#114: Discovering tomfoolery
What to do if work SUCKS, a Christian perspective
There’s something wonderfully wrong about a decontextualised Jesus. Think of the Jesus that shares Easter with a happy bunny. Or that white, blue-eyed, insipidly-smiling Jesus who shares Christmas with Santa Claus. That Jesus belongs on a car dashboard as one of those bobblehead toys. He’s a cultural relic like Yoda. But Yoda is cool. And that Jesus is a bit icky because his legacy is intertwined with colonisation, patriarchy, apartheid and most of the evils humans have had to put up with in the last two thousand years.
Ever wondered why darker-skinned Africans still get dressed up in suits and ties to go to Church? The spread of Christianity was a strategy of colonisation. Sure, for many it was well-meaning. But to become a Christian in Africa was conditional on assimilating to whiteness. Wearing Western clothing. Ascribing to Western values and speech. And in Africa that is clearly unkind and controlling. Just read Romans 14 in the Message translation and the lights should come on if you don’t believe me. Control is the opposite of The Christ.
Or, have you ever taken the time to wonder why secular nations like Australia are leagues ahead in terms of women's rights than ‘God-fearing’ nations like the USA? That’s because at face value the Bible is a patriarchal book written in a patriarchal time. Apply it without Romans 14 (don’t be a dick and think you are better than others); or John 3:16 (God is interested in loving all people); or Genesis 2 (God made men and woman equally) and we naturally create a world where men think and act like they are better than women. Sadly GBV, different pay scales for genders, lack of representation of women in leadership etc etc etc…, a lot of that in the West is because of a belief in that icky Jesus and his de-contextualised cultural stories used to control.
But as far as the decontextualization of Christianity goes, that is not the worst of it. In my mind the way we WORK is. Many of us put our faith in Jesus sincerely. We believe there’s a meta-universe, or a viel, or something that comes after our eyes go dark from death. And that is loony. Like flat our crazy. In a post-modern world ruled by science, we have no proof or any substance for that belief. And yet we still manage to cling to it like a float in the tumultuous seas of 2024. And yet while doing all that furious clinging we are happy to still live under the curse of work and making ends meet only by the sweat of our brow??? That’s just weird!
OK. Let’s take a giant step back. Maybe you’re not a Christ follower. Maybe you’ve never sat in church before. Let me catch you up. Christians believe they need Jesus to get to Heaven because inside them is sin. A darkness. A vacuum that needs to be filled with God. It was this darkness that got Adam and Evil kicked out of paradise. A place of no shame. A place of rest and peace and walking and talking with God in the cool of the evening.
It was outside of Eden Adam and Even fed themselves only ‘by the sweat of their brows’. According to the Bible WORK was one of the worst consequences of not having God. The wonderful Harvard historian Noah Huval Harai describes it well. He calls this change in the way humans worked the ‘great lie’ in his book Sapiens. Worry. Inequality. Social comparison and working extreme hours; all of those bitter curses came from humans craving security and peace from work in a world void of God’s love. Now a contextual Jesus is one that walks people BACK into the Garden. Back to paradise. Back to peace and rest and communion with the Great Spirit. And many of us experience that. We know God, or think we do. We’ve found deep, beautiful peace in our relationship with Love. But what is so fascinating is while we adamantly hold onto the idea that God has placed us back in paradise and will hold us there for ‘eternity’, we still put up with hating our jobs and suffering under work…??
Again, that's just weird.
It’s weird because, like lots of Christianity, this perspective is hypocritical to the point of mild insanity. A contextual Christianity says God cares about what we spend most of our life doing and like our souls he wants to heal that too. A contextual Jesus craves to bring all our lives, including work, back to order and peace and rest. That’s the whole point. This is not the ‘Prosperity Gospel’. It is just the character of the God revealed in the Bible. If He loved us enough to incarnate His son and kill Him brutally on the cross to get us back into Paradise then that includes work. Surely? And so that’s why I started Tomfoolery 10 years ago. I just couldn’t live with my own hypocrisy anymore. I was a marketing executive for Tevo working twelve hours and days and mostly hating my work. And it just felt wrong. Not ethically wrong, but spiritually wrong. I just couldn’t live with a sincere belief in the Bible and hate my work. The two are in conflict.
Alrighty, so if you hate or are unsatisfied with work here are three things the Real Jesus might say to you today:
One: I love you. That’s an awkward start and it feels like we are right back to that icky, insipid cultural icon. But I think it is what the Real Jesus would say. Why? Fear or love. Those are our two primary meta-narratives humans get to choose from. All our decisions are rooted in either one or the other. So if you hate your job but have stayed at it for more than a few years there is a chance it is because you are afraid. And that fear is legitimate. Don’t get me wrong. But it is fear nonetheless. A contextual Jesus is one that is able to enter into your fear and ease it just enough so you can believe every now and again that there is more for you. There’s rest and peace, and maybe even abundance. And the only way that happens is when you feel loved…
OK. So I’ve suffered more than anyone I know well. It’s been dark, tyrannical and almost daily for going on twenty years. But throughout that time I’ve experienced mostly peace and even joy. I can’t quite explain why. It is like if I want to I can push my hand through a curtain and enter another world. And in that place, there’s singing in the subtext. Water moves not as a sound, but as a feeling, deep inside my stomach. In that place, there’s more and less perfection that you can’t quite put your finger on… And it is there that I know somehow I am truly loved by Love Himself and so despite myself I know very little fear….
I think to master work in 2024 we need access to that space. We need to not just hear we are ‘loved’, but feel it. And if we don’t feel that all that remains is what we see. Comparison. Inflation. Social media. Retirement. Competition. KPIs. Promotions and bigger cars etc etc etc etc
Two: Love others. Before I became a marketing executive I painted buildings for seven years. Not the creative kind of painting. The one with twenty-litre buckets, trays and poles. Yup, hardcore manual labour eight hours a day, five days a week, two hundred days a year. Every day doing the same thing over, and over and over again until your mind has played out every thought and all that is left is just an everlasting wall...
Now I’m not saying I got this right all the time. Sometimes I sobbed on my knees out of sheer frustration; but most of the time, let’s call it 75 - 80%, I stayed at the wall out of love. I worked for a church. I was in charge of moving venues, and we moved ALOT. That meant each time we moved I had to paint the entire place. The last venue we moved into was four thousand square metres (I carpeted it too), and through that period I learnt something I’ve never been able to forget. Work is love.
I still get this wrong, but often our framing of work is the problem. We make it all about us. All about what we are getting from the transaction. And commercially that is the correct approach. But spiritually it is death. For us to reap the rewards of work spiritually we must, must, must love. Weddings are the place to strength-test this idea. Who hasn’t heard that famous passage - “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way”. Preachers should read the verse above it more often too - “If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
Beautiful.
Three: Chill. I literally think a contextual Jesus in 2024 would say this. We’re surrounded by a sea of excellence. Anyone with even a shred of ambition cannot help themselves but be overwhelmed by moments of existential madness. So I think Jesus might say gently “Instagram and TikTok are making you crazy fool”, and then smile. Or jibe me to “focus on your family, you Charlie…”, or “enjoy lakka food and a beer after work” because “that is life”. And I think I would agree with him. We do need to chill. I for one take myself and life waaaaay too seriously….
A glorious garden. That’s what life and spirituality seem to be. There are seasons and peace and flow and pruning, and a rhythm to it all. And the biggest part of any garden for those awake and off their smartphone is enjoyment. And it is always in the small things. A gentle breeze. The fresh smiles on the faces of those we love. The kiss of the Son on our skin. The blossom of talents we never knew existed. Moments of peace and health we feel inside and out. Becuase is that not true richness? Is that not an eternal blessing?
PS. That’s for spending time with me. Hope you have such a great work week ahead
PSS. Here’s a thought - let’s love on our neighbours today? Think of someone you love who this mail might genuinely serve and share it?