What’s the Sense of Work?

“What’s the Value of Work?” is one of thirteen films in the series on “God and Man in the Twentieth Century,” produced by Educational Communication Association (P.O. Box 114, Indianapolis, Indiana 46204) for institutional and television use. The subject is discussed by three panelists, with Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY as moderator. Dr. Jean Austin, like her husband, became a surgeon to serve as a medical missionary in the Congo. Her husband was killed on an Air Force mercy mission in World War II, but she went to the Congo as a widow; after a span of service, she married another surgeon, whose wife had died on the mission field. Today the Drs. Austin practice surgery in Alexandria, Virginia, where Jean Austin is mother to six children. Dr. Leo Eddleman served as a missionary in Palestine, then as president of Georgetown College in Kentucky. For some years he has been president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Sherwood Wirt, editor of the monthly religious journal Decision, is author of numerous books. During studies at New College, Edinburgh, where he received the Ph.D. degree, he wrote his thesis on Christian vocation.

Henry: More and more people seem to be having fundamental doubts about the value of work. Dr. Eddleman, what do you think accounts for their skepticism?

Eddleman: One thing is the vast amount of work that people are doing today in which they lose themselves. They become almost a statistic, in view of mass production of almost everything that is made in our country. The individual tends to lose a perspective of his own individual relationship.

Wirt: You must realize, however, that people have always had a hard time working. Work has never been easy. And the fact that we have complicated modern conditions does not alter the fact that it’s always a hard job to earn a living. Aristotle demeaned work. Karl Marx exploits work. But work has always been a part of our lives.

Austin: Dr. Eddleman said some people have lost the end-view of work, and they are more or less on a treadmill—the pickax without a useful purpose, which makes work a prison to them. They’ve had to look for a new end, and so they’ve set up the dollar as the status symbol and money as their god, rather than work in itself as an end.

Henry: Dr. Eddleman, do you think inflation, and the whole trend in the modern world of big government as the emergency support of all human exigencies, contributes to this in any way?

Eddleman: Certainly inflation underscores what Dr. Austin has just said. It keeps the dollar decreasing in its value to the extent that one or more segments of our population are always behind in what they are supposed to be earning. This causes a tendency to look on the government as the Big Mother, and as a result we get into this treadmill of monotonous work. We lose our sense of meaning in life.

Henry: What do you think about the big labor movements of our time? Do you think these have helped or hindered the quest for meaning and worth in the worker’s life?

Eddleman: At least they’ve done one thing: they have produced better wages and better working conditions. And to this extent the workers have been freed from some of those aspects of the old way of doing things in the factory that kept a man from finding some measure of self-realization.

Wirt: Yes, the labor movement has been a blessing to mankind by and large despite factors which detract from it—such as the handicaps we’re now going through in strikes here and there. The fact remains that mankind has been blessed, and I feel that the Church has not realized this sufficiently. The Church has worked toward charity for the worker rather than justice. This, I think, was a tragic mistake, particularly in the nineteenth century, and resulted in a great divorce of the working man from the Church. I hope that the Church is now becoming more aware of this.

Austin: Big labor tends to reduce men to only the instrument for making more dollars. They are nothing; they are just being used. This tends to frustrate them and adds to their spiritual misery. They get no enjoyment out of their work, and we should have joy.

Henry: Do you mean that onesided emphasis on the financial reward for a man’s work ignores a great many of the moral and spiritual factors.

Austin: Yes. I think Kipling said it, “But each for the joy of the working.” Where joy is gone, there’s frustration. When you’re just an instrument of the big labor union, that’s the other side of the coin. Unions may be good, but so many unions tend to inhibit initiative and in doing so, they frustrate.

Wirt: Joy is not the reason for work. We don’t work because of the joy in it. We work because we have to. We work for survival. And a man has to work in order to eat. That’s what Paul said.

Austin: Yes, but don’t make it a prison.

Eddleman: That is only true of certain people. You and your husband both are surgeons. You love your work, and therefore you go ahead and do it. But a great many people are working simply because this is the way they get their livelihood.

Austin: Yes, and this is what I say brings up the greatest frustration in man.

Eddleman: I want to take issue with one thing. There are a great many laboring people, union members, who are members of churches and actively engaged in the church work. I pastored a church for ten years that had 2,500 members, and many of them were union members and actively engaged in the labor movement.

Wirt: I don’t think, however, that the issue is whether a working man belongs to a church or not. I would say that the great issue is, Does the worker have a sense of vocation in his work? This gets one out of this hole you’re talking about, Dr. Austin, because when a man knows he has been called by God, then he can serve God in his work. That is to say, the work serves God, man serves the work.

Henry: Well, what of the notion that you get, sometimes, in an offbeat theology, that work is a result of the Fall of man and that in an ideal world nobody would have to work? Or the old Greek idea that work is a penalty for ignorance, and that in a thinking man’s world nobody would have to work, that the slave class is the only group that ought to do manual work? You get it again in the modern emphasis that science is going to lead us out of our ignorance and into the cybernetic age when computers are going to do all of our work, and men ought to draw a living wage whether they do any work or not. What about this?

Eddleman: Yes, but, Dr. Henry, even the most avid supporters of automation do not claim that automation is ultimately going to free everybody from having to work. We find that automation simply creates more jobs for more people. If I want to take a non-offbeat theological viewpoint, the Scriptures plainly state that before the Fall man had the responsibility of tending and dressing the trees and the vines and other growth in the Garden of Eden. Then after the Fall, work became a toilsome affair: Six days shalt thou labor and earn thy living by the sweat of thy brow.

Wirt: I think that the meaning of this passage in Genesis is that work is not necessarily evil. It’s true that work became a curse after the Fall, but then all aspects of life came under that same curse. The concept of work itself is good. Man was given hands to work with. He was given a brain to think with. And I think it’s a natural thing for man to want to work. But until he receives his call from God, until he is empowered by the Holy Spirit to carry through his function in life, his work is a drudge, a bore, simply a method of survival.

Austin: This is the redemptive feature of work, in that we are all born with hands and we are all born with our job, as J. S. Lowell said. But we must harness our heart as well as our hands. We must get our attitudes as well as our actions to working. This is what raises work to a spiritual level, and takes it out of the Fall, and the Greek idea of ignorance, and the treadmill.

Wirt: I think, Dr. Eddleman, that when a worker has given his life to Jesus Christ, at that point God gives him a sense of vocation. This comes through not only at the lathe or wherever he is working—in the office or in selling—but also in the relationships he has with the people among whom he works. It also comes through in the efforts he makes through his union or through his association to improve the working conditions. It comes through when he votes as a citizen. It comes through when he goes to church and teaches a Sunday-school class. All this combined gives him his sense of vocation.

Henry: Do you think that the problem of meaning is especially acute only for the assembly line worker.

Austin: No. All sorts of work, I believe, may be an assembly-line type of work. Even in the doctor’s office we occasionally feel that we’re on an assembly line, and that the end is just to finish the day’s work. But this is not the true meaning of our work. It goes deeply beyond this. We are called to serve people, and the resources we have within us must be constantly available. This is not an eight-hour-a-day job, nor a five-day week. We are not called to this. We are called to serve, if we have a true sense of vocation, and twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we should be available. Now I know there are limits to this.

Henry: Dr. Austin, how many babies did you deliver last year?

Austin: Well, between 200 and 250. And that is not all of my work. I take care of those babies after they come. That is a good deal of work, too.

Henry: Along the line of what you have been saying, I remember driving to Mayo Clinic once with one of the surgeons there. More or less as devil’s advocate, I said to him, “Now don’t you feel that it demeans your human dignity to have to do the same type of surgery week in and week out? You have this assembly-line responsibility—doesn’t it demean your dignity?”

Austin: No. No, not at all, because every person that comes to me needs me; he does not come unless he needs me. This I feel is my biggest asset within myself. My deepest spiritual resource is that I know that, if in the morning I lift my life to the Lord, during that day he can use it as he brings people to me, and that I am his to be used as he would have me used that day. No, it cannot be an assembly line. Only when fatigue comes in, as it does in all lines of work, do we ever think we are on a treadmill.

Wirt: If I may break in here, I must say that you have a very favorable type of work, Dr. Austin. But what about the man who is engaged in monotonous work, or the man in trivial work, or the man in useless work, or the man in immoral work—the man whose work is hampered by restrictions or by unfavorable working conditions? Where does he come through on this great feeling that he’s needed, and so on?

Henry: Don’t you think that you’ve got to define immoral work? This, from the biblical point of view, can never be justified as a calling, because, as Dr. Eddleman said, on the basis of creation God wills work for man in order to extend the moral and spiritual purposes of God in the universe. You can’t ever justify immoral work. But the real question is whether work has to be glamorous in order to have meaning and worth. Isn’t much of the work that’s worthwhile significant even though it’s routine?

Eddleman: This is where I would want to underscore the statement of a few moments ago. Work does not have to be glamorous in order to have divine significance and meaning. A man who is making automobiles, although he just turns one screw all day long eight hours a day, almost 365 days out of every year; is contributing to the well-being of society. He also has an opportunity to work in his church and say, as I’ve heard people say, “I get my meaning in life out of the combination of these two facts: I make my living here and I serve humanity over here.”

Austin: I remember the Scottish housewife who had written over her sink—and I believe Mrs. Billy Graham does too—“Divine service conducted here every day.” How unglamorous, housework and washing dishes! But it can be a divine service.

Eddleman: Dr. Austin, it is estimated that a woman will wash over 1,100,000 dishes in a lifetime.

Wirt: But what about the man who cleans out the septic tanks, the man who takes away the trash? Are you going to put a sign on his car saying “Divine service conducted here”? I just raise this question because there is a lot of nasty work that has to be done.

Austin: Yes, but if he takes it that he is doing the nasty work in the Lord’s will, his attitude more than his actions is what counts here.

Eddleman: Think how much nastier the world would be if he didn’t do that.

Henry: And this is the service of God and of his fellow man. Regardless of how routine and mechanical and unglamorous work may be, the turning of the right screw by a person who knew how to turn it has saved many a human life. And the wrong turning of a screw by somebody who didn’t know how to turn it has exacted many a human life.

Wirt: And caused a few automobiles to be recalled.

Henry: I want to get back to the surgeon at Mayo Clinic, because his reply was so much like yours, Dr. Austin, that I think it’s worth mentioning. What he said to me was: “Every morning when I come to the clinic I remind myself that I can say either ‘Here comes another chunk of humanity down the line’ or ‘This is my patient and I must handle him as if he were the only patient I shall ever have.’ ”

Austin: Yes.

Henry: Well, now, what meaning and purpose has work according to the Bible?

Wirt: I don’t think that you can solve that question of work until you solve the question of the individual man. You get the man’s life straightened out, get him on cue with the Lord, and then his work falls into its natural place, no matter what it is. If he is doing the wrong kind of work—if he’s setting type for a pornographic magazine—he’s going to get out of that kind of work. We had a man in London who was showing obscene pictures in the Soho district during the Billy Graham crusade; he came forward at the crusade. That man had to give up his work.

Eddleman: Dr. Henry, we mustn’t undersell the fact that the Bible is very realistic. While Christ may have seemed to have had his head in the clouds, he always had his feet on the ground. Now, our Russian friends, who themselves are very realistic, have come up with a system whereby over 60 per cent of all their physicians are women, like Dr. Austin here. They are convinced that women’s innate tendency toward compassionate concern for humanity makes them capable of being better doctors.

Austin: Oh, but I think that I have to speak for women in general, not just specifically as doctors. I believe women are called just as men are. There may be a fifty-fifty relationship, so to speak, with men. We’re in the day of equality and, especially with our present administration, of raising the status of women. I believe that God calls women just as much as he calls men—perhaps not to as glamorous work, as you say, but he gives gifts to all. I’m not to hide my light under a bushel, whether I’m a man or a woman. He did not say “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men” just to men. Nor did he say “Go ye into all the world” just to men—as all our women missionaries on the field will testify. I believe that with the creativity that a woman has—and what larger creativity than to produce children?—she bears the highest of qualities for work. And to be in her home and to produce there is the first place that she should work.

Wirt: I can’t help feeling that if Paul the Apostle were living today he would not have said quite the same things he said about women in the New Testament. I can’t help thinking that he would have lifted the restriction on women preaching. After all, he did open the Gospel to the Gentiles. Why would he not open the pulpit to women?

Austin: Oh, I want to answer you, Dr. Wirt. I’m so glad you said that, because while I am a woman—and I am a feminist, I hope, but not too much so!—I do firmly believe that the man is still the head of the home. I believe this will never change. This is biblical to the end of time. Women are subordinate in authority and should be; and I find women find happiness only in this relationship. I want my husband to be the head of my home. I definitely want him to be the leader and the children to look to him. And I need him as the leader to lean upon. I feel that then, from this basis of home and security and leadership, I can better go out into the world and do the work I have there. Perhaps when we go into the office—his office is right opposite mine—there we are more equal. And in the operating room the same way. And certainly in dealing with our patients, there is no difference in authority or subordination. But in the home, yes.

Henry: Let’s ask Dr. Eddleman: What do you think of Paul’s admonition in the letter to Timothy, “I suffer not a woman to teach or to usurp authority over her husband”?

Eddleman: One of the most obvious sociological facts of life is that wherever “open-Bible Christianity” has prevailed at one time or another, equalitarianism between women and men has prevailed. This is not true of the rest of the world. So Paul and the rest of the Scriptures elevate womanhood. Secondly, any statements in the Bible, particularly from the pen of Paul, that seem to circumscribe womanhood must be taken in their context. For example, at Corinth and several other places in Asia Minor there were temples that had processionals led by temple prostitutes, and it was in this kind of context that Paul would make such a statement as “Let the women keep silence in the church.”

Wirt: And keep their heads covered.

Eddleman: Yes. These prostitutes went in this processional without anything on their head.

Henry: So that this admonition grew out of exposure to possible misunderstanding of integrity and dignity.

Eddleman: It was an effort to avoid any resemblance to the heathenism that was right next door to them.

Wirt: That’s why I feel that under different circumstances Paul might have said something different about women.

Henry: You know, we have emphasized on the panel that every person, not just the minister or professional religious worker, ought to justify his work as a divine vocation, a divine calling. I’m wondering, then, why the Christian Church ordains some men, or women, and not everybody. What is the significance of ordination?

Eddie man: This lies in the fact of a divine-call concept which prevails throughout the Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament. A man who is called of God has had an experience, if he is called to the gospel ministry, that is difficult to understand; it’s difficult for the layman to understand it, and certainly the world at large does not even appreciate it. But it is nevertheless true that some men come and say, “I’m called of God to the gospel ministry.”

Henry: And so they are set apart for a specific task. What is the peculiar glory of the ministry? What is the task of the minister?

Eddleman: The peculiar glory of the ministry is the handling of the Word of God, rightly dividing the Word of truth. We’ve had men come and enroll at our seminary—one man abandoning the position of hospital administrator, another this year with a Ph.D. in history from a great state university—saying simply, “I’m called of God to preach and I must come and get my theological education and prepare myself for this particular ministry.”

Austin: Irrespective of the ordination of women, I must say a word for women here. If every woman would consider that she is called and that marriage and motherhood don’t require her to thwart her creative gifts, how much greater a task force for the church we would have.

Henry: We’d just multiply our task force, wouldn’t we? We would double it.

Austin: We have a terrific wasted potential in the waste of women’s talents for the Lord.

Wirt: But the vocation of church leadership, I think, will always probably be primarily in the hands of men, don’t you think?

Austin: Yes, and I believe that women should be subordinate in the church. I don’t mean that women can’t preach. I’ve spoken many times. But I believe that as far as leadership is concerned, here again man should be the head.

Eddleman: Primarily so; yet in South Russia there are numerous women who are pastors of churches.

Henry: Just the fact that a man goes to seminary doesn’t mean that he qualifies, at least in our time, for ordination. Aren’t there large numbers of young men studying for the ministry today out of quite different motivations than in the past? Don’t you find this a problem among your seminary students?

Eddleman: This is a problem to a degree, but it largely depends upon the seminary. There are institutions that have replaced the Gospel of redemption with the “gospel” of social action. Numerous students coming to these seminaries may not be coming out of this sense of call. But largely in an evangelical seminary the men will come to prepare themselves for this ministry of the Word.

Wirt: I don’t think the word is social action any more, Dr. Eddleman; I think it’s political action.

Henry: Some people today are attracted to the ministry because it’s a good, clean profession where you don’t get tangled up in some of the demands of other frontiers of modern life. So there seem to be all sorts of motivations for going into the ministry today.

Austin: And they have a captive hearing; they have a pulpit, and they have prestige and dignity, and people will listen. I wonder if some men don’t go into it just for this—that they have a hearing?

Eddleman: We notice them every year, Dr. Austin, as they come in, first-year students at the seminary. And we can detect a few men who were called into the ministry either by their mother or by some social-action program. But we have a system that usually separates the men from the boys early. We require Greek and Hebrew of every student, and before the first semester is up we usually know who is called by the draft board and who is called by the Lord.

Henry: Dr. Wirt, what do you think of the Communist thesis that capitalism necessarily degrades the worker and that Communism dignifies him?

Wirt: Well, insofar as capitalism exists in a free society, I think we’ll have to say, Dr. Henry, that the man is better off—the worker, that is to say. He is a free man in his work. But looking at the whole problem of modern industrial society, whether behind the Iron Curtain or this side of it, the fact remains that the worker has a problem. He is caught in the spokes of a great machine.

Henry: There are assembly lines behind the Iron Curtain also, aren’t there?

Wirt: Of course. And the problem of finding meaning in life is just as great there. In fact, it’s greater, because there the worker is not considered a free man. He is considered a servant of the state. I think, however, that the real issue here in finding meaning and significance in a man’s work does not ultimately depend upon whether he works in a capitalist society—whether he works for General Motors or whether he works for Aeroflot, let’s say, in the Soviet Union. The question is, Does God come into his life and invade and pervade his life with meaning?

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