Work| Work, Identity and God By David Spicer

Recently I got stuck listening to a fifteen-minute monologue by a Christian companion who was detailing all the minutia of his day to day happenings at work. As he finally sought to draw breath I jumped in with 'So where does God fit in?' After a couple of minutes with a furrowed brow he said 'Oh well I go to church most Sundays.'

A classic story that Christians use to describe how we put God into a box and naïvely think that we have the power to open the lid as and when, treating our creator at our behest and choosing to let him into our lives.

Identity
But this story also sums up society's view to work and the fact that our identities are entwined within it. In our 21st century world work has replaced the 20th century class structure and become our identity. God is given no place within this, but pushed outside as we work longer hours, throwing our lives into a never-ending quest to reach that goal, earn that promotion, get that bonus. But why are we now socially conditioned in such a way that staying in on a Friday night is the 'new going out'? Or that working a sixty-hour week is now the norm, and that we should never take our holiday quotas.

Self Definition
Work now defines who we are, what we do with our time and the courses that our lives will take. Meet any one new and two questions become automatic, 'What is your name', 'What do you do?". The question is not even 'Where do you work?', for the automatic assumption is that we all work and our identity is linked to and defined by what we do. Answers such as 'I'm a banker in the City', 'I am a nurse' or 'I work on-line' all form instant pictures in our minds and influence any potential relationship that we might chose to form with our new acquaintance.

Outside of Work
But what happens when we don't work, what are we meant to do with our time? Where does our definition now come from? We are lost in society without work and this is a prospect that is facing more of us each and every day. The terrorist attacks of September 11 have hastened the decline of the society that we identify with and define ourselves by. It is no longer a stigma to be made redundant; in fact it is all too common an experience today.

We need to ask the question, 'Who am I now as I have lost my identity?' How can one contribute any value to society without work? And how are we valued in the modern materialistic society that possesses us?

Definition by God
If we are humble enough to open that box and let God back into our lives we will see from the Old Testament book Joshua that God will be with us in what ever we do and where ever we go. If we let our relationship with God define us and let this relationship be reflected in what ever we choose to do in this world, then we have the answer to our identity and our value, as we were originally created to be - one of God's children.

David Spicer works in telecommunications and marketing.