Fellowship Around the Table
Great conversations about life, faith, and the Bible from Fellowship Bible Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma (www.fbctulsa.org).
Fellowship Around the Table
Made for Work: Origin of Work w/ Nathan Cozart & Seth Perry (Part 1 of 6)
What if work wasn't just a necessity, but a divine calling? Join us on Fellowship Around the Table this week as we explore the profound connections between faith and vocation. Nathan Cozart, an aerospace engineer, and Seth Perry, an operations manager at a wheelchair company, join me to share their unique career journeys and how our shared faith has shaped our paths.
In this episode, we dive deep into the biblical significance of work, starting with God's act of creation in Genesis. We challenge the common misconception that work is a consequence of sin by reflecting on Genesis 2:15, where mankind is tasked with cultivating and keeping the Garden of Eden. By discussing how work allows us to bear God's image, we uncover the profound implications this perspective has on our daily lives. We also explore the concept of the cultural mandate and how it reflects our creative potential, drawing fascinating parallels between the beginning in Eden and the future fulfillment in Revelation.
We redefine work to include more than just paid employment. Join us for a heartfelt, thought-provoking conversation about finding your calling and the eternal significance of work.
Show Notes:
- https://www.christianitytoday.com/2003/06/heaven-not-just-eternal-day-off/
- Some books we love: Every Good Endeavor, The Call
- Why we work (Dorothy Sayers)
- Leaf, by Niggle
You are listening to Fellowship Around the Table.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Fellowship Around the Table, where we endeavor to have great conversations about life, faith and the Bible. This week Around the Table I have two dear friends, nathan Cozart and Seth Perry, and they're here to talk about that four-letter word work.
Speaker 3:Gentlemen, yeah, four-letter word. Yeah, it's good to be here. Yeah, yeah, morning, appreciate it Morning.
Speaker 2:Well, who are we? I mean, we've known each other here a while. We've been coming to fellowship. Well, maybe start there. How long have you guys been at fellowship?
Speaker 1:I think we have been here for 17 years 17 years In a couple months we just celebrated. My wife and I, valerie celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary in September and I started coming pretty much the week after that.
Speaker 2:All right, you've been here long enough that you're in the last printed member directory.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like a real print pictured member directory. That's a great one. That's a great one, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:We were kids back then, you do look like it. It was a good like Olin Mills. Pose, you know Like I'm sitting down and Valerie has like two hands on my shoulder. Yes, pose, you know like I'm sitting down and valerie has like two hands on my shoulder yes, it's a good one.
Speaker 2:We should bring that back. If I find that pic, it's going to be the cover of this. Oh, that would be a good one. That would be a good one. At least it's not a glamour shot yeah yeah, that is true seth, how long have you been here?
Speaker 3:in april it'd be 20 years. Wow, karen was coming here when we married. Okay, I didn't realize that I've been here. In april it'd be 20 years.
Speaker 2:Wow, karen was coming here when we married.
Speaker 3:Okay, I didn't realize that I've been here before, so this is a reintroduction that's right.
Speaker 2:That's true. You've been on the podcast you can go back and listen to podcast number 23.
Speaker 1:He's just making that don't act.
Speaker 2:Last year's christmas special yeah, that's a good one. What about you, heath? How long have you been here? Rory was born that September after we started that spring, so 16 years plus All right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we all pretty quickly got to know each other. I was thinking about the depth of our friendship and just really appreciate the consistency of time together. And how you can't really microwave a deep friendship. It's like it just takes a little time it does.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would encourage that pursuit for everyone. That's right, it's a good one. It is not a two in the reps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, put it in the reps, the gain store, the gain store, putting it on layaway. Yeah, the friendship gain store.
Speaker 2:We've had some occasional jaunts in the wilderness. Yeah, a lot of backpacking together.
Speaker 1:Probably 10 or 12 of those At least. Yeah, 16 years we've been going to the wilderness together. Yeah, that's a good way to form and forge relationships. And then, yeah, just a lot of time hanging out coffee together. Yes, our group was maybe originally called the Young Married Group. It was, and I think we have squarely become middle-aged.
Speaker 3:That's right. That's a hopeful statement, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm middle-aged. I think Seth is old.
Speaker 2:Well, speaking of that, this topic came up years ago now where we were talking about work and our work and had been in that workforce for a while and trying to understand it, and I think it was back in 2017,. We really got into it together and we're reading some great works on it and decided to have an impact class on it. What does the Bible say about work? How does God think about work and how does that impact our lives?
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's been a formational topic for me. It was yeah, it was really personal and helpful at the time, One of the first kind of topical deep dives that I remember reforming one of my thoughts based on biblical theology.
Speaker 2:So how would you describe your day-to-day work? What would you say?
Speaker 1:you do around here, bob, I'm an engineer. That's probably the most concise statement. One great thing I've picked up from Valerie is just start with that. Let it hang there. See if there's any follow-up. So I just solve problems, create solutions, oh man.
Speaker 3:Do you ever create problems and look for solutions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, if you're good at your job.
Speaker 3:Sometimes your solution is a problem.
Speaker 2:Seth, what about you?
Speaker 3:I'm in operations. I have been for 11 years now.
Speaker 2:You guys are concise.
Speaker 3:What do you?
Speaker 2:engineer Nathan.
Speaker 1:I'm in the aerospace and defense industry and in particular, sensor integration, so we put together sensors for the defense industry. So right now I'm particularly supporting a high-altitude, long standoff intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance sensor. There's the engineer.
Speaker 3:That's right, that's right. It's the double click.
Speaker 2:Seth. What do you operate?
Speaker 3:I work at a complex wheelchair company, so we provide specialized equipment to people with severe disabilities and just make sure things are moving smoothly.
Speaker 2:How did you guys get into that line of work?
Speaker 1:I, for one, had a really small view of the vocational options as I was growing up. As I was growing up, I think, as I kind of got to the end of high school and was looking at college, the options seemed pretty limited, or just like the breadth was pretty small. You could either be a teacher, a nebulous business person and nobody really knows what that is and an engineer, or in the medical profession, and that was about it, yeah, and so it's like well, I like Legos and math, so I guess I'm an engineer or in the medical profession.
Speaker 2:And that was about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And so it's like well, I like Legos and math, so I guess I'm an engineer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this sounds like you're playing the game of life. My favorite was the nebulous business Seth. How about you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was actually going to get into it a little bit in the third podcast.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:But you could go ahead.
Speaker 2:Brief answer preview now our listeners don't know this. What if the lord comes?
Speaker 3:back before. Okay, okay, fair enough. It's a bit of a winding story, but the short answer is my wife teaches english horseback riding and one of her students that student's dad was a part owner in the company where I work now, and he was just talking to my wife and said has Perry found a job yet? Perry had not found the job yet, and so he had something that he thought I might be interested in and that might benefit his partner as well.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 3:And here you are at least a decade later.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, 12 years in April. Thankful for those personal connections.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I think my wife's gotten me half of my adult jobs Just through connections.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's how that works. I am from the accounting background for my work currently, yeah, I know. What's funny is I had a long, winding road to figure that out. I didn't study accounting in college. I did finance, which is related Went to work and discovered that, oh, I actually like accounting. I did not like it in school, didn't click with me at all, and then I started working. But it's very obvious, when I was a kid, my parents were public school teachers this is the mid-80s and they got a hand-me-down computer from school when they were changing them out, and so we had our first PC. That was one of those green screens, you know. It didn't do a lot, but it had some games. But the first thing that I did was take my baseball cards and put them in a spreadsheet, oh yeah. But it took me another 20-plus years to figure out what I needed to be in life.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, did you put them in by cash value or team, or how'd you?
Speaker 2:I did put the cash value in there because I had a beckett book. But I would put them in there by year and by brand of card because you would try to get sets yeah yeah, I would love to see those spreadsheets monochrome yeah, I bet it wasn't Microsoft Excel back then.
Speaker 1:No, that did not exist.
Speaker 2:Perfect days you know, it was way before that Like Lotus or something there.
Speaker 1:We go On your Pentium 86.
Speaker 2:So what did you guys dream of doing when you were young? I think that silence says a lot, yeah.
Speaker 3:I. I didn't really. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had some interest in cars and maybe being a mechanic or an engineer, you definitely had interest in cars. You still do, yes, but not like I did. It used to be pretty severe. I'd skip lunch so I could spend money on my car.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 3:The math bug, though it might have caught.
Speaker 1:Nathanathan, but it didn't catch me yeah, so the engineer just did not work out. Did you have any things you were thinking about as you grew up that you were dreaming about?
Speaker 2:you know, besides like an astronaut or a cowboy no, in the same realm, I think I didn't have a lot of exposure. I think the business world I love, how you said nebulous, because it was just like I don't know what that is or what they really do. I've learned.
Speaker 1:Now you just create value. That's right. That adds a lot of clarity I know a little more now.
Speaker 2:I thought some point medical or like training, like around sports, because I was definitely around sports all growing up, you know teaching, I didn't know, I don't know that, I didn't know at the time that I definitely didn't know it's interesting and yeah, in retrospect, and even if you think about the percentage of your life that you spend kind of in adulthood or even like of your waking hours working. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at least for me. I don't think I had a real vision of what I wanted to be when I grew up either. I've realized this in retrospect, but in the earlier part of your life there's a very kind of consistent milestones that you get to. So it's like, okay, you graduate high school, you go to college, you get a job, you get married, you have a kid, you buy a house or something.
Speaker 2:Some progression like that. That's the order you might draw it up in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you might yeah.
Speaker 1:Indeed. But I found that in my first job I had kind of gone through a lot of those stages. I'd gotten through high school, gotten through college, gotten married yeah, got a job. I was fortunate. I think probably my vocational aspiration when I was young was really just to make enough money, not to be stressed. I saw some financial stress in my family of origin, just in day-to-day life. Really it was just I just don't want to do that. In my first job I was thankful as an engineer to have a decent starting salary and so we had some ability. And then the other thing just by personality, I really love adventures and rich experiences and things like that. So in my first job we were able to do some of those things and travel quite a bit and pretty quickly just started to feel kind of empty, it's like oh, I guess being able to go to work from 8 to 5 and then take several international trips.
Speaker 1:Isn't the meaning of life after all, and unfortunately, you know, it's like you're 25 and you're like oh, wow. So I'm just going to kind of like keep doing this for the next 60 years and then die.
Speaker 2:This was your. What did you call it? My quarter life crisis? Your quarter life crisis, yeah. So, I've arrived and this, is it this?
Speaker 1:yeah, so that kind of that quarter life crisis is really what made me personally interested in the idea and what I just what I discovered is that whole kind of quarter life crisis was founded on the misconception that work was a result of sin and so really that like the curse of sin. I thought again it's because it's because of sin that we work.
Speaker 1:If you look back at the philosophies of work, that is one of them that the gods don't work but, they made people to do their work, and that's not from the biblical worldview but it kind of crept in crept into mind and then you're going to, you're going to toil and it's going to be miserable and just muddle through and did you know, I don't think I knew the name of the movement, but things like the fire movement, financial independence and retire early yeah, that's all about escaping from work, that's right, and so really didn't know it to buy into that idea at that point. But that probably would have been like the next logical step in my mind, like, oh, if I don't want to endure this drudgery for the next 60 years, then I better double down and get out early. Yeah, escape, yep.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm talking about work and very common misconception of work that, Nathan, that you worked through. I mean, when did work originate?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Where did it come from?
Speaker 1:As with most things. We should turn our attention to the Bible.
Speaker 2:Let's do that. Let's do it.
Speaker 1:We're going to like bounce around in Genesis 1 and 2 a little bit. So it's the creation account telling about how God made the world.
Speaker 2:Right there. I think that's significant, that this doctrine, this theology of work we're going to talk about, is right in the beginning. Very much. This isn't way down the line in God's account. It's a core doctrine right out of Genesis.
Speaker 3:Yep Genesis 1. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Worldviews, you know, tell us things like who is God, what's his nature, characteristics, things like that. Who is man, what's his nature, characteristics, things like that.
Speaker 3:Who is man?
Speaker 2:what are?
Speaker 1:his nature and characteristics, and then what are the problems and what are the solutions, and so we get really a lot of that in Genesis 1, 2, and 3. And then you know spoiler alert we get a lot of it in Revelation, at the very end too. So there's a really neat symmetry that we'll unpack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in some aspects the rest of the Bible is going to explain the things that are laid out in Genesis one, two and three Yep.
Speaker 1:So be listening here for the first first verb that you hear in. Genesis. All right, you know, this is a shout out to my English friends. My wife in particular really loves words.
Speaker 2:She diagrams and sentences.
Speaker 1:Oh man big time Nice Sometime. Just like stop her in the hall, ask her to diagram a sentence.
Speaker 3:This is going south quick if we're talking about diagramming.
Speaker 1:Ask her the types of syllables. She gets into that stuff.
Speaker 1:Okay here we go, genesis 1.1. In the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth. We got a verb in there, we got a verb Pop quiz. What was the verb? Created? Created, yep, okay, there's the first verb. Who's doing it? God is doing it.
Speaker 1:So the first thing that God describes himself is doing is creating. It's a very physical word, whether it's an artistic sense or kind of a workmanship making something, but he's creating the heavens and the earth. So then it goes on to talk about the different realms that he created and what he populated them with. So it talks about the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.
Speaker 1:So these should, these should give us pictures of darkness and void, should remind us of chaos. And so then then he starts to fill these things and he says let there be light. And God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness. So he's both filling a void and then ordering it. And then you start to see that through the rest of the account, that there's a realm that's created and then it's populated or filled, or good things are put into it and then they're rightly ordered. So throughout this whole narrative you very much see a chaos turned into order.
Speaker 1:And that's very, very much about God's nature. So then, jumping down to Genesis two, the next thing I'd call your attention to is Genesis two.15. And it says the Lord, god, took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.
Speaker 2:That's Genesis 2.
Speaker 1:It is Genesis 2. So I did, I did skip past kind of the rest of the.
Speaker 2:I get that, but you know I'm thinking through the account.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. I've been around long enough to know the fall is genesis 3, right, and so there's, like the, there's one of the problems with my misconception right there. You know I was thinking that work came from the sin, but I've you know I was a chapter off you might think this is bible trivia. Does anybody know how many chapters are in the bible? I don't, so I don't know I was hoping.
Speaker 1:One of you guys I really respect you guys, bible scholars, so I was going to say like it's some percentage, you know often where I was going there.
Speaker 2:But like I don't have, there's approximately 1,189.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's just off the top of my head, wow, okay.
Speaker 2:And so one chapter that was for us and I think I probably knew that. But to really settle and think about that was a really big aha moment yeah and I remember that when we did the class. That isn't like a new idea for people but it gets lost and just work and life and all of that and that grind and drudgery you mentioned. Wait a second. God established work before the fall.
Speaker 3:Yeah, might want to repeat that that's the seminal point of our entire study, right? Probably this discussion, right?
Speaker 1:here, yeah, is that God created work and that it's a good thing. And when we do it we are image bearing. You know, like we are reflecting what he does, we're doing the same thing that he does, and that's a uniqueness to humanity that we bear God's image. That's a I don't know kind of a churchy sounding term, but out of all of the created order, humanity is unique in that they have the image of God inside of them, that they reflect him in some way, and work is one of those ways and it's easy to think about. Oh, maybe, if I show selflessness or love towards somebody, like that's an easy thing to connect With image bearing, with image bearing.
Speaker 3:But work is also, and he didn't just create work, he did work. So he created the concept and then he modeled it for us. That's right, yeah, and you'll see even further in the life of Christ how that work was further modeled for us.
Speaker 2:That's right. I know too, like thinking about that fall, that obviously work has been cursed, like everything with the fall, but work is not a curse. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, we forget, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we forget that so fast, Cause if you think back to the experience I had I'm sure a lot of you have the same it doesn't always feel like bearing God's image.
Speaker 2:No, and you don't walk around with that perspective but, I, think what we'll get into when you do. It's significant change.
Speaker 3:Really really big. Yeah, yeah, and not not just for you either.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yeah, for those around you. Yeah, for the people around you. Yeah Well, keep going. I think there's something else in Genesis there that you want to talk about. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So spending too much time there. In Genesis 2.15, but just like we talked about at the beginning that God, you know, created these realms, then filled them and ordered them, you see some of that same language in the kind of one sentence that we're looking at, about the work, the nature of the work that he gives to Adam. It says to work it and to keep it, and so another translation for to work, it is to cultivate it, and so that brings back a lot of agrarian makes me think of having a hoe and work in my little garden plot or something like that.
Speaker 1:But it can also mean to serve, and then keeping it denotes like guarding and protecting it.
Speaker 1:So this is very much similar to the nature of the work that God was doing at the beginning too. Yeah, Okay. So the other passage I want us to look at is Genesis 1, 26 through 28. And this is a part of Genesis that's referred to as the cultural mandate. So here it is. Then God said let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his image, in the image of God. He created him male and female. He created them and God blessed them. And God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves in the earth.
Speaker 2:There's some interesting parts in there, nathan. What's often called is that cultural mandate, but that you see that reiteration that once again we're made in God's image and his likeness. So we're put on this earth that he created to bear his image, which is unique of all creation, and then we're given dominion over all of it. We're the top. You know this pushes back in a lot of the evolutionary mindset that influences most of our day-to-day thinking in the time and space that we live. But we're placed on top of all of it to steward it in this very special way. And then he gets into that more, be fruitful and multiply and fill this earth with more and more and more image bearers, more than we could ever count, and then subdue it, which is yeah, and this like dominion and subduing language.
Speaker 1:it can like, I think, sound oppressive initially, but I like how you used the word stewardship. It's a big responsibility to bear If things are not going well on the problem. It's like our responsibility to take good care, own the problem. It's like our responsibility to take good care. And uh, and then, like you said, to fill it. It kind of begs the question of what are we filling it with? And, um, you know the title we gave for this section. The cultural mandate gives us an indication, kind of, as you, as you flesh this idea out, culture is the thing that you're supposed to to fill it with Right, and this is a teaser and a look ahead to revelation. But the perfect beginning was a garden.
Speaker 1:And then, in the end of revelation, we see that the perfect ending is a city, and so that's that's where we get this idea of the culmination of filling the earth with people and things that reflect God. Yeah, is a culture that's rightly oriented.
Speaker 3:It's just so interesting that this section really is about work as a continuation of God's work, not a byproduct of sin. And you see, god's original design was he created heavens and the earth and everything in it and then he created us and perfection was Adam and Eve in a relationship with God, and we'll see here in a chapter where our sin broke that relationship. So even God continues that work of perfection through the life of Christ and I think even again calls us to work in Ephesians and just get goosebumps thinking about how we chose darkness. And he again calls us forth out of darkness into his perfect work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we were really called to excellence, just like him.
Speaker 2:Everything he made and worked at was good, and we're called to also good work and I love that picture of the beginning and all of that creation and in some sense there's just these incredible raw materials and opportunities for us to not create something out of nothing, but to take what God created and think about the things that have been created with these. Raw materials that you know we live in a fascinating time and place where we get a lot of hindsight. Raw materials that you know we live in a fascinating time and place where we get a lot of hindsight. But can you imagine that we could send information through the air, that you can take all this stuff from the ground and these minerals and you're an engineer, I mean it's amazing and we probably have only obviously scratched the surface of the potential that was in Genesis, one with that same material same material.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like praise the lord and thank goodness for all the people that have like worked faithfully, because think about just like the epochs of time and the significant like whether it's the you know, development of metal working, and just like the ability to make implements.
Speaker 1:And it's surprising how quickly you see musical instruments introduced in the genesis narrative, introduced in the Genesis narrative Right in the beginning. Yeah, and so like, just if you think about, you know, a thing like just music, the understanding of how harmonics work and what sounds good and sound waves moving through the air and how to create and manipulate those to produce a pleasing sound. And there's just a lot going on there, and that's just like to make a simple like. And there's just a lot going on there and that's just like to make a simple, like flute.
Speaker 2:That's right, we'll get into this. But that's what excites me and you talked about revelation and this progression and our ultimate home on a new heavens and a new earth, in that city, that Everything that God is and has made, and the fact that he's eternal and we're finite in the sense that we had a beginning, that we can never catch up to him. Yeah, knowing that we can never be finished with that, that we have all of eternity to continue to bear his image and to take what he's giving and create and do To work.
Speaker 2:It's big. I know that's exciting. I was missing that picture for a good chunk of my adult life and when I reflect on that I get excited From a low view to a high view.
Speaker 1:We've been in a very ethereal headspace. Let's see if we can land the plane.
Speaker 2:We iterate that first point, this idea that work was a part of God's creation. It was always a part of our story in the sense that it was before the fall. We know work's been messed up some regard and we're going to get into that by the fall. We know work's been messed up some regard, we're going to get into that by the fall. But work is not a curse yeah, correct, we should.
Speaker 1:We should think of it as a continuation of god's work and a one of the chief ways that we bear and reflect his image yes, and intrinsic to our design yep, it was a part of our dna, yep from the.
Speaker 3:This is how we are wired. Should expect to continue to do it into heaven. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so pulling on both landing the plane and the comment Seth just made. We kind of need a working definition. Yes For work. Yes, let's do that. I don't know that this one is perfect. It's probably not even good. There was a little bit of a trump yeah, yeah, okay, good, I'm glad you got that I think I caught it more with your hands than the voice.
Speaker 2:Let's be honest.
Speaker 1:Let's be honest, best statement ever this is not even a very good definition, and it's still better than most. I need uh, I need to bring a in for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we need Alex. Nobody does it better than Alex, I know, I know.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is just the working one that I'll propose for now. I would define work as the activities associated with who God made you, where he put you and how you love and serve your neighbor. So it's a lot different than, like, accounting operations and engineering.
Speaker 2:Say that again, say that again. Okay, read that again.
Speaker 1:The activities associated with who God made you, where he puts you and how you love and serve your neighbor. I love that.
Speaker 3:I think that's pretty encompassing. I mean, you think about Heath's story earlier, about the spreadsheet and the baseball cards. I mean, I think you could see at an early age who God made him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think it does involve the individual and something about where he put him like he's. In an era where you have a spreadsheet and a Beckett, that's right.
Speaker 2:Can I double click on that for?
Speaker 2:a second We've been around Christianity a good chunk of our lives and you get into the theologian speak about sovereignty and this big philosophical concept and these deep, deep. You can get way into the weeds on that term, but I think practically for most Christians we miss the most obvious parts in our lives and you guys are hitting on it and in this definition and that's the fact that we did not choose when we were going to be born. We didn't choose who we're going to be born to. We didn't choose where we're going to be born. And I think a lot of science and research bears this out about personality. So much of it is intrinsic. It's not environmental I mean it has impacts on it but it is intrinsic to who we are and what we were born with.
Speaker 1:Each one of us is a unique, unique creation.
Speaker 2:And so we didn't decide any of those things. And nobody would argue with me that, regardless of your faith, background creation. And so we didn't decide any of those things, and nobody would argue with me that, regardless of your faith, background Right, and I look at that and marvel at it. But it does help with this definition in that God didn't make a mistake. He put me in this specific time and place, in this region, for a purpose, and it's fun to think about living that out and stewarding that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're getting at the idea of a station. Yes, I don't have a tidy definition for that word.
Speaker 2:I don't know if anybody anybody does, but yeah, it's very much that it's helpful to talk about that, what that looked like historically, which is what most people experienced in all of history that we are a little unfamiliar with, because we live in a time and place with some freedom and flexibility and some wealth to move around and do whatever we want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of vocational mobility. But if you go back before the industrial revolution all of that really shrinks. You're born in a certain place and there's not much geographical mobility. And then also your family's vocation really determines what your vocation will be. That's right, and there's not a lot of options to that either.
Speaker 2:I had a historian on a podcast this week and I forget the percentage he said and he was estimating, but it was a high percentage, like 80% of people pre the last hundred years never left a 20 miles area. You know, that's just where they lived and did life, and that's all they knew.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're in a different time and so all of this, to me, is part of the context, as we're looking at that idea of stewardship and I think we'll pull on this more later but just as you're taking stock of what have I been entrusted with that I need to steward. That's all part of it. But we're still like talking around the like nine to five stuff, and so I think really the vision that we're trying to communicate and cast is, you know, one like we said, that work is not a curse or the result of the curse, but it's a way that we bear God's image and that we reflect him. But then also that we should expand our definition of work, and this can help you know whether you are unemployed, a student, retired, if your primary work is in the home right now. Like this, this kind of like casts a much bigger circle, like my Venn diagram just got a lot bigger for what all is inside the circle of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's bust that. Part of work is only something I get paid to do circle of work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's bust that part of work is only something I get paid to do, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so if we're going back to that working definition of the activities associated with who God made you, where he puts you and how you love and serve your neighbor, just like cutting out all those prepositional phrases in the middle, it's the activities of how you love and serve your neighbor, and so our paid vocations are a way that we serve each other. But then there's so much more work that is also grafted into that definition and if you think through some of your stations, you can you can maybe articulate what the work that goes along with that is. You know, it's like I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a engineer, like we've talked about. I'm a citizen in Tulsa, I'm a member of FBC. Each of these things has some work that comes with it, and that's not a thing that I should try to escape. That's like something to take stock of and lean into and think about how can I love and serve my neighbor, also taking stock of who God made me and what I'm good at yeah, how I can.
Speaker 2:Grounded in that faith, you take everything you said and you can wake up every morning and say God didn't put me here on accident. He's made it clear in his word that he's going to quit me to do everything that you just said, to fulfill those responsibilities and steward them.
Speaker 1:well, what a different paradigm to get up and do every day and that we can rest a little bit, like sometimes the vocational mobility that we do have can feel overwhelming. I think the narrative right now is that you can be and do anything and then we're in a time of kind of limitless opportunity. But we can also rest in the fact that God planted us in a certain place at a certain time with a certain intellect and certain opportunities that he either opens or closes for us. So we also don't have to be overwhelmed by the vocational mobility. So there's a really good balance.
Speaker 2:There is and I do agree with what you said there, but there is a little bit about that. You can do and be anything that's a little burdening and a little enslaving right. It sounds romantic until you really start to peel back some layers there.
Speaker 1:Pretty quickly feel insufficient. Yes, you are not sovereign, it's a bit of a cultural lie too. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not true at all. You become incredibly selfish. Yeah, and from what we just described in that definition and how God made us, it's not even true. Can you do anything? Maybe, but you might make everybody else, yourself and everybody around you miserable. But you can do everything, anything you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Major League Baseball has never given me a call I've been waiting for. Those jerks yeah, 30 years, no call, I've been waiting for those jerks?
Speaker 1:Yeah, 30 years, no call, they missed out. Here's a quote that I like. It's the farmer tills the ground to provide food to sustain his neighbor's life. The craftsman, the teacher, the lawyer, indeed, everyone who occupies a place in the division of labor is providing goods and services that neighbors need. This is God's providential ordering of society, but for a Christian, the service rendered can become animated with love. For Martin Luther, vocation was more than an economic activity. It included also our callings and our families, the church and the culture as a whole. Each of these vocations calls us to a particular neighbor whom we are to love and serve. Husbands are called to love and serve their wives. Wives are called to love and serve their neighbors. Pastors love and serve their parishioners, who love and serve each other. Rulers are to love and serve their subjects, and citizens love and serve each other for the common good. It's beautiful, and so you really just have this whole picture of this is how society works together. It really does take all the parts to make the whole.
Speaker 1:So whether you want to look at the analogy of the body, the Bible uses, that later talking about the body of Christ and how each person has unique gifting and they need each one, give each other value for the roles that we have, but then also kind of work in your station. It's the same picture here that without that division or specialization of labor, society doesn't go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and all space and time of written history, different cultures, different forms of government, this just all seems to happen. You know, it all just kind of comes together and it's just happening and it's just intrinsic to how God created things.
Speaker 3:One aspect that I've really been convicted of this year is you know we're going to talk primarily, I think, about vocational work, but he's called each of us to work in our own time and space, and part of that is improving society around us, whether it's your local church, your local community, et cetera. And I've been convicted this year even just to be more involved, say in the children's ministry, because I have children in the children's ministry. This is not paid for by Shea, by the way. Hopefully it will be paid for, but it's not right now. But God has called us to cultivate, and I think part of that cultivation is knowing that we should affect the environment around us for good while we're here.
Speaker 2:And how God designed us yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think that applies vocationally where we are, but then also where we are at church, where we are at school and in different capacities, and certainly not everybody can do everything, but I think. God has called us to be involved. I mean to be lightbearers to not just the outside world but even the inside world.
Speaker 2:Steward every station you're given, as you are listening off Right.
Speaker 1:And this is like you know, getting ahead to the, to the sin piece, but like there's chaos in every one of your realms, and so there is opportunity for you to bring order.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:To bear God's image in that way. So good old entropy keeping us employed.
Speaker 2:Let's wrap up this episode by kind of fast forwarding to the end and that continuing that philosophy. You started off at the beginning talking about fire and this idea of escaping and retirement, and we do work, and then we get to an age and we get to quit all that right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Is that right?
Speaker 1:So I thought and so and I also alluded to the symmetry of the Bible and the picture of perfection in the beginning, in the Genesis creation account, and the context being a garden. And so the other place that perfection is restored, you know, kind of after the, you can summarize the biblical narrative in the creation, fall, redemption, restoration, kind of those four big movements. So the place where we see that restoration back to the perfection is in Revelation 21. I mentioned that it's a city, not back to a garden state, and so really, you see that all of the created order has been rightly ordered in a way that culture reflects God. Let's read for a minute from Revelation 21. Great.
Speaker 1:Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying Look, god's dwelling place is now among the people and he will dwell with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
Speaker 1:He who is seated on the throne said I am making everything new, and then fast forwarding to verse 22,. It says or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives its light and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut and there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. So I don't know about you guys, but that's a totally different picture of heaven than I had, I think, growing up. My picture of heaven was kind of a forever church service where it's like you know, we're some mix of precious moments, angels, disembodied, forever singing, and you pretended to be excited about it.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's the thing it was like. I was always kind of like that sounds really lame.
Speaker 1:You know, I mentioned like it's personally animating to me, like novelty and rich experiences and things like that, and you know sorry.
Speaker 3:You wanted to enjoy those European vacations before you got there. Yeah, I was like oh boy. Or don't let me die yet.
Speaker 1:But, man, what a low view of heaven that I had. So if you look at this, this is, you know, really fast forwarding to the very end, to that true restoration of everything. But what really stands out to me is the physicality of it. There's a lot of description about what the new heaven, new earth and the new Jerusalem will be like, and then, even in that later part of the chapter where it's talking about the nations will walk by its light, the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. It talks about gates, with people bringing the glory and honor of the nations in and out. There's still like a language of commerce there and still very much like, yeah, like physicality, like, yeah, there are still kings, whatever that means, like people that are responsible for domains and they are bringing the fruit of their labor in for God's glory.
Speaker 2:Or, as Keller says, their culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, exactly, and so yeah, just that idea that in heaven we will keep working, that was another big reset.
Speaker 2:Not just one big retirement plan?
Speaker 1:Yeah and so I think that's a rebuke to the kind of american mindset yeah, do we get to bring our 401k I?
Speaker 2:thought you're gonna say our bag of golf clubs well, I do hope I get to hit a few yeah yeah, well, and I think you know we'll, maybe set will actually be good yeah, I was thinking of a baseball bat.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, if you're too old to still swing.
Speaker 2:I've already seen all the dreams. We know this baseball.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's back to that idea of not something that we're escaping, yeah.
Speaker 1:That it's a good thing, and we'll talk about the frustrations that we're experiencing now, that make it feel like drudgery. Those will be gone. Yeah, so it will be. You know, work in itself will be restored. How about this? Here's a quote to close this out. This is from an article, and we're going to fill the show notes. They're going to be very good. I'll put a link to this article. Yes, this is a quote from an article entitled Heaven, not Just an Eternal Day Off.
Speaker 1:The possibilities that now rise before us will boggle the mind. Will there be a better Beethoven on the new earth, as one author has suggested? Shall we then see better Rembrandts, better Raphaels, better constables? Shall we read better poetry, better drama and better prose? Will scientists continue to advance in technological achievement? Will geologists continue to dig out the treasures of the earth? And will architects continue to build imposing and attractive structures? Will there be exciting new adventures in space travel? Perhaps we shall be able to explore new planets. We don't know, but we know that human dominion over nature will then be perfect. Our culture will glorify God in ways that surpass our most fantastic dreams.
Speaker 2:Yes, amen. Come quickly, lord, jesus, amen.
Speaker 3:I do hope the geologists never dig up a ball of rug.
Speaker 2:We're going to work in some Lord of the Rings there, Maybe just close. You're going to put these in the show notes, but some of the books that influenced our research and discovery on this topic say probably the main two.
Speaker 1:One is by Tim Keller, and it's called every good endeavor. It's about connecting your work with God's work. And then the other is the call by Oz Guinness.
Speaker 2:Those are both really excellent works, excellent works, and so they really shaped a lot of this and then we'll add these two in here. These are a little more literature rather than philosophical and practical, but why we work with Dorothy Sayers.
Speaker 1:That's a great, great article that I found since 2017.
Speaker 3:Tolkien yeah. Leaf by Niggle. Yeah by Tolkien yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a short story of his that kind of brings in the imagination of the things we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, somebody that's frustrated by their inability to fully work. Yeah, and then what it could be like.
Speaker 2:And to look back and realize how significant your work was and all that God was doing.
Speaker 3:And, having had a misconception the entire time that's right had a misconception about what his true work was.
Speaker 1:That's right, and you know, if you've been listening to like an accountant, an engineer and operations do talk about it and you're more on the artistic side of life. This is a story about an artist and it's really depicted beautifully. So check it out, it's a good one.
Speaker 2:All right, you guys are going to join me on the table next week as we continue. This week we talked about the origin of work. Next week, we'll talk about the history and philosophy of work.
Speaker 1:I'll see you, then All right.
Speaker 2:See you next week.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining Philips for Brown on the Table. If you'd like to learn more, go to fbctulsaorg. I don't think I had a real vision of what I wanted to be or do.
Speaker 2:Gosh, that's the engineer's watch.
Speaker 1:Turn it off and start over. Dad. Why is there an alarm at?
Speaker 2:6.07?. Is that a Casio? Yeah, it's a Casio.
Speaker 3:People still wear Casio watches.
Speaker 1:Yeah, casio.
