How to love your work and NOT turn it into an idol
5 practices for ensuring your work doesn’t become an idol, why “gratitude is the on-ramp to adoration” of God, and why Jesus said he is the “bread of life” and not the “grain of life.”
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[0:00:05.4] JR1: 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 bakers, product designers, and orderlies? That’s the question we explore every week and today, I’m posing it to Joe Rigney. He is a pastor and author of one of the best books I’ve read in the last year, called Strangely Bright.
Joe and I recently sat down to discuss five practices for ensuring that your work doesn’t become an idol, and by the way, you saw my recent devotional series on this, you’re going to learn one new practice in today’s episode. We talked about why gratitude is “The onramp to adoration of God” and the significance of Jesus saying that He is the bread of life and not the grain. This is one of the best episodes we’ve recorded in a while, do not miss it.
Friends, please enjoy this conversation with my new friend, Joe Rigney.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:19.3] JR1: Joe Rigney, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[0:01:21.8] JR2: Hey, thanks for having me, Jordan.
[0:01:23.6] JR1: Man, I’ve got to say, Strangely Bright is one of the best books I’ve read in quite some time. It was just such a succinct, compelling, and biblical way to tackle one of the great tensions I know I felt in my own life, and I’ve heard from so many of our listeners I know they’ve struggled with, namely, this perceived tension between loving God above all things and yet, man, really loving some of the things of earth, like good food and beautiful places and more relevant to this podcast, really, really good work.
And you describe this tension as being between the totalizing passages of scripture and the things of earth passages of scripture. Can you quickly summarize that tension for our listeners?
[0:02:12.6] JR2: Yeah. So, oftentimes, we experience this tension, sort of psychologically, emotionally, “Man, do I love God enough? Do I love my stuff too much?” That kind of stuff but we have to recognize that this is a tension that emerges because we’re just good bible readers. It’s not like we just made it up, it’s that we read the Bible, and there is this – tension is the right word for it.
So, you have passages, one of my favorites is in Psalm 73, where then Solomon says, “Whom have I in heaven but you, and on earth, there is nothing that I desire besides you?” So, you read that and you go, “Okay.” So, and we sing songs like that, right? The worship leaders, they put up songs, the Hallelujah, All I Have is Christ. “All,” that’s it but we do, we do sing it, and we say, “Yes. Okay, God is greatest, God is best.”
And so, on the one hand, you have passages like that. You have passages like set your mind on things above and not on things on the earth. You have passages like, one of the big ones, everybody knows this, right? Is where Paul says, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus.” Like, knowing Jesus is everything. So, you got that kind as the totalizing passages. All of me for all of Christ, that’s that passage.
And then on the other hand, you got passages like, where Paul says to Timothy, “Tell the rich set their hope on God who richly provides them with everything to enjoy.” So, “Okay, He gives us everything to enjoy?” Everything created by God is good, nothing is to be rejected if it’s received with thanksgiving or you know, everybody loves this one, James one, “Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from the Father of Lights.”
And so there, it’s not, “All I have is Christ, everything is rubbish.” There, it’s, “Hey, God’s giving you all these things for your enjoyment, it’s good, you should receive it, it’s a gift.” And so, it’s that tension in the Bible that I think produces that tension in our souls where we’re trying to figure out, “Okay, I want God to be supreme in my life. He’s God, I’m not, the stuff is not. So, I want Him to be supreme in my heart, my affections, my mind, everything.”
And yet, at the same time, I’m told that the stuff that He’s given me from my food to my friends, to my family, to my work, are really good and are for my enjoyment. Now, how does that actually work itself out? What do I actually do?
[0:04:10.6] JR1: And I’m so glad you brought up Colossians three. I was going to bring that up. Yeah, I read passages like James one. I’m like, “Yeah, every good and perfect gift is from above.” I think well, my work is a gift, work was God’s first gift to humankind in Genesis 1, right? So, yeah, I should enjoy that gift but then I read Colossians three, and it seems like Paul’s saying the opposite on the surface, “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.”
But Paul’s not telling us that our earthly jobs are distractions from worshiping God here, right? Can you explain this to our listeners?
[0:04:39.8] JR2: Yeah, right. So, when he says, “Set your mind on things above where Christ is, not on things on the earth.” He goes on to say, “Put to death what is earthly.” And it’s the same word as earlier. “Put to death what’s earthly” and it’s sexual immorality, impurity, covetousness, sin. So, the earthly things he has in mind is sinful passions, sinful orientation to reality, and we know it, and so then he goes on to talk about, what is that kind of life look like. A mindset that is set on things above, set on Christ, what does it look like? And it’s like, man –
[0:05:08.2] JR1: Work hard on the land of the Lord.
[0:05:09.0] JR2: Yes, exactly. Clothe yourself with –
[0:05:10.7] JR1: It’s pretty earthy.
[0:05:11.4] JR2: Yeah, clothe yourself with humility and patience, forgive one another, love one another, be grateful, and then yeah, you get into the household code, you know, husbands love your wives, wives with your husbands, children obey your parents, and everybody needs to work hard as though it’s for God and not for men. There, you can actually hear it, right? It’s, the first part of the passage is, “Set your mind on things above.”
And when it gets to work, he says, “Look, work heartily for the Lord, not by way of eye service as people pleasers but doing it for the Lord.” In other words, the person who your eye is on, we’re always doing this, we always have somebody’s gaze in mind, somebody’s gaze is somebody’s looking over our shoulder, and Paul’s point is, “Well if you’re going to set your mind on things above, set your mind on Christ.”
Then the person whose gaze you should care about is God’s, not fundamentally your boss. Not your master, not your boss, not your parents, not your teacher, it’s not some other human being who you’re trying to fundamentally please, it’s, you’ve got your eye on, “Is the Lord pleased with this? Is he happy with the way I’m working? Am I working heartily for His sake to honor him, or am I just doing it?”
As long as my boss is looking over my shoulder, man, I’m working hard, and then as soon as he turns his back, I’m checked out.
[0:06:16.7] JR1: All right. So, how do we hold this tension well? The billion-dollar question, right? How do we hold the totalizing and the things of our passages here? Because I think when we don’t, I think that’s the definition of idolatry. How would you define idolatry? You offered a few definitions in the book but if I had to pin you down on one, how would you define idolatry?
[0:06:35.4] JR2: Yeah. idolatry is when we fail. So, I think that those totalizing passages God puts in the Bible as basically comparative tests. Their comparative passages, right? There’s nothing I desire besides You, compared to Christ, all things are lost compared to knowing Christ, all things rubbish compared to Christ. So, there’s comparisons happening, and I think he puts those in the Bible in order to test our affections.
To test who is supreme and so it’s basically, if you put God in one side of the scales, just God Himself, all that He is, and then you put all of his gifts on the other side of the scales, and then you ask, “Which one of these is more precious to me?” If that’s what the scale is, “Which one of these is more valuable, more worthy, what do I love the most?” Well, faithfulness says, “Well, God is, and it’s not even close.”
Idolatry says, “The gifts are.” If you put them in the scales and then you elevate them, if you separate the gifts from the giver, and then you elevate the gifts over the giver, now, you’ve fallen into idolatry. This is what Paul is doing in Romans 1, when he says, “Creation, the things that have been made reveal who God is, creation reveals what God is like, His eternal power, His divine nature.” That’s been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.
So, we see and know God, and then it says, “But we suppress that truth and we don’t honor Him as God or give thanks.” In other words, we turn aside, we exchange, that’s what Paul says, we exchange the glory of the immortal God for created things. We exchange them. So, that exchange is sort of the fundamental definition of idolatry, where rather than seeing the gifts as sort of sunbeams that we chase back to the sun.
That they are good and perfect gifts, they come down from the Father of Lights, and they’re meant to lead us back to the Father of Lights, instead of doing that, we take the sunbeams and we say, “We don’t need the sun anymore. We just rather have these beams and no sun.” And what we discovered, this is a Lewis point, you know, you’re a Lewis fan like I am. Lewis says, if you put first things first, you get second things thrown in.
If you put second things first, you lose both first and second things. So, it’s not as simple as, “Oh, I made a lesser choice.” It’s that you lose the lesser thing, you lose the gift if you un-detach it from the giver.
[0:08:40.3] JR1: That’s really good, that’s really helpful. All right, let’s roll up our sleeves and get practical. How do we enjoy the God-given gift of work specifically without it becoming an idol?
[0:08:50.0] JR2: Yeah, so I think there’s a number of things. I think this is true, there’s a principle I describe in the book that has to do with anchors, it’s called anchor points. It’s the rhythms and God made us, we’re temporal creatures, we live in time, and that means we can’t do everything all at once. We have to do one thing and then another thing. So, God set up our existence to kind of work through this rhythm of you could think of work and rest.
Sort of the classic Genesis Chapter One sabbath sort of principle, “Six days, you shall labor and on the seventh, you’re going to rest.” You’re going to set aside time to worship God, to set aside time to rest for yourself, and set aside time to give rest to others, right? Which I think is a really important thing if you think about that sabbath principle. I know we’re not under the old covenant like it was in the old covenant but –
[0:09:31.6] JR1: Still stands as wisdom with you.
[0:09:32.9] JR2: But the principle is still there and a key element is not just, “You need to rest.” But you need to give rest to other people. Loving your neighbor means giving them space to rest, and so that would be one example of how we honor God is that we honor that pattern, is that we’re not 24/7 worker bees but instead, God gives His beloved sleep and so we rest but then having rested, we get to work and we work heartily for the Lord.
That we have His eyes on us and that we are consciously entering into our work, so you might think of it as, before we did this podcast right now, we prayed, why do we do that? Well, it’s an anchor point. That was pouting a marker down in the ground to say like, “Lord, this is for You, we know that You’re watching, we know that we want to please You, we want to do this in the strength that You supply.”
And so, you put that marker down as an anchor point, and then having done that, you enter into the work, you enter into the labor, relying upon God, trusting in God, asking Him for help as things come up. You know, I find that I go through my day as a professor, as a pastor, I regularly find myself in situations where it’s like, “Man, I don't know what to do here.” I want to have in my soul there to be a habit of saying, “Lord, help me.”
Just, even that simple, “Lord, I don't know what to do here, help me.” I tell people some of the most common prayers I pray, there’s two of them, “Help me, help me, help me.” And “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Like that, you know? Like those two because there’s the rhythm of my life, “Lord, I need help here, I don’t know what to do here. Give me some help.” And then, now, I’m back in, locked in, focused on what’s in front of me.
And then, if God shows up, which He frequently does, then I turn back and say, “Lord, thank you for that, that was your kindness to me. I did not deserve that but that went far better than I could have expected because You were with me.”
[0:11:13.1] JR1: Yeah, it’s really good. In the book, you talk about something that I think is really counterintuitive that, ironically, one of the ways we can keep the things of earth from becoming idols is to delight in the more and not less. I’m going to quote you to you, which I know is such an awkward thing as a writer. Here’s what you said. You said:
“When we’re talking about legitimate earthly pleasures, my counsel is to take the governor off. If I know in my bones that Christ is the Alpha and Omega of all joy and delight, then I need not fear the lesser pleasures, let them erupt. Let them soar as high as they can for when they do, they carry my joy in God with them.”
Explain more about what you mean here because this is deeply counterintuitive.
[0:12:01.9] JR2: Yeah, right. So, a lot of times, people think that idolatry is just wanting things sort of too much but the desiring things, delighting in stuff too much. The problem with that is, what does too much mean? It’s this vague sense, and the answer is, well, it’s always too much relative to God. If you want it more than Him, that’s what too much would be but let’s say you don’t want it more than Him.
Let’s say that you’re enjoying it rightly and that you’ve established that God is the giver, you know, a key element in the book is God reveals himself through the things that He’s made. He reveals Himself in the heavens and in the birds and in the grass of the field and the flowers of the field, and everything else as well. God reveals himself to us, and so when we rightfully receive those gifts, we’re growing in our knowledge of God.
Which means, there’s no competition, rightly ordered, there’s no competition between our love for the gifts and our love for God. So, the more that if it’s in that proper order, the higher that my love for saying my wife goes, then, the more that my love for God grows, and that’s the idea, it’s pushing it up. This is how God has designed us, this is how he expands our souls frequently, so that we can take more of Him and this is actually where the name of the book came from, right?
You have Strangely Bright, it’s the little version, the things of earth as the bigger version but it’s that old hymn, turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely, and then where do you seek there, right? The hymn says, “The things of earth go strangely dim.” And I get what she’s – the hymn writer was talking about. She was thinking of that Colossians passage, “Put to death what is earthly in you” the sinful stuff.
What we often think, “Oh, she means, like, my love for my kids, that grows dim.” And I go, “You know what? I feel like when I’m walking with the Lord, when I’m engaging with Him, when I worship Him, reading His word, praying, I feel like my kids are more delightful.” They grow brighter, like, there’s this holy aura, right? Around them, not because they’ve become sinless but because my heart’s right.
And because my heart is right, everything is alive with the glory of God. The world’s crowded with Him and so, they grow brighter, which means now, I enjoy them more but I’m enjoying them for God’s sake, which means the more that I enjoy them, the more I enjoy Him. The more I enjoy Him, the more I enjoy them and it’s just this up, up, up, up, up thing, where I’m not worried about, “Ah, but is it too much?” It’s like, “Man, let it go as high as it can because it’s carrying my joy, and God with it.”
[0:14:28.0] JR1: Yeah, that’s really, really good. I’ve heard from listeners before like, “Man, I feel like I should love my work less.” And I would argue that’s impossible and foolish for two reasons. One, God created you to enjoy your work, right? See Genesis 1, see Isaiah 65, and second, I do think, as you’re pointing out, the more you enjoy God’s gifts, including good God glorifying neighbor-loving work, the more you can appreciate the betterness of Christ.
You’re upping the contrast, right? You pointed this out, this is all throughout the Psalms, where joy in the Creator is frequently described in comparison to the joy that Solomon has found in some created thing, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. Your love is better than life. You put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound” right? And that’s what you're saying, right?
By enjoying these things freely and fully, we are upping the contrast and understanding in a deeper level just how great and better Christ actually is, right?
[0:15:32.2] JR2: That’s right, exactly right, and you can immediately see this if you were to try to flip it around. If what the Psalm has meant is, if that comparison was, “You’ve put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” And you think, and grain and new wine, those kind of parties are pretty boring. Then it’s like, you know that’s no longer a compliment, you’re not praising God anymore. It’s like, “Hey, I’ve never – I’m just kind of a dullard who doesn’t enjoy anything but God, you’re better.” And it’s like, “Well, who cares?”
[0:15:57.2] JR1: Better than what? Yeah, yeah, it’s empty.
[0:15:59.5] JR2: You don’t – it’s an empty praise, whereas if you’ve really enjoyed something, if you can have a great night with your family, or if you’ve worked really hard and you’ve been really fruitful in a particular day, and you get to the end of that day and you go, “Man, this is a good day, I was clicking on all cylinders, everything was rolling, I was running downhill, this is good.”
And you get to the end of that day and then you can go, “And you know what? Even that, God’s better.” Now, that actually means something, like, “Man, this was great, but God’s even better.” Now, that praise actually means something and I do think, you know, to think about, “Can you love your work too much?” The test of this, I do think is that kind of sabbath principle because what the sabbath principle is doing is reminding you that you're not God.
God’s always, “My Father’s working ‘till now,” Jesus says. So, His work of creation is done, He rested from the work of creation, He handed it over to man to take dominion and just sort of fill it out, that that’s where, like you said the work principle, we’re going to guard the garden but we’re also going to subdue the earth and take dominion. That dominion fruitfulness principle is basically God saying, “I’ve set up the boundaries, now, I’m handing it over to humanity to carry on that labor and to draw out the riches of creation that I’ve embedded there.”
That’s the cultural mandate. So, He’s given it that but He said, “As you do it, I want you to follow the same pattern I did.” Which is you need to rest. Now, God didn’t need to rest but we do, and so part of our faith in Him is to say – and so, I tell this to guys all the time, I’m a college professor and I’m trying to help students to go, “Hey, you don’t work 24/7, you need to take the day off, you can do other stuff, you could enjoy it, you can recreate.”
You know, go to the lake, go to the – go for a hike, take a nap, whatever you want to do on that, on the Lord’s day but the thing you should be thinking of is, “I’m not trying to be productive here. Instead, I’m trying to be fruitful.” And people go, “Wait, what’s the difference between productive and fruitful?” Well, productive is what - like our language of productivity kind of comes from the analogy, the image there is one of machinery, right?
Machines produce things and it’s just, you turn the machine on, and it just cranks and it could go forever. We want fruitfulness, that’s the biblical vision, and that fruitfulness includes, “I’m not made to work 24/7, and so I’m going to trust the Lord with the rest of the week. I’m not going to try to get ahead, I’m not going to try to constantly be churning in the rat race. Instead, I’m going to rest and then, having rested, now, I’m ready to dive in to Monday morning. You know, let’s go. There’s work to be done, there’s labor in the Lord, He’s with me, let’s get it done.”
[0:18:29.6] JR1: It’s a form of sabbath keeping. I hate to use the word sabbath because again, we’re not under the old covenant, right? But taking one day off a week to rest well is a form of biblical self-denial. It’s a way of recognizing that I can experience the deep joy of being loved by the Father even when I’m not being productive, even when I’m not striving and longing for the next thing, does that make sense?
[0:18:53.4] JR2: That’s absolutely right and I think, it also is a pattern that communicates, sort of new heavens, new earth glory because the idea is, one of the habits that we have up here in Moscow is that a number of families will do Sabbath dinners. Usually on Saturday night, kind of is the kickoff. We typically – a lot of folks here celebrate. We sabbath kind of from Saturday about five to Sunday at five.
And the reason is, A, that allows you, you know, that Sunday at six or 7:00 when you’re trying to gear up for school, get the kids ready, get your mind reoriented, “Okay, I got to get up, you know, in order to get to work.” And everything else, you budgeted for that but that Saturday night kickoff is this big feast, and usually the families are cooking the meal, setting the table, making it a big thing so that that sabbath meal is real glorious.
We look forward to that every week, we’re working towards something, there’s a goal, there is a celebration at the end of this and then, we’re going to feast and then we’re going to worship the Lord on Sunday morning, and then after that, we’re going to go home, we’re going to take a nap, we might go out and throw a football, we’re going to enjoy the day and then boom, we’re done.
And what that does is, it gets anchor point, again, it’s the – you pray before the meal but then you enjoy the meal, and then you work hard, and then you set this anchor point of like, “We’re going to celebrate, we’re going to enjoy what God has given us, His kindness to us by sabbathing together.”
[0:20:13.2] JR1: Yeah, it’s so good man. Hey, I want to point out one other practice that you pointed out in Strangely Bright for enjoying creative things without turning them into idols, generosity. You spent I think a whole chapter on this if I’m remembering correctly. How might the mere Christians listening practice generosity vocationally in a way that helps keep the good gift of work and check from becoming an idol? What does that look like?
[0:20:37.8] JR2: Yeah. So, I distinguish in the book between self-denial, which is just saying no to something, saying no to a good thing. So, if you say no to a bad thing, that’s not self-denial, that’s just holiness. Self-denial is, “This is a good thing, I have a right to enjoy it and I’m not going to for the sake of something better.” Generosity ups that because it’s not just denying yourself, it’s denying yourself in order to give to others.
And so, this is that passage actually where Paul talks to the rich and they set their hope in God, He provides them with everything to enjoy but then he goes on to say, “And there to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, ready to share.” You know, laying up for themselves a treasure for the future. So, in that, that doing of good and being rich in good works, being generous, and being ready to share is the disposition that we ought to have.
God’s been kind to you, now, you need to be kind to others. He’s been generous with you, you need to be as generous with others with others as He has been with you. The form that that takes is going to vary, and I think this is important because oftentimes, we can make generosity fundamentally a matter of like dollars and cents, like, how much money do you tithe, that kind of thing.
That is one important measure but frequently, you can have folks who maybe don’t have a lot of extra money in the bank account but they can be really generous with their time, with their skills. That doesn’t mean that, “Oh, I am a Christian. I am obligated to give away all of my time and effort and I can’t get paid for it.” No, of course not. Labor is worthy of its wages, this is a biblical principle.
But it’s when your needs have been met and you’re good, when you have excess, “Oh, I’ve got a little bit of extra time. Yeah, I’d be happy to help you with that. Yes, I’m actually really good at that, I have something to offer.” So, generosity with your time, generosity with your other resources that can’t be quantified quite the same way. So, if you have you know, sometimes it’s like a, “Oh, I’ve got a big pickup truck and so yeah, I’m happy to let you borrow it to make a, you know, because you’re moving something across town and need to borrow it.”
That’s generosity, that’s saying, “God has given me things, and I want to be as generous with others as He has been with me. I want to reflect Him.” Because I think this is the other principle with it. On the one hand, I really emphasize that the things of earth reveal what God is like, you know? So, I say in the book, “Made things, created things, make invisible attributes visible.” That’s the Romans one thing, made things show what God is like.
But then I point out, right? You’re a made thing, we’re a made things, we’re created things, so what are we for? Well, we’re to show what God is like. We’re to reveal and show to others what He is. We’re to be walking, talking, living, breathing, gospel presentations for others what is God like. That’s with your kids in your home when you give them tickle fights at night, it’s with your spouse and it’s with your neighbors.
It’s with the people in your community where you’re trying to communicate, “This is what God is like.” And generosity is one of the core ways because God is fundamentally a giver.
[0:23:15.1] JR1: It’s so good, man. I told you before we started recording, I actually recently just recorded an entire devotional, a four-week devotional largely based on Strangely Bright, just applying it to the lane of works. So, I take at least partial credit for any uptick in sales.
[0:23:29.7] JR2: There you go.
[0:23:30.2] JR1: Well, over the month of June 2024 but I ended this, I am not an acronym guy, but I ended it by outlining an acronym for how we can enjoy work without turning into an idol. I want your feedback on it if you’re in for and if you hate it, we’re going to delete this out of the episode, right? Here we go, here it is, number one, “I insist that Jesus is better than your work or any other created thing.”
Two, “Delight in your work freely and fully as a means of better appreciating the betterness of Christ” which we were just talking about. Number three, “Offer your talents generously in service to others.” And then number four, “Limit your labor regularly via self to nine rhythms of rest.” So, that’s what I got you, what do you think? What’s missing, what would you add? What would you change to help our listeners enjoy their work while enjoying the Gift Giver most?
[0:24:22.2] JR2: No, I think that’s a great progression. I also think it’s hilarious that you made it spell out idol.
[0:24:27.1] JR1: First and only time. I’m not that good of a Southern Baptist, yeah.
[0:24:31.9] JR2: Okay, that’s right but I just think, “Hey, that’s the twist at the ending.” It’s like, “Oh, this is a great little progression, what does it spell? Oh, my goodness.” Well, I won’t – now, you see the thing is, is that now everybody remember it. No, I think that’s actually a great progression because you are settling the fundamental thing first, which is the supremacy of Christ and then you are trying to live that out in the various ways.
Whether it’s delighting in it, generosity, and then that sabbath principle, so all of those are precisely the way. So, your integration is happening there that I am enjoying God and everything and everything in God, and then you’re testing it. You are providing these comparative tests. “Well, can I be generous or am I clinging? Can I limit myself? Can I acknowledge that God is God and I am not or do I have to work 24/7?”
Well, I think those are great ways to – a sticky way to remember how to honor God with your work.
[0:25:18.9] JR1: You know what’s missing though? As we were talking, like being, “This is missing for the framework and I don’t know how to make it work and keep the action input.” I think gratitude has to be a piece of this. If idolatry is enjoying the gifts without any recognition of the Gift Giver, gratitude while enjoying the gift has to be a piece of this equation, right? Like, you talk about pumpkin crunch cake in the book and how much you love pumpkin crunch cake.
If you enjoy that without giving thanks to God, can’t that thing become an idol as small as that seems?
[0:25:49.1] JR2: Yeah, that’s right and I think in your – in terms of your acronym, it would be right there in the D, the delighting. So, gratitude is just the overflow of joy and it’s what joy – this is again another Lewis principle is that praise consummates our enjoyment. It’s not just an add-on at the end but praise is the consummation of joy, that’s why the world rings with praise. Everybody is praising everything that they love.
They are expressing gratitude for it, so I would just rope that gratitude into the delight as the expression, the outward expression of the joy that you take in the gift but that’s absolutely right in the same way that the two fundamental sins in Romans one are – is idolatry and ingratitude. They don’t honor God as God nor do they give thanks. If you flip that around, I am actually working on my project.
I’m giving some talks at a youth camp in the next couple of weeks on Romans One and part of what I love to do with that passage is to flip it on its head and say, “Okay, this is Romans One the sinful version, this is what human culture, human society looks like when it’s given itself over, God gives it over to sinfulness but you have idolatry and gratitude. Well, what would it be if Jesus put it right? What if He turned it right side up again and will it be worship and gratitude?”
They honor God as God and they give thanks, that would be the foundation, and then from that would come rightly ordered sexuality, rightly ordered societies where people love one another rather than hate one another, you know? And the rest of Romans One but I think that’s right. So, worship and gratitude sort are the two – they go hand and glove because worship says, actually again, another Lewis line.
Gratitude says, “How good of God to give me this?” But adoration or worship says, “What must the quality of that being be like if His gifts are this good?” So, it takes it beyond just the gift is good to, “Man, if this is an extension, if this is like a reflection and communication of what God is like, what must He be like? If this is this good, how much better?” It’s that how much more principle, that’s the worship adoration side, which gratitude is often the on-ramp.
So, that’s actually one of the ways I think about gratitude is when you struggle, “I mean, I don’t know if I love God. My heart’s kind of, you know?” It’s like, rather than trying to go to God directly, God often invites us to go through the gifts to say, “Okay, well, just real concrete with your gratitude.” Thank Him for specific things, start thanking Him for and be you know, the warmth of your wool socks in winter, the cool breeze on a hot day, a diet Coke, your meal, the hug of your wife, whatever it is, just start working through it thanking God.
Give Him gratitude for these concrete gifts and see what happens, see if your heart doesn’t start to enlarge and now, you’re actually I’m adoring God for who He is not just for His gifts.
[0:28:20.5] JR1: Gratitude is the on-ramp adoration, man, that’s really, really good. I’ve never thought about it that way. All right, hey, Joe, stepping out of the idolatry conversation for a few minutes, I want to circle back to what I said a few minutes ago when you say in the book, “Made things make invisible attributes visible.” And I want to unpack what I thought was this brilliant observation you made about Jesus’s words in John six, where He says that He is the bread of life.
And you pointed out, hey, Jesus could have said that He is the grain of life but instead, He says the bread of life. I want you to unpack for our listeners what that means for the work that they do as bakers, sales reps, mechanics, etcetera, etcetera.
[0:28:59.0] JR2: Absolutely, yeah. So, it’s significant that it’s not just – it is easy to look at the creation and say, “Okay, creation reveals what God is like.”
[0:29:06.4] JR1: The stars, the mountains, yeah.
[0:29:07.2] JR2: The heavens declare the glory of God, birds, the lilies of the field, we reflect on them and we fight our anxiety, right? Like Jesus teaches, but it’s significant that the Bible regularly points to human cultural artifacts to do this as well and so, when for example, the Bible describes, “Lord, you are a sun and a shield.” God made the sun and so the sun reflects Him but a blacksmith made the shield and it reflects God too.
This is what’s going on with Jesus and the bread of life, it’s not the grain of life. So, grain is something that God makes, right? He just causes it to grow but bread is something that people make out of what God makes, so we take the grain and we glorify it, which is what human culture is. Human culture is an act of glorification, it’s taking a good thing and making it greater. It’s drawing out the potential within it.
You know, you take, okay, so here’s a bunch of good things, you’ve got apples and you’ve got grain and you’ve got sugar and you’ve got eggs. All good in themselves but it’s like what if you were to combine them and add some heat, also something that God made, and rope them together and it’s like, well, you get apple pie, and apple pie is those things but glorified. Bread is grain glorified, wine is grapes but glorified.
And this is significant because it’s what Jesus chooses as sort of the sacramental meal of the new covenant is this, the Lord’s table, where He sort of says, “You know what? It’s human culture.” God, He didn’t just say, “Here’s grain and grapes, remember Me.” He said, “No, you pour yourself into making good bread, good wine, and use that to remember Me.” And so, that’s – and that’s a key thing.
It is again, a kind of anchor point marker for us to reflect upon about the value and the goodness of human culture making in service of God.
[0:30:50.1] JR1: Okay, so knowing that, knowing that God can use human culture, human work to reveal truths about God to the world, how should that change how we work?
[0:30:57.8] JR2: It means that again, you’re doing it under the Lord. I think it’s really important, you know, Peter says this in 1 Peter 4, “If anyone serves, let him do so in the strength that God supplies so that in everything, God gets the glory.” So, there is a way of working, serving, and laboring but you are doing it in someone else’s strengths. There is some need for some, what does that look like?
What does it look like to serve not in my own strength but in the strength that God supplies? Paul talks about this of course in that passage we love, we quote it a lot, 1 Corinthians 15, where he says, “I worked harder than any of them but yet, it was not I but the grace of God that was with me.” So, on the one hand, this is this paradox of the Christian life, Christian labor, “I worked harder.”
People from the outside we’re looking, they would say, “Nobody works harder than that guy and yet that guy will say it wasn’t me, it was the grace of God that was with me. That the grace was sustaining me, I was serving in the strength of another.” So, I think one thing is laboring to serve in the strength of another, that’s where prayer comes in as conscious reliance upon God for everything.
It’s where stability in the midst of hardship, so you’re working hard, and you know, this is the thing, what you’re going to teach your kids when your five-year-old has built a big tower out of blocks and then it falls down. Is he going to fall apart and you’re saying, “No, no, no, we get back to work.” And you say, “Oh, that’s sad” tears for a moment but then it’s back to work and it’s we need that in our own lives.
You are going to face hardships, you’re going to pour yourself into something, and it’s not going to come to fruition and you can either sink into that and be wrecked by it or you can say, “Back to work, back to work, I’m trusting in the grace of God, trusting the providence of God.” And then I think even the way that we focus on what’s it for, like what are we doing? We’re loving our neighbor, loving our neighbor as it flows from love for God.
We’re trying to bless others with what we produce, with what we do so that we beautify the world, glorify the world in a way that blesses other people. That’s a key way that our labor is meant to honor God, God’s pleased with that sort of effort as well. So, those will be a few ways I think that we can use our labor to honor Christ.
[0:33:01.0] JR1: That’s good. As you're talking about this principle of made things making the invisible attributes visible, you’re strengthening I think the argument to take Isiah 16, the glory of the nations literally, and I’ll park here for just a second. You know, Joe, out of everything that I’ve written about, this idea that some acts of human culture will literally and physically be resurrected and welcomed by Jesus into the new Jerusalem is by far the hardest thing for people to accept.
Like, it’s not even close, there’s not even a close second, right? And I spent a bunch of pages in my most recent book, The Sacredness of Secular Work, beyond Isiah 60, beyond Isiah 65, beyond Revelation 21, making the case as to why we should expect this to be taken literally but I think you’ve just given more credibility to this. If made things to glorify God if Jesus can point to wine.
And say, “Hey, yeah, this is kind of like Me, do this in remembrance of me.” Or “Hey, I’m the bread of life, not the grain of life.” Shouldn’t we expect acts of human culture on the New Earth to better serve, to help us understand what God is like?
[0:34:08.0] JR2: Absolutely, and all you have to do is think, “Well, will there be bread in heaven?” And if there will, then you just opened the door.
[0:34:13.4] JR1: There’s the glory of the nations.
[0:34:14.4] JR2: Exactly. If not –
[0:34:15.4] JR1: We know there’s wine, we know there’s choice food.
[0:34:17.9] JR2: Yeah, we know there’s bread, we know there’s wine, we know there’s food, and then you can extend that out. Do we think will the great stories, when we tell those good stories, like, will we get to read Narnia in heaven? Will you get to read Lord of the Rings in Heaven? Will that still be a part of the enjoyment? And I said, “Well, why wouldn’t it be? Tolkien thought, maybe, God might even make the Hobbits real.”
[0:34:34.4] JR1: Yeah.
[0:34:35.1] JR2: You know?
[0:34:35.6] JR1: Yeah.
[0:34:37.1] JR2: You know, Tolkien, you know somebody I was talking to one time, “You don’t think that Middle-Earth is actually real?” And he said, “Well, one hopes.” And I think this is actually a place where Tolkien actually does give the suggestive hint that not only will the things that we’ve made be there but they’ll be there sort of in their glorified form that God will sort of amend our errors, you know? So, we did –
[0:34:57.3] JR1: This is Leaf by Niggle, have you read this?
[0:34:59.5] JR2: This is Leaf by Niggle. This is absolutely Leaf by Niggle. Niggle spends his whole life working on, you know, painting a tree and working on these leaves and you know, working on it, working on it, it was never quite right and then he dies and he gets to the afterlife, and he comes around the corner and all of a sudden, there’s his tree but it’s filled out. It’s like, “Oh, l was going to do that but I never had time, I ran out of time to make the tree.”
“But now it’s there and it’s real and it’s blowing in the wind.” And this is sort of, I think Tolkien’s hope for all of the sub-created efforts is that God will amend them, and I think, again, since we’re on Tolkien, he’s got a great line in his poem, Mythopoeia, which is a poem that he wrote, after his conversation with Lewis and it’s about the value of myths and literature and things like that, where Lewis was like, “Ah, they’re just lies breathes through silver, they don’t really matter.” And Tolkien writes this poem as his answer.
Well, at the end of that poem, Tolkien says this: “In paradise, perchance, the eye may stray from gazing upon everlasting Day.” And he’s got “Day” capitalized. So, gazing upon everlasting day means, gazing upon God. So, this is the glorious vision of God that we’ll have when faith becomes sight. So, “In paradise, perchance, the eye may stray from gazing upon everlasting Day”, and then he goes on, “And see the day illumined and renew for mirrored truth, the lightness of the true.”
The idea is, that you’re – we’re going to be gazing at God but he says, “Your eye may stray, it will see the day illuminated.” See the day lit up and renewed by mirrored truth, by the truth of God reflected, where? In the New Heavens and New Earth. So, you see God in his new creation as well as all of the glory that the nations have brought in and that renewed, and it’s reflected and it’s mirrored in that stuff and that actually illuminates, and now, you turn back to God with greater eyes.
[0:36:51.7] JR1: Yeah. The gratitude has led you to adoration.
[0:36:54.7] JR2: Exactly. Gratitude leads you back to adoration even in the New Heavens and New Earth, and I think that’s a great picture. I think that’s why we’re told that the New Heavens and New Earth, it’s a very earthy place as it’s –
[0:37:04.1] JR1: Cultural place.
[0:37:03.9] JR2: As it’s described in the scripture.
[0:37:05.9] JR1: Yeah.
[0:37:05.8] JR2: Absolutely.
[0:37:06.4] JR1: Man, gosh, that’s so good, I’ve never heard that Tolkien poem, it’s so good man. All right hey, speaking of the New Earth, first of the four questions, we wrap up every podcast with, what do you want to be doing on the New Earth? Isiah 65 says we’re going to long enjoy the work of our hands. If you could ask God for any job to do in his service, what would it be?
[0:37:23.6] JR2: Yeah, so, there’s probably – when I think about what would be really enjoyable, it will be interesting to see, I’m a teacher so, one of the great joys I have is both in sort of intellectual discovery as well as communication. I’m telling people about the things that fascinate me and trying to make them clear. So, presumably, that gift will not be in vain even in the New Heavens and the New Earth.
So, and again, this is something Lewis talks about and actually, it’s in The Great Divorce. There’s a conversation between two artists and the artist says, “Come and see.” The faithful artist says, “Come and see, come look.” And then, the guy says, “Well, am I not going to be allowed to paint anymore?” And he says, “No-no, there will be some things that you’ll see better, you’ll be able to then communicate them in whatever way you want but the first thing is, you got to come and see.”
You got to come and feed, and then after, then you’ll be able to.” So, continuing that vocation would be glorious. The other one would be coaching baseball.
[0:38:15.5] JR1: I knew you were going to say this. I love it.
[0:38:17.6] JR2: Coaching football, something like that.
[0:38:18.8] JR1: Yeah.
[0:38:18.7] JR2: And I say coaching because that’s where I’m at right now. I’ve got my kids, they’re in you know, junior high in high school. I do this a lot and I really enjoy it. I enjoy the coaching of these kids and think, “Man, it would be great to coach them up in the New Heavens and New Earth.” So, what would that be like?
[0:38:34.9] JR1: I loved you dreaming about playing baseball in the New Earth with your kids and your dad. I thought it was this like really beautiful section. I also loved that you addressed the unspoken objection from your reader of like, “Oh, this sounds trivial” right? Like, why in the world would we imagine, why do we need to imagine baseball in the New Earth or vocations on the New Earth? Can you make the case for our listeners as to why we should spend time thinking about this?
[0:39:02.8] JR2: Yeah. So, the bible says that, “The eye has not seen, ears not heard, nor is the mind of man a man can see what God has prepared for those who love Him.” So, you don’t know the glory that what God has prepared for us and so, my suggestion is, well then, you should use your imagination to give God a workout, right? So, work out your imagination here, we can give God’s omnipotent goodness a workout there.
So, He says, “Okay, this is how good it’s going to be.” I’m trying to think of the best thing I could think of with my limited finite, and then if I get to heaven and if it’s not that, it’s like, well then, it will be better than that and I’ve just – I made God work a little harder to make it better because I’m dreaming about the glory to come.
[0:39:42.8] JR1: That’s right. I had a reader one time, I was doing a Q&A. “Why do you care what you’re going to do in the New Earth? Like, why are you wasting your time in this discussion?” I was like, “Listen, the scripture gave me clues, scripture encouraged me to imagine this.” Isiah 65 says, “I’m going to long enjoy the work of my hands.” Do you think God didn’t think that we were going to imagine what that might look like?
Do you think the poor who are in jobs today that they have to do rather than jobs they would describe to get to do are imagining what that’s going to be like? You don’t think that God’s honored by that? Please, and whatever it is, it’s going to be better than what I can imagine. All right, three more questions Joe, number one. If we open up your Amazon order history right now, which book will we see you purchasing the most to give away to friends?
[0:40:25.2] JR2: Live Like a Narnian.
[0:40:25.8] JR1: Ooh, yeah, there we go. Come on.
[0:40:28.1] JR2: So, it’s my own book. So, I get that one and I have them lying around that one and actually, Strangely Bright. I actually – I’ve got boxes and boxes of Strangely Bright. It’s the easiest one to give away because of how short and accessible it is.
[0:40:39.6] JR1: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I love it. Who would you want to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel influences the work that mere Christians do in the world? And know that most of the time, we’re not talking to pastors. We’re talking to mere Christians working as you know, technicians and marketers and software engineers. Who would you want to hear talking about this?
[0:40:58.2] JR2: If you ever get my friend and colleague, his office is right around the corner from mine, but Doug Wilson’s great on this sort of stuff.
[0:41:03.3] JR1: Yeah, yeah.
[0:41:04.5] JR2: He’s got a great book coming up, Ploductivity.
[0:41:06.2] JR1: Yeah, it’s good
[0:41:07.3] JR2: And things like that. So, Doug would be fantastic to talk about this stuff.
[0:41:10.4] JR1: I’ve read Ploductivity, tell him I loved it, it’s good. All right Joe, what’s one final thing you’d like to say or reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?
[0:41:18.9] JR2: Yeah, I think the final thing would be, begin where you are. This is a Lewis principle again, basically, everything I say is just rehash Lewis. He says, “Begin where you are.” So, don’t – at one point, in Letters to Malcolm, Lewis says, “I’ll not be able to honor God on the highest occasions if I’ve not learned to honor Him on the lowest.” Meaning, just the mundane start, begin with where you are, begin with – right?
Like, literally, right now, when you turn off this podcast, look around and go, “What has God given me? Where has His kindness evident to me right now?” And just start working through it, again, with that gratitude as the on-ramp to adoration, and spend a few minutes, and I mean, minutes, not just 10 seconds. I mean, actually spend some minutes reflecting on God’s kindness giving thanks to Him.
See what happens to your heart, see what your heart does in response to gratitude. If it enlarges and then all of a sudden, you're entering the rest of your day filled with grace, filled with glory, and ready to bless other people.
[0:42:09.8] JR1: That’s good, man. Joe, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do, for the glory of God and the good of others, for helping us hold this tension well between loving God above all things and loving the gifts he’s given us including our work, and thank you for giving us just some really practical tools we need to ensure that we love the Gift Giver more than his gifts.
Friends, I can’t recommend this book highly enough, it’s called, Strangely Bright. The longer version of this book is called, Things of Earth. Is that right, Joe?
[0:42:37.4] JR2: That’s correct.
[0:42:38.0] JR1: The Things of Earth, and if you're interested in hearing me go deeper on this, check out The Word Before Work Podcast, my other podcast, where we recently completed a series called Working Without Idolatry, largely inspired by Strangely Bright. Joe, thanks for hanging out with us today.
[0:42:54.4] JR2: Hey, glad to do it, thanks a lot.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:42:56.4] JR1: Dang, I hope you guys dug that episode as much as I did. Hey, if you did, do me a huge favor and go leave a review of the Mere Christians Podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to this show. Thank you, guys, so much for listening, I’ll see you next week.
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