Great to hear from you.

I’m with you in thinking this passage is not so well utilized when used to call people to leave secular work for ‘ordained’ or ‘paid’ ministry - and I certainly don’t think that Vanuatu is the only Christian culture that has an underdeveloped sense of what the non-ordained ordinary Christian life looks like

I think Luke has running throughout his book the concept of stewardship. So Jesus can at once insist that his disciples need to give up everything to follow him (14:33), to sell their possessions to give to the poor (12:33), and at the same time consider them workers who are worthy of their wages (10:7), commend to us the example of the ‘shrewd manager’ and commend Zaccheus even though he only gave away half his possessions. In other words giving up everything won’t necessarily mean giving up everything, and by extension leaving behind won’t necessarily mean leaving behind.

What is does mean is that my disposition to everything is no longer one of ownership or entitlement but rather stewardship and deployment.

Regarding secular employment I suspect our Christian cultures are the victims of ( at least) two errors. Firstly a particular error that automatically privileges ‘Christian’ over ‘Secular’ employment, and secondly a more general error of thinking we can easily/automatically deduce the details of a godly life from the more abstract overarching dispositions of a godly life. So, for example, I am called to love my parents and my children, and this will require that I give instructions to one, and that I NOT give instructions to the other. Nothing in the concept of ‘love’ tells me which. Instead I need to know the details of how God had ordered and designed parents and children to relate.

Hope this helps, I wrote for longer than I planned.

Love to you all.

Tim

PS Regular content should kick off again in March. We have stuff written, and other writers recruited.

So I’ve been meditating on this a lot recently. I’ve been particularly reflecting on what Luke 18:29-30 means for the ordinary christian. Usually when I hear it explained, its about leaving home and possessions for professional christian ministry, often missionary work. But this doesn’t explain what it means to leave wife and children… and doesn’t account for the fact that we don’t follow Jesus around Palestine anymore. Essentially, what does it look like for the ordinary christian to follow Jesus? What is it that we all must leave behind if it isn’t our secular jobs? Now, I think I know the answer to that (e.g. 1 Thes 1:9-10) but is that a valid application of the Luke passage?

This is a bigger question than just ‘men’ and ‘work’, I know.

Of course, since many men are already prone to finding their self-worth in their work, it will take careful teaching and honest truth-speaking to keep people focused on Jesus when they are working jobs which are in worldly terms ‘important’.

But we should never cling to one error just so we can avoid another

I think that when a bloke has no work, or feels that his work doesn’t benefit anyone, he is most likely to feel “unfulfilled”. This may even be a big factor in male depression and anxiety disorders.

One of the problems with the way we evangelicals view work, is that we fail to see work as a blessing unless it involves explicit gospel proclamation all the time. Instead, most of my peers have had moments where they feel the only work that blesses people is “ministry work” and have thought about quitting their “purposeless” work for a more “purposeful” alternative (ie. full-time paid ministry). Other friends feel guilty because the message they hear is that it’s selfish to remain in the secular workforce.

Thanks for seeing the value in work and expressing it so clearly Tim.