be known by our work, and that that would speak loudly to our community and anybody else around us.
So just thank you, Father, for challenging us again with these thoughts, and may you be pleased as we apply them to our lives. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.
