What the nail scars in Jesus’s hands mean for the work of your hands
What the nail scars in Jesus’s hands mean for the work of your hands, why the eternal value of your “secular” work depends upon the value of creation, how we got to the place of overemphasizing heaven v. the “renewed earth.”
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[0:00:04] JR: Hey, friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of Mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as HR managers, dental assistants, and curators, that's the question we explore every week, and today I'm posing it to Dr. Darrell Cosden, a brilliant theologian and author of an excellent old book called, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work.
Dr. Cosden and I recently sat down to discuss what the nail scars in Jesus' hands mean for the work of your hands and how much that work matters for eternity. We talked about why the value of your secular work depends upon the value of creation and how we, the Church, got to this place in the last few hundred years of overemphasizing heaven and going to heaven when we die versus Scripture's promise of bodily resurrection on a renewed earth? Listen, this episode is more academic than others, but it is mind-bending and well worth a listen. I loved this conversation with my new friend, Dr. Darrell Cosden.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:27] JR: Dr. Cosden, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[0:01:30] DC: Thank you. It's great to be here.
[0:01:32] JR: In the Acknowledgement section of this new book I just published, The Sacredness of Secular Work, I wrote, “Thank you to those who did the hard theological work that my readers and I now benefit from, NT Wright, Randy Alcorn, Darrell Cosden.” Then I listed a few others, but I got to tell you, and I told you this before we started recording, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, which you wrote something 20 years ago, was so, so helpful to me. I'm just thrilled that you're here to help us unpack it for our listeners. Thank you again for all the hard labor-intensive work you've done over these years.
[0:02:07] DC: Well, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for those kind words, too.
[0:02:10] JR: In your book, you quote this other theologian, Dr. Miroslav Volf, as saying, “The significance of secular work depends upon the value of creation. The value of creation depends on its final destiny.” Bold claim, which you go on to agree with. I want to hear you make that case for us here. Why does the significance of secular work depend on the value of creation in this material world?
[0:02:40] DC: Sure. Let me start by just making a couple of caveats here. I'm talking to Christians. Okay?
[0:02:46] JR: Yes.
[0:02:46] DC: I'm talking to people who believe in something that we call eternity, who believe that this life, this universe that we currently live in, in its current form, is not simply temporal and fleeting and gone, and there's nothing else. Okay? I'm talking to people who believe is a fundamental part of their belief structures, that there is something future, something more. Okay?
Also, to put Miroslav Volf and myself into context here, we're talking about meaning and value, finding meaning and value in work, and having a perspective, and an angle from which to come. If I'm talking to a person who doesn't believe these things, I'm not saying, at all, that your work can have no meaning and significance. I want to say that right up in the front, but it doesn't have the same ultimate, dare I use the word, eternal significance, that Christians are seeking when they approach life. Does that make sense?
[0:03:51] JR: 100%. I'm glad to clarify that.
[0:03:53] DC: Of course, our daily work is bound up with the physical creation. I don't mean that in a narrow sense. I just mean, it's our context. We are bodies living in a world that is spiritually physical, if you will. Therefore, if all of this stuff doesn't ultimately matter, then it doesn't ultimately matter.
[0:04:16] JR: Yes. That's right. That's exactly it. Contrary, and this is what I'm really addressing as you know in the sacredness’ sake at work, contrary to common belief, God's plan for that creation, right? That spiritually physical, if you will, is not cosmic destruction, but redemption and renewal, right?
[0:04:36] DC: Absolutely. This is the key to the whole argument, at least that I am, and many others, I'm not alone in this. It felt like I was alone maybe in the early days, but I'm nowhere near alone in this conversation now. That is the key to it, right? If we believe that creation is going to be destroyed, if it's disposable, if it doesn't matter to God. I mean, to really push it down. If creation isn't saved in some way, then neither are we, because we are physical beings. If some notion, which I think is not biblical remotely that salvation equals the soul going to heaven when you die. First of all, that's Plato. Pure and simple. Show you chapter and verse. I used to read it to students in class all the time and they go, “Oh, that sounds very Christian.” I'm like, “Actually, no. That's Plato.”
If that were true, well, from a Christian point of view, if salvation equals the soul going to heaven when you die and that's it, then it's not really you who's being saved. It's only a small part of who we are. The whole testimony of Scripture and the whole testimony of reality around us, people can question the spiritual reality, but it's really hard to question physical reality outside of some an experimental matrix-type thinking. So, yeah. It just seems to me that if destruction were the goal, then the whole Christian framework, the whole Christian – I mean, Christian story, it makes no sense. There is no salvation.
[0:06:14] JR: It makes zero sense. Not only do we have biblical evidence that in the end, this earth will not be destroyed, but renewed. It also passes the logical test. If God called this creation very good in Genesis 1, we really think he's going to destroy it – it just doesn't make any sense, right? If he is God, he is sovereign. He called this thing very good. Then logically, it follows that he will want to renew and keep and redeem this thing forever. Here's where the rubber meets the road for us that care about our work that we do in the present.
If heaven is our ultimate hope and this earth that we're sitting on right now is going to burn up in the end, then our work with this earth, typing on this MacBook made out of aluminum that I'm talking to you on now, and planting gardens, and building homes, does not matter in the grand scheme of eternity. But if God redeems the earth and deems it to be eternal, then my “secular work” with this earth has to matter for eternity, right?
[0:07:14] DC: Right. It's a redefinition of what makes something spiritual. It's not spirit as opposed to matter. It's spirit infused into matter. That spirit includes meaning and purpose, right? I think you're absolutely right. When I started these conversations, gosh, there's a backstory, like there was just this nagging frustration and sense that, like Neo in the Matrix, something's just not right with the Christian world that I was in. So, I began searching back in the late 80s. It was only in the early 90s that I even discovered a potential direction of this conversation in Miroslav Volf's book that you've mentioned that I quote in my book.
That really got me started in this trajectory and thinking. When I started, boy, I was alone, that there were people who maybe wanted to say, “Hey, I think there's something that you've got here that's worth pursuing.” But there are a lot of people who just resisted. It's just did not fit their Christian understanding of God destroying creation and recreating out of nothing.
[0:08:27] JR: Yeah. I got to know how we got here because you say in your book, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, which again, you wrote nearly 20 years ago, “The belief that our ultimate salvation hope is the bodily resurrection to a transformed and genuinely physical new heaven and new earth has been relegated to the spiritual background in danger of being lost altogether.” This is getting better as you pointed out, right? I think this theology is less endangered than it was 20 years ago, but how did we get here? Because as I understand it, our emphasis on the present heaven versus the new earth is fairly new in church history.
[0:09:07] DC: Yeah. How we got there is the thrust of the question and I'll get to that in just one second. I think for sure we've made progress theologians, people training in seminaries now, seminary professors, theology programs in universities are emphasizing new creation, resurrection and trinity in the way that even when I was back in my earlier study days in college and seminary anyway, before my doctorate. We're just, yeah, of course, and then we move on.
Now, the implications of these things are being brought out. What I'm not convinced that I see yet on a church level. I'm not suggesting that these younger, newer pastors aren't teaching what they learned, I just don't really yet see a lot of the average ordinary, Mere Christian, either understanding or grasping these things, right?
[0:10:02] JR: I agree.
[0:10:03] DC: I used to be naive and think, “Oh, if we just train the pastors, the pastors will say it, and people will hear it, and people will believe it, and that will change it.” Something isn't – that just isn't the way it seems to work. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I was convinced that was the way it worked. Now that I'm 60, I'm like, “Maybe not.” That goes to your question, how did we get? Oh, boy. You want to open up a can of worms for debate, how we got here? I have my personal thoughts and I'll try to sketch them.
I mean, as you say, the Christian belief, the Christian hope has always been the resurrection of the dead to the new creation. That is fundamental. That is at the level of creedal. That is at the level of biblical. I think that as the early church moved from its original context within a Judaism of the second temple period and moved into a predominantly Greek conceptual world and intellectual world and began engaging with the classical Greek authors as a good form of contextualization. Do not get me wrong here. I mean, then everybody does it, we all contextualize. As it did that and began engaging with Plato. I think there was this matter-spirit dichotomy that just began to seemingly sound like what we were reading in scripture.
Then I think scriptural translations begin to reflect that thinking and the very English, well, eventually English words or German words or French words, whatever. The very words that we use to translate these Jewish concepts from the Second Temple period. I'm thinking, New Testament period here, began to take on a meaning that we think is evident, self-evident, and obvious, like the word eternal. Boy, you talked about a misunderstood word from at least an original biblical language’s point of view and to what we think today.
I also think that as we move from the fringes to the heart of the seed of power and empire with Constantine, that there were certain necessary functions of doctrine and a threat and fear of the afterlife that I don't think the New Testament knows that starts sneaking its way into our thinking in order for there to be social control. I just think all the – and then the rise of the spirituals, the aesthetics, the monasteries, which I'm not anti and thinking all totally negative about, but it did create when coupled with secular power.
Yeah, I think it creates this dichotomy between – well, as Luther experienced it, like just read any Luther biography. He experienced this. There's a difference between seeking spiritual things, all our ultimate salvation, and then worthless worldly things until he has his revelation that I'm not even sure he fully understood the depth of his own revelation. If you read my book, I have some challenges to Luther on that, but I still value and think he had that revelation. Yeah. So, boy. It's complicated how we got here, but I think it's so ingrained.
[0:13:21] JR: It's so deep.
[0:13:22] DC: It's at the level of intuitive that I don't just think a generation of pastors and teachers who happen to learn it now, because of people like N.T. Wright or others. They can preach it, if they preach it, they can preach it, preach it, preach it. But I think people will hear the words, shake their head, yes. I don't think it goes to that deep level of, “Oh, my gosh. This changes everything.”
[0:13:47] JR: Everything. I'm just so – somebody asked me the other day. How are you teaching your kids about heaven? I'm like, “Well, for starters, I'm not talking a whole lot about the present heaven. I'm talking a whole lot more about the new heavens and the new earth.” Right? Just to right-size this, and because I think when we look at scripture, that bodily resurrection, that physical resurrection at the earth was the ultimate hope of the writer's scripture, not the present “heaven” where the souls of the redeemed are with God awaiting bodily resurrection.
You mentioned scriptural translations. This term new earth, I think it's interesting, right? Because I think it implies a brand-new earth like you said, that God is going to destroy this one and create out of nothing a new earth. Of course, like we just said, that has great ramifications for how we think about the eternal value of our “Secular work.” I've read a translation or two that translates new earth as renewed earth, which I think is really interesting. Is that a more accurate, more biblical way to think about what scripture says God will do with this planet?
[0:14:52] DC: I think in a current state of English language, as we have it today, that that is probably a more helpful way to translate it. Granted, you're doing some interpreting there. You're not just taking exact word. You're trying to say, “Well, what does this word mean?” I like to illustrate it this way in revelation when it says behold, I make all things new. I think what he's saying is, “Behold, I make all things new.” Not I make all new things. Okay? Once you have that concept in your head squarely anchored, and I think you can use the word new or renewed, but it has to hang on the difference between the concept of making all things new again, versus making all new things again. If that makes sense.
[0:15:41] JR: It makes total sense. Makes total sense. Dr. Cosden, I told you before we start recording that we've talked a lot on this podcast before about the biblical evidence that it's not just the earth, this earth that will last for eternity, but also some of the things we make out of the earth, some of the literal works of our hands. We see evidence of this in Isaiah 60 in Revelation 21:26 and elsewhere. But you pointed out something in your book that I had never considered before, that the nail scars in Jesus' hands give us further biblical evidence for this idea. Can you unpack that for us?
[0:16:16] DC: Sure. I mean, what I was thinking at the time was, it's really easy to think that maybe some of the more noble, and positive, and wonderful things that we do on this earth, sure, God will happily accept those things. What about even the work that maybe in some kind of a way isn't as virtuous? Is there even hope for the healing of the bad stuff? If there isn't, then ultimately even our best endeavors are kind of, well, lost and worthless.
[0:16:48] JR: Yeah. Because everything's marred by sin.
[0:16:50] DC: Right. Right. When I look at this, I see a clear example of a post-resurrection description in Scripture of a work of human hands, not one that we as human should be proud of, but clearly the soldiers were working, right? The soldiers were obeying the empire's lawful authority, and instead of wiping that out and finding no trace of that, we find. Even that hymn says it. Rich wounds, yet visible above and beauty glorified. That somehow even the ugliest, even the most broken, can somehow participate in this renewal. I think Jesus' body is the paradigm of the – I mean, it's the only paradigm. It is the paradigm of resurrection. If it isn't, then none of it makes any sense. There is no resurrection.
[0:17:43] JR: Park there for a second, Dr. Cosden, because that's something I wish I had space to explore in my book, and I didn't. Make that case briefly. How can we look to the bodily resurrection of Christ as a template, if you will, to inform not just our bodily resurrection? I think that's a logical enough, but also the resurrection of some of the works of our hands.
[0:18:04] DC: Yeah. You're drawing a lot of theological inference at this point. I do think, like you're Roman’s eight. I think you're drawing from some definite direct biblical evidence. Okay? But I also think that direct biblical evidence makes sense within the theological inference that Jesus is always depicted as the first fruits, the firstborn, as the paradigm of what is to be expected. I mean, there's more to it than that. Jesus is both the paradigm of who is God. If your God doesn't look like Jesus. If your God looked like something else with Jesus tacked on, then you're not talking about the God of Jesus, right?
Jesus reveals how God acts, what God's character is, who God loves, the whole thing, right? You don't add Jesus to the Father and come out with some kind of a balancing, mathematic equation. Also, when you look at Jesus, you see what the ultimate fulfillment of humanity looks like. He is the quintessential human, okay? When we get this from the creed and it's a Chalcedonian Definition. He is the full representation of God. He is the full representation of humankind. Okay?
When we look to Jesus in his life, and his death, and his resurrection, we get the image of what God's purposes, and plans, and goals are all about. That's what I'm trying to drive at. There is both a continuity, a similarity, a continuation, and a genuine newness to that resurrected body. I think we've erred on the side of the difference, the discontinuity, because we tend to think of heaven as so opposite of creation, or eternity as so opposite of creation. I don't want to lose the surprising newness, but if we neglect the similarity and the continuity, then we're simply denying the resurrection narratives. I mean, they're there, like they're not inferenced, they're clear. Now, the implications of that, wow, let's reflect on that.
[0:20:16] JR: Yeah. You pointed to Romans 8. What other passages can help us connect the dots from, okay, Jesus bodily resurrection to our bodily resurrection, and the resurrection of some of our work? Some of that, yes, there's discontinuity, but some of the physical continuity of the work of our hands. What passages should our listeners go study up on here?
[0:20:36] DC: I think you can say any passages in any of the Pauline literature that talk about resurrection.
[0:20:43] JR: 1 Corinthians 15.
[0:20:45] DC: Yeah. I mean, I clearly do that in the book. I mean, in any place where that's talked to, but then also, as if anybody who's looked at the book knows, I think Revelation 21-20, 21-22, those last chapters of Revelation. I don't mean to just limit it to that, but it's very focal, very central there. I think we see this culmination of creation. When you put the last chapters of Revelation with the first chapters of Genesis, it just opens up a whole new understanding of the story of why Jesus came, and what Jesus did, and where the plan was. Already from the beginning before sin even entered into the picture. So, for me, those passages are central. Genesis 1-11, Revelation 20. Yeah, the whole started 20 just for ease, 20 to the end. Then any of the Pauline literature. Yeah, 1 Corinthians 13, but any place that talks about resurrection.
I think when you focus on those, you begin a picture of the shape of the gospel emerges that has been truncated, or limited, or neglected by some of our traditions within the history of the church. Then those other bits that we should never ignore, the bits that I haven't mentioned look at, but they have a new horizon. They're seen against the backdrop of a new horizon. Their meaning takes on a whole new depth perception, if you will.
Then when you look at specific statements in Scripture, like in the Old Testament about workers and the value of what they do and God's saying, “Hey, that's really good or whatever.” Then you see that as part of a bigger horizon rather than just focusing on the bits and pieces. If that, yeah, if that helps. I would really encourage people to think that way.
[0:22:51] JR: Yeah. It's really good. You did such a good job in the Heavenly Good of Earthly Work of building the biblical case, the eternal significance of work, but you also broke down the logical evidence for this, or at least you started to hint in this direction. Yeah, going all the way back to Genesis 1. You shared this story, this picture that I haven't forgotten about your story, the story of your friend who was in prison in the Ukraine, and what he watched the guards do to his work day in and day out that I thought was really instructive here. Can you share that story with our listeners and what you think the point is for our work today?
[0:23:27] DC: Sure. I lived and worked in Russia and Ukraine at the end of the Soviet period. Even before I went there, I spent a year working for a human rights organization on the questions of religious freedom, prisoners of conscience, prisoners of faith. But when I moved to that part of the world, I began to meet, not just read about, not just legally and theoretically think about, but meet near the stories of people who were put in prison in one way or another for their faith. The one friend of mine told a story about how – and it's a story even similar if you watch movies and you're into the literature of movies that you find in the movie Bridge Over the River Kwai, right?
If you're a prisoner, your life is meaningless, purposeless. Your life is one of nothingness, but if you have work to do, you can throw yourself into it and distract yourself from others. The guards would even, in the prison camp, assign hard labor work duty to the prisoners, like for example, move this pile of heavy rubbish, nonsense, rocks, whatever, all this stuff over to this other location. They would do it. Even like in the Bridge Over the River Kwai, they get into it, they become engineers for building that bridge there.
My friend who had never seen that movie, but would talk about them organizing themselves and economizing – you know, basically the stuff you do at work and move that pile, but then once they got it done, the guard said, “Okay, now move it back.” As a form of psychological torture to show them the meaninglessness and the futility of their existence and the fact that others have absolute power and control over them.
It dawned on me in that conversation and even in watching the movie, the similarities. It dawned on me that that was the way I was taught or if not taught directly. That was the background assumptions about anything other than “professional Christian ministry” in the world. I thought, it's no less a form of torture if it's all meaningless and God just destroys it and it doesn't have any eternal significance. It just seems so obvious to me like, duh, God isn't that.
[0:25:52] JR: This does not compute with what we know about the character of God.
[0:25:55] DC: This does not compute with the God that we see in Jesus Christ. It can't be true. Now, I should add something I didn't put in the book for your listeners. When I first came to this realization, even before I wrote the book. I had understood this, like so probably four or five years before putting pen to paper in the book. I was in a church and I was preaching on this subject, because I was asked to. I used that illustration as a significant part of the sermon. At the end of the sermon a man when we're having that quiet, reflective time before everybody leaves. We've had the ending and we're sitting there with the quiet music playing, and everybody's just saying their final prayers and now we're going to get up and walk out.
Well, the man turns out was an elder of that church, stands up in the back and in a growling, yelling voice yells at me at the top of his lungs. Now, this is happening in a church setting. I want you to get this picture. He growls at me, “How dare you question God. If God commands you to do it, then you do it. You don't ask for questions of meaning and purpose. If God commands it, you do it. Obeying God's command is all that matters.” I mean, the whole church froze. I mean, you could like, you just imagine what everybody else in the church is doing at this point. Okay? He came forward and I was younger. I was in my 30s. I would handle it very differently now than I did at the time. But at that age, I thought, “Really? You think ethics is just a matter of doing what God commands, whether it's meaningless, purposeless, or valueless, just because God commands it.” He said, “Yes.”
Now, I know from my training, oh, so he's a deontologist who studied Kant. I mean, all these things, they’re going on in my head. I'm like, “Wow.” I can't believe I said this, a little comic relief here, maybe cringe-worthy comic relief. I can't believe I said this. I said, “Huh. That sounds very similar to the approach to authority and Nazi Germany in the 1930s.”
[0:28:10] JR: Exactly. Yeah, that's almost like –
[0:28:13] DC: Of course, he didn't take that well.
[0:28:16] JR: You don't say.
[0:28:17] DC: You don't say. It didn't end up going well. I wasn't wrong, but probably in front of all those people at that moment, while you could have heard a pin drop everywhere else saying that, probably wasn't the most helpful thing for me to do.
[0:28:31] JR: Probably wasn’t the wisest, but –
[0:28:34] DC: But it was so obvious.
[0:28:35] JR: But the point still stands.
[0:28:36] DC: The point still stands. I didn't want to put that in the book for obvious reasons, but I will never forget that moment that why would you not find this good news that God is not a torturer, that God doesn't command us to do things for no purpose at all, except the fact that God can, like why wouldn't you find that liberating, freeing, and life-giving and livening, wonderful, glorious, great news? Why wouldn't you find that great news? There's something else at work going on here behind the scenes. Wow.
[0:29:12] JR: I've heard this objection, not with growling, but I've heard it from some believers. It sounded something like this. Why do we need to be motivated by our work lasting forever? We shouldn't need that, right? It's almost trivial to consider this. My response largely aided by Dr. Randy Alcorn's work is no, no, no, no. Number one, God put a desire for eternity in our hearts. I believe that's primarily a desire for him, but also a desire for the thing that he asked us to do in the beginning to be an eternal thing, number one.
Number two, by thinking about and dwelling upon the eternal significance of “secular work” and this work literally outliving us. It makes more, not less of the resurrection, but Christ has redeemed not just souls, right, but all of the material world makes his glory shine brighter in the present and for eternity. Does that make sense to you, Dr. Cosden?
[0:30:11] DC: I think you're absolutely right. I used to do a little experiment with students in class, okay. To that effect, like I said, I think the church, if you ask people forever in most churches, do you believe in the doctrine of the Trinity? They say, “Of course, we do.” If you ask them, “Do you believe in the resurrection?” They say, “Of course, we do.” Okay? I would have students come in and I would casually ask if they believed in the resurrection. The answer was obviously, yes. But then when I ask them a different question, describe for me then what salvation is, the nature of salvation. I separate it by several minutes. I don't want to give away my hand here.
[0:30:54] JR: Sure. Yeah, yeah.
[0:30:56] DC: Without exception, I would get some version of the soul going to heaven when you die.
[0:31:01] JR: Going to heaven when I die. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[0:31:03] DC: I said, “Give me one church holiday where we celebrate that.” They look at me and I said, “You know that the resurrection of the dead is salvation. You know this.” But when I ask you what salvation is, you make no reference to it. Wow. I mean, and then it's like, okay, at this point, as a pedagogue, as an educator, I'm like, “Now that I have your attention.”
[0:31:27] JR: Turn your textbook to.
[0:31:29] DC: Yeah. Because they literally would say, “Oh, my gosh. You're right.” Like, “Oh, wow, how did I get to this place?” I said, “You're not alone. This happens to every course, every class, every year. This is just, you're not unique.” Why is it that we don't think that the resurrection is big and central to that whole Christian belief? It's Easter, we celebrate for goodness’ sake. The Christmas, what we've just celebrated, celebrates the incarnation. God's yes to this whole creation project. Easter affirms and puts on an eternal plane.
If we still had questions, God's yes to this whole project. How is that not like the best news ever? Makes it so much bigger, like you said, just following up on what you said, it just makes it so much bigger and more real. If this is true, then wow, I mean, of course, critic might say, “Well, this is all fantasy. This isn't true.” It's like, yeah, the apostle Paul said, “If this isn't true, it is all nuts.”
[0:32:38] JR: Yeah. It's foolishness.
[0:32:39] DC: We just live and hope that this story, this narrative is the truth. We believe it, because, and we live in hope. I can't prove to you at this moment on this side of eternity that your work matters for eternity. I can't prove to you that the resurrection will apply to you and will happen. It's given to us in the form of promise. That's what we believe and live into and work toward.
[0:33:07] JR: Man, so good. We should end the episode right there, because that was so good. But I have to ask you about one more thing before we wrap up. This quote of yours that I think about a lot. I put an exclamation point next to it when I originally read the book. You said, “Commenting on Genesis 1 and 2 when Adam works on nature. He is also working on himself.” Can you explain what you mean by this? Are you basically saying, hey, listen, we're created at a dust and when we work with the dust, it's a process of sanctification that work as somehow sanctifying us? Is that what you're talking about here?
[0:33:45] DC: Depending on how you describe and unpack that. Sure, I'd be happy with saying that. What I'm saying is humanity, there are two ways to tell the Genesis story and we could go into hours of conversation here. The Eastern Church and the Western Church, I'm going to simplify it to the point of making errors in oversimplification.
[0:34:04] JR: Okay.
[0:34:05] DC: But the Western Church believes that in creation, humanity were created perfect, complete, done, and dusted. We were at the height. We were saved, whatever language you want to use and that we fell from that height. Paradise. Paradise lost. Okay? Now, salvation is paradise regained. It's like this three-stage process of telling the story. I think the Eastern Church, meaning the Eastern Orthodox Church tells that story in a slightly different way when Adam and Eve were created. They were created infantile. Good to go. Everything is there that you need. You're not finished. You're just getting started on a journey of becoming. Okay?
I personally find that that narrative, regardless of the exogenous image and likeness of God, I want to get into that, but I firstly find that narrative, makes sense, both from a biblical point of view, from a psychological point of view, from an existential point of view that are work. I don't mean aren't necessary. I'm not limiting that to employment. Okay? I'm talking about our physical, our activities in this creation. I might even include play. I would include play. Okay? That somehow that process of doing becomes both an unfolding of who we are and the becoming of who we are in order to fully move toward the reflection of being like God.
In the New Testament, we call that Christ's likeness. In Genesis, we call that being in the image and the likeness of God. Then in the New Testament, that notion of Imago Dei image of God, image and likeness of God. That's from the Greek language. Jesus becomes depicted in Colossians as the icon or likeness of the invisible God, both as fully human and as fully God himself. Therefore, to me, when I look at this process of our work, can either bring out and make us into healthfully, hopefully the people that God wants us to be. It is sanctifying in that sense, as you said or it can crush and destroy God's creation, depending on the conditions within which we do it, how we do it, what we do it toward, what's imposed upon us from external circumstances.
Now, the great news is redemption applies both to the beautiful and the good to perfect and the broken and the destroyed to heal and perfect. But let's not misunderstand what we do and how we do it. In some sense is a form of, I hate to use the word, because I don't like it, but self-realization. You realize who you are. You create who you are. You shape who you are. Within the confines of the tram lines, maybe God has put in place, but there's a lot of openness, and flexibility, and freedom as to who we become and what we become. I wouldn't want to reduce our work to simply a platform for evangelism, as I know you don't either, nor do I want to reduce our work to some selfish pursuit of the individual, self, and identity becoming realized, but I don't want to not have those elements in there either. I just don't want to reduce it to that.
[0:37:36] JR: That's good. That's really importantly nuanced and really, really well said. Dr. Cosden, we end every episode of the show with the same three questions. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending most frequently? For the sake of this episode, let's narrow it down to this topic of the sacredness of secular work, right, like which books would you recommend people go deep on here other than, of course, your own, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work?
[0:38:02] DC: Yeah. I think Matthew Kaemingk has a book out now about how worship shapes you. Work and Worship. You probably referred to that on your podcast before. I think that's probably the, in terms of this, a book that I would recommend and wish I had written many, many years ago, because I do believe we become what we worship. We become formed more by what we sing than by the sermons that we listen to. So, I really think that that's a really important book. I think that Tim Keller's book, obviously, that Katherine, who worked with him, pulled his things together and wrote. I think that book, Every Good Endeavor, I think it's called, right?
[0:38:45] JR: Yeah. That's it.
[0:38:46] DC: I know books. I just can't remember their titles. I think that's one that I would recommend for people to look at.
[0:38:55] JR: You kindly endorsed The Sacredness of Secular Work and you asked me, so what new contributions are you making to this conversation? I was like, “Man, I got to be honest with you, Dr. Cosden. I don't know that there's original contributions.” I think I am saying some things that haven't been said in a very, very long time about this topic, right? I think I'm saying them with a whole lot more Taylor Swift, easter eggs and Hamilton references, right? Maybe making it a little bit more accessible, but just trying to popularize the really important great work that you and others have done.
Hey, Dr. Cosden, most of our guests on the show are not theologians. Most of them are Mere Christians working as mechanics, and entrepreneurs and really talking about what it looks like practically for the gospel to shape how they do their work in the world. As I articulate that profile, does somebody come to mind for you like, man, I'd love to hear this person, this craft's person I know or this teacher I know really unpack this topic live on the show?
[0:39:56] DC: That's a really good question. I have a friend who was up in Seattle who was a former owing exec, who's been a part of the faith and work movement now for 20-some-odd years. His name is Al Erisman.
[0:40:10] JR: I know Al. I love Al.
[0:40:13] DC: If you know Al, Al has a way, a sweetness and a spirit, and a way of talking to, all right, at least someone in the business world that it's just like, “Yeah, gosh. Why didn't I say it that way? Why didn’t I think of that way?” If he hasn't been on the show, he might be good. Now granted, my frustration over the last 20 years with the faith and work movement has been its strength became its weakness, right? Its strength was that it spoke to the executive, okay? Its strength was that it got thought leaders and people who have power over institutions and organizations into a conversation. But up until that point, the faith and work movement from at least the Second World War on was a working-class movement, okay?
I do think that over the last two decades that was significantly lost. I think in the last couple of years, there's been some recognition of that. I think the tradesmen, I hate to use the word blue-collar, but to use the old language, the blue-collar worker could be drawn in as well. I will say this though. I hope this is okay, and you can edit it out if it isn't, but my – for years with this whole faith work integration stuff, I just took the faith as a given, and the work side of it is where the emphasis needed. As I look at the church around me now in the current state of where we are culturally in the United States anyway, but I've also seen it globally. I almost hesitate to talk about faith and work integration anymore, because of what I see as the understanding of the faith. That breaks my heart, and it hurts, and it makes me angry.
I'm not claiming I have it all together, but I'm saying if your faith doesn't look like Jesus, then your faith is something that's corrupted and co-opted by some other cultural forces that have nothing to do with what I consider to be the gospel. There's a lot of Christianity now that I observe often in media, but not exclusively, that I don't recognize as looking like Jesus. As a result of that, I've backed away from this discussion a bit, because I just, like the last thing I want those Christians doing is taking their faith into the workplace.
[0:42:39] JR: Amen.
[0:42:41] DC: I mean, I hate to say that, and maybe I should have been saying that 30 years ago. Maybe I just didn't see it. Maybe I was naive. I don't know. But boy, I think that needs to be addressed too. What is – we're talking about integrating faith in the workplace. What is genuine Christian faith that looks like Jesus, that acts Jesus, therefore looks and acts like God, or at least God's representatives? Someone who can really help unpack that, there are those out there who are really emphasizing that. I think they should be brought into the faith and work conversation too.
[0:43:16] JR: Yeah. It's really good. Dr. Cosden, I was going to ask you for something to leave our listeners with. I think you just left it with us. That's where we need to end of, yeah, and making sure that in all this talk about the importance of our faith and our work, that our faith is truly an apprenticeship to Jesus Christ and becoming more like him, being more like him, because if we're not, yeah, maybe question whether or not you want to “take your faith” to work. We need to be taking Jesus to work. Not some faith that's been concocted by modern media and other modern trends.
Dr. Cosden, as we close, I just want to commend you for the exceptional work you've done throughout your career, and you continue to do for the glory of God and the good of others, for helping us ensure that this theology of a renewed earth, this theology, the sacredness of secular work does not become extinct. Thank you for helping us see how all of our labor in the Lord, not just the spiritual things, all of it is in the words of Paul, not in vain. Friends, pick up a copy of The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work. It's an oldie, but a great read. You're going to get the cliff notes version of it in The Sacredness of Secular Work, but I would encourage you to read the entire thing as well. Dr. Cosden, thank you so much for joining us today.
[0:44:38] DC: Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I hope it proves to be helpful in some way.
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[0:44:44] JR: Dang. I loved that episode. I hope you did too. Dr. Cosden and I talked for another five, ten minutes afterwards and he informed me, he's actually working as a Mere Christian today in the public school system, which I love so much. It's like man, you got to come back on here and talk about what does it look like to live out your faith in this post-Christian context. Anyways, we might have him back on this show at some point in the future. Hey, if you love this episode, do me a favor and go leave a rating and review of the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening right now. Thank you, guys so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week.
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