Made to Work
I was sitting across the desk of a man who had worked his way up in a corporation to be managing partner. He ran one of the company’s locations, had a minority stake and participated in leadership’s inner circle.
He was facing retirement. And he was not happy about it.
He had done well for himself and was going to be financially comfortable.
And he didn’t care about his loss of status–he was a quiet, self-confident man without the title.
But he was trying to figure out what he would do without work.
“What am I going to do, Mark, wash my car every week?” he said to me, grimacing. “Play golf? There are only so many times you can do that.”
He was made to work. And so are you.
In fact, God’s plan has always been for us to work.
The Three Jobs in Paradise
Even if you see the Garden of Eden as just a metaphor, play along: Adam and Eve worked in paradise, before the fall.
By my count, God gave them three jobs (see Genesis 2-3):
- Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.
- Work and keep the garden.
- Name the animals and have authority over them.
Perhaps you have experienced one of the exquisite joys of life: to feel like you were living out your purpose.
It might be seeing your children grow into adults. Or a charity where you know you are making a difference. Maybe it is sheer pleasure in an activity: I’ve often heard bosses watch an employee lost in their work, “in the zone,” and say, “She was born to do this kind of work.”
That’s perhaps truer than we realize: “Vocation” comes from the Latin for “to call.” In other words, your calling is just that: a purpose for which you were made. Once a sales manager told me, “I love getting a customer to say ‘yes’—it’s better than sex!” (Even at the time, as a virgin, I somehow knew that would NOT be my reaction to his line of work.)
There was sweat in paradise. The good kind of sweat, the kind you get when you are in the zone, in a flow state, living out what you were born to do.
To this day we are still doing that work we were made for:
- I do not fill the earth, but I love being fruitful with my beautiful wife. (She is modest and private, so I’ll just note that we have four children and I did not agree that sales was better than sex and move on.)
- I’m a terrible gardener, but we are all growing things: raising families, developing employees, contributing to a culture—the same root word as cultivate—or bringing some art or hobby or craft into the world.
- I did not name the animals, but I have had the privilege of seeing the power of naming things in my line of work.
That third one requires an explanation. To do so, we have to acknowledge that the jobs have been broken.
The Three Jobs, Cursed
While they could have stayed in the garden, fulfilling their purpose and being fulfilled, Adam and Eve listened to a series of lies. Attempting to become gods themselves, they revolted from the plan.
We could talk about how being fruitful now involves the pain of childbirth, how growing things now involves thorns and the “wrong” kind of sweat. We could talk about hundreds of consequences.
But consider how the fall has impacted our job, our calling, to name.
We name things as facts that simply are not facts. Consider the difference in these two statements:
- “I noticed so far this month you have not been at your desk when our office opens. I’m concerned you have a problem getting to work on time.”
- “You’re lazy.”
See the difference? One names a series of facts: I observed your behavior; I have a concern. The other takes an opinion and names it a fact. And that opinion may not be true.
(Unfortunately, one of my clients chose option 2 and lost a potentially good employee in the aftermath.)
That’s an example of how naming poorly impacts employment. But we could go on:
The manager who names a certain goal as unobtainable ensures his department will never reach it.
The girl who is told she is ugly grows up to be insecure about a great many things.
The boy whose nickname is Dummy never strives to better himself.
The group written off as [fill in a prejudice here] fights a constant battle with how others perceive its members.
All of these limiting beliefs begin with someone naming a belief as fact, declaring a lie.
It’s a power we have, a power we were created to exercise. Yet names wound. Labels stunt.
My colleague Pamela Cole introduced me to the research around Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs). Research suggests that negative thinking can start a downward spiral. For example, a person who thinks, “this situation will never improve” will have feelings of hopelessness. The hopelessness leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy: The person never takes any steps to address the situation.
The thought, “this situation will never improve,” is to name it hopeless. And that may be a lie. Many of the ANTs work this way: we name ourself or another with a label … we name a prediction of what will happen … we name what we think another is thinking.
How can you be so sure of these “facts” about people, the future or another’s thoughts? If you aren’t sure, you have just caused violence with a name.
Our power to name is broken. But what’s broken can be redeemed.
A Cursed Job Redeemed
Adam named the animals and “had dominion” over them. And that phenomenon—having authority over things you name—plays out across the pages of scripture.
As U2 said, “Jacob wrestled the angel / And the angel was overcome.” Except he wasn’t: The angel dislocated Jacob’s hip and changed his name from Jacob (translated as “heel grasper,” or “liar,” or “manipulator”) to Israel (“wrestles with God”). It changed the course of Jacob’s wicked life.
Example: On her deathbed giving birth to their son, Israel’s wife names the baby Ben-oni, “son of my sorrow.” But Jacob, renamed Israel, renames his son: Benjamin, “son of the right hand.” And again, this renaming has a prophetic affect on what would become the mighty tribe of Benjamin.
Automatic Negative Thoughts are about naming things with lies. But they can be conquered by using “true names.”
If you catch yourself thinking an ANT, you can name what’s really happening.
This situation will never improve. It’s just so hopeless. … Wait a minute—what am I doing? Is that really true? I don’t know what may happen in the future. And there are things under my control right now. My thinking caused a downward spiral in my thoughts—I need to watch out for that.
I often get the pleasure of seeing this play out verbally as my clients think out loud.
There is power in naming what is going on and taking authority over it as a result. My clients will say out loud, “This is the problem. … That is my dream. … This is something I have a talent for. …”
Often, they’ll then say: “Wow. I’ve never said that out loud before.” Sometimes they realize that what they’ve been thinking is false–even silly–once heard out loud.
“I just need to say things out loud to you,” a client once told me. “Then I can evaluate if the things are true or not.”
I had employees at another client tell me, “I wish the owner knew how powerful his words are to tear us down over a bad month. But they are also so powerful at building us up. People hold on to compliments he gave years ago.”
Even that old sinner Ebenezer Scrooge knew that power. In “A Christmas Carol,” he tells the Ghost of Christmas Past that the boss of his youth deserved praise not because of any money he spent on his employees. Instead:
… He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.
Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”
You were made to work. You were made to name things.
Use life-giving, truthful names.
It may be worth more than a fortune to those around you—or to yourself.