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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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