So here’s the first of the promised posts bringing the bible to bear on my unemployment. As I said before, my hope and prayer is that it’ll help me understand the situation more myself, and give me more helpful things to say and do and pray for others in unemployment in future – to guard against the line of preaching applications that say ‘so go into your office and glorify God by… Oh, and if you’re out of work, keep trusting God.’
The gospel is effective for the whole of life, for the whole of the person, for any person in any situation. As has been said, ‘the whole of the gospel for the whole of the person for the whole of life.’ In line with the Reformation view of life, there is no ‘sacred/secular’ divide, so there must be something more that the gospel has to say to people in my situation*.
In line with a suggestion from a friend, my first attempt at tackling the topic is going to be a sweep of Biblical Theology – what does the story of creation, the fall, redemption and the new creation have to say on the issue of unemployment?
Creation
God is sovereign. God is creator. He made the universe, he made it good, he made it ordered where there was chaos. And into that, he brought humans, creatures of immense dignity because they were made in the image of God (there’s Genesis 1 and 2 for you right there!). But what does that mean?
David Wilkinson suggested that being image bearers is not about God ‘putting an extra part into us’ that the other creatures didn’t get. It’s not like the thread in films like A.I. or Blade Runner which (like all good Sci-Fi movies) are mirrors held up to humanity, the thread which discusses what ‘extra’ feature makes humans humans and robots not. It is about the fact that we are made for relationship – with God! He highlights four features of what humans are ‘made for’:
- God gives us relationship, not slavery
- God gives us community, not isolation
- God gives us the responsibility of a royal steward of his creation, not purposelessness
- God gives us fruitful rest, not fruitless toil
So right from creation, a big part of being made in God’s image is order, not chaos, community, not isolation, and a balance of work and rest – both of which produce fruitfulness. There is immense dignity given to humans, because part of being image bearers means taking on a ‘creation mandate’ (see Genesis 1:26-28), which seems to have some continuity across the Fall.
Part of the challenge of being unemployed is retaining the dignity that is normative to human beings when you have no clear ‘task’ in which to be fruitful (beyond firing off CVs and application forms!).
So where does unemployment map onto this? Where are the touchpoints we can hit when we’re thinking about how to help people who are unemployed? What does creation suggest or explain about the difficulties and opportunities it presents?
- One of the big problems with unemployment is that it brings chaos into your life where once there was order – you don’t have the structure of a set place to work, you don’t have clear ‘office hours,’ and so on. There is something there that sits quite uneasily and I suspect that is because the process of moving from employment to unemployment is often almost like a ‘decreation.’
- Where once there was community, now there is isolation. Although the Genesis ideal of Adam and Eve working together maps most closely to marriage, there is a facet that informs us here – it’s not good for us to be alone in our work! One of the great difficulties facing the unemployed is loneliness. One of the most dominant communities in your life (especially, it has to be said, if you live in London) is surgically removed, which means you need to re-examine community.
- Both work and rest are designed in creation for fruitfulness, not fruitlessness. It’s very hard to rest when you’re looking for work, because there’s always something else you can do. And yet when you do do some kind of work (complete an application form, attend an interview), there is no guarantee it will lead to any fruit (more on this tomorrow!). One of the massive differences I’ve found is that, no matter how hard you work, no matter what you do, no amount of work can guarantee that you will be fruitful in your labours, and no amount of rest seems to help you be refreshed, to stand back and admire the creativity of what you’ve done.
- The creation mandate to rule and organise our ‘little corner of creation’ is still possible, but the balance shifts – how do take on the ‘royal steward’ responsibility in the whole of your life when you remove your paid employment? How does it now affect your family life, your church involvement, etc.? The mandate was always meant to apply to the whole of our interaction with Creation and not just ‘the work you do to live’. Unemployment forces you to think about this mandate more widely and less tritely (which is a good thing, but a painful thing too!).
Let me quote David Wilkinson again. After a discussion of the creation of humans, he says this:
‘What does this mean for human beings made in the image of God? It says that at the heart of our humanity is the need to be involved in creativity, and the space and time to enjoy the accomplishments of that creativity. We need to ask whether our work reflects this. We also need to affirm the importance of human creativity in music, drama, dance, painting, art, sport, sculpture, film and humour. It is in this that we find what it means to be human.’
So what does that look like when you don’t go to the office each day? What ‘creativity’ can we stand back and admire? Our dignity is found in the fact that we are God’s image bearers, not in performing a specific task. Our role is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever – and that in any situation (Paul’s secret in Philippians 4 is what allows him to be happy with much or little – God’s strengthening. It’s often quoted out of context as a kind of ‘do whatever you can think of and God will gas you up’ motto, when it’s a truth meant to sustain the believer in ministry regardless of the circumstances’). Because God is sovereign, God wants us where He’s got us.
One of the most painful lessons I’ve learned over the last six months is that my dignity as a human is dependent totally on God and not on me. I am, left to my own devices, a somewhat undignified creature, because I play down the image of God and play up my self-worth. Unemployment dents my self-worth … but in light of the doctrine of creation, that’s a good thing. Sometimes my self-worth needs dented (or destroyed), before I remember that I was created in the image of God.
But unemployment also sits out against some of the shape of the way God built creation. Work and rest are often fruitless. Days are often marked by loneliness and isolation, and not community. Life becomes less ordered and more chaotic. It is harder ‘rule and subdue,’ and easier just to coast through life – to ‘react’ as situations present themselves, and not to order life creatively.
Anyway, much of this leads into tomorrow’s post – on to sin, the Fall, and living in a broken creation. We’ll see where this all takes us then!
(Oh, and as a closing note, I’m mainly writing from my perspective, that unemployment arises unbidden, and is an unwelcome situation. I recognise that this isn’t always the case – it’s sometimes a choice and is often the right choice to be out of paid work. However, as I write, what I mainly have in mind is the unwelcome situation of being in forced, uninvited unemployment)
*Interestingly enough, the day after I introduced the series, I actually got offered a job, which I plan on accepting. God works in mysterious ways… However, I still feel this is a useful endeavour!
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