Work and Leisure

This school year at NSA, I had the joy of taking twenty sophomores through an elective course called Work and Leisure. I first taught it back in the late 1970s at Wheaton College, as well as in church and retreat settings. In recent years, I’ve covered it at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, both online and in person. And when you come down to it, the course could be called “Life,” since it pretty much addresses the broad topic. 

Life’s a big subject, so a term’s work only scratches the surface. But I think a sampler of the things we addressed can give you a sense of what I and they were up to:

1. Work for leisure, or leisure for better work?

The big question is whether we work in order to gain leisure or enjoy leisure that we might recoup our powers for more work. Aristotle said that leisure was the highest thing. It meant freedom from the grind of “getting and spending” whereby “we lay waste our powers” (as Wordsworth put it). Far better to use our time for contemplation, indeed, for philosophy (said the philosopher). He didn’t mean, “Get all you can, can all you get, and sit on your can.” But it seems his perspective could undermine the “Protestant work ethic.” And if the biblically-prescribed proportion of labor to rest is 6:1, what business do we have in seeking to shave off hours or days from that mandate?  

Furthermore, you didn’t hear the cherubim beside the flaming sword at Eden’s exit whisper, “By the way, Adam, if you do what you love, you’ll never work another day in your life.” A lot of toil is our lot, so we might as well embrace it according to our callings. But heavenly rest is coming, when, as sometimes pictured cartoonishly, we can lounge on clouds with our harps. Well, surely, we can look forward to singing praises to the Lord together, free from the debilitating incursions from the world, the flesh, and the devil. But perhaps there are gratifying projects or missions with an element of challenge. I’m not at all suggesting we’d be little Frank-Capra Clarences (as in It’s a Wonderful Life). But we all know that there can be a little taste of heaven on earth in the accomplishment of godly things. Indeed, we can become so delightedly absorbed in the work at hand that we forget to go to lunch. And so the conversation goes.

Of course, there are rocks on both sides, whether a matter of too much leisure or too much work. In this connection, I showed them a talk I gave to a Founders Ministries gathering, one in which I suggested that some pastors might need to step up their game. The title: “Resolved to Get Cookin’: Overdue Diligence.”  

2. Course Readings.

In Gilbert Meilaender’s anthology, we touched on the work of around fifty different writers, as well as on a dozen scripture passages. For instance, in the Bible, we read the “if you don’t work, you don’t eat” verse in 2 Thessalonians and the “season for everything” chapter in Ecclesiastes.  And the range of non-biblical writings is bracing, e.g., Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith”; Calvin on vocation; Seneca on “The Shortness of Life”; Twain’s Tom Sawyer; Rabbi Heschel on the Sabbath. On and on go the writers: Shakespeare, Orwell, Ruskin, Herbert, Trollope, Augustine, Hesiod, Tolstoy, Kipling, Sayers, and even Marx. And so run the topics, from business as a calling to homo faber (“man, the maker”) to the use of weekends to the parson’s circuit. 

This collection included some pieces on athletics, baseball in particular, and I connected this to a short video I did on Michael Novak’s The Joy of Sports, wherein he spoke of the transcendent elements you might find at play inside “the friendly confines” of Wrigley Field—sacred space and time, a band of brothers, rooting, agon, competing, and self-discovery.

We also used an issue of Christian History magazine, one devoted to “Callings: Work and Vocation in the History of the Church.” Therein, we read Luther’s attack on the sacred/secular distinction in the workplace and his impatience with convents and monasteries; of the moral status of charioteers and military governors in the eyes of the Early Church; the emergence of the WWJD watchword; and Wesley’s prescription for “honest industry.”

3. Field Videos.

In assembling my seminary on-line course on work and leisure, I drew a camera from the home office and shot dozens of field videos as I traveled about. (They complemented the ones a crew and I did on campus.) I showed a few to the class, e.g., miners a half-mile deep under a Kentucky mountain, men observing that they were like astronauts, in that, each day, they went where no man had ever gone before; a hotel housekeeper in Arkansas who said that her biggest challenge was dealing with leftover hair, particularly in the shower; and my daughter, who walked away from a fully-funded doctoral program in political philosophy at Georgetown to become homemaker and home-schooling mother.

4. Leisure and Work in the Popular Arts and Media.

In leading them to consider what leisure might encompass, I referenced videos on sauntering (the expression, some argue, coming from pilgrim walks through the Terre Sainte, AKA the Holy Land), browsing (as in a huge used book store in Detroit), “working” down through a bucket of places to go and things to see, and even cutting up wood for the fireplace. (I called it my “health club.”) 

We also took note of leisure pictured in song (e.g., Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee,” Jack Norworth’s “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville.”) And then, in film: The Way (with Martin Sheen walking the Camino de Santiago in memory of his son) and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (with familiar scenes from Chicago’s North Shore, where we lived). As for TV (whose viewing is a major leisure activity), we find a host of shows covering a range of sports, including bowling and fishing.

The popular and fine arts also treat of work. The songs are often cranky, e.g., Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for the Money,” Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons,” and Lee Dorsey’s “Workin’ in the Coal Mine.” Yes, you’ll find a cheerful “Whistle While You Work” now and then, as with Disney’s Snow White. But the pro-work songs are typically more given to honor than giddiness. Among my favorites are Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” and Alabama’s “40-Hour Week for a Livin’” (Mick Jaggar even did a remonstrative “Let’s Work.”)

Turning to film, we have countless portrayals, old and new, serious and silly, including 9 to 5, Wall Street, Tommy Boy, The Devil Wears Prada, Twelve Angry Men, Blackboard Jungle, and Mr. Mom. And then, on TV, there are plenty of “non-fiction” offerings, such as Ice Road Truckers, Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs and How America Works, Gordan Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen, Undercover Boss, and Deadliest Catch. In the fiction category, we find (and have found in years past) The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Taxi. And, along the way, I found perspectives on work in a range of other venues, e.g., through the adaption of Studs Turkel’s book Working to the musical stage, featuring the sung soliloquy, “Just a Housewife,” and also the “Man at Work” art collection at the Grohmann Museum in Milwaukee. 

5. Drafting Women?

In 2019, I was tapped to testify in DC before the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. Representing the Southern Baptist Convention, I cited our resolution opposing the use of women in combat, a statement that noted, among other things, deficits in both their “survivability and lethality” on the battlefield. The commission was considering a recommendation that women be registered with the Selective Service System, and I raised an objection over not only drafting women into the military, but also drafting them away from homemaking. My daughter and her four daughters were in the audience, and I pointed them out as a case in point. C-SPAN 2 covered the event, and the chairman’s introduction and my opening statement occur in the first thirteen minutes of this video. This was the portion I showed the class as we talked about complementary roles for men and women.

6. Discerning God’s Will for Your Life.

Not long after my dad graduated from seminary in the 1930s, he became a student minister at the University of Kentucky, and, while there, he picked up on a formula for finding God’s vocational will for your life, one circulated by a denominational leader. I passed this along to the students, pitching in some indicators of my own. The original three read this way: 1. “Follow your bent.” (What do you like to do? How are you wired? Reminiscent of the old preference tests we took in high school, we might ask, “Would you rather read stories to kids or man a fire tower?”); 2. “Look for the gleam.” (Is it satisfying as you get involved in that sort of activity. In this connection, I point them back to a scene in Chariots of Fire when Jenny tries to talk her brother, Eric Liddell, into bypassing the Olympics and heading to the mission field. His reply comes along these lines: “Oh, Jenny, the Lord made me fast, and when I run I feel his pleasure.” So things just seem to click.; 3. But then comes the prescription, “Watch for open doors.” (Okay, you have a heart for the sick and you did some gratifying volunteer work in a hospital. You’re pretty sure you’re on the way to a career in medicine, but then you flunk organic chemistry in college, and med school fades away in the mist.) 

I add a couple of suggestions from my own experience: 1. Imagine the confluence of different streams of experience—the offhand observation of a friend, a book or article you read, an invitation from a surprising sector, a kind of envy as you watch others involved in a certain line of work. That sort of thing, accompanied by the conviction that God engineers the features of your life; 2. Imagine being alone in the stands in a dark arena with dozens of fine things positioned on the floor below. All of a sudden, a spotlight comes on, and it illuminates a particular item, whether, say, a big screen TV, an ATV, or a big BBQ grill. You can make out other items, but your attention returns continually to the object in the circle of light. It’s sort of like the artistic technique of chiraroscuro (as in Rembrandt’s Saint Peter in Prison). You may have had your heart your set on something else, but a sort of holy preoccupaton keeps bringing you back to a certain focus. I think God uses such nudges (or jolts) to orient/reorient our steps. (And no, the TV/ATV/grill list was only an analogy, not keys to particular vocations.)

Of course, there are those who have little or no use for this sort of talk. Back in 1982, Multnomah Press came out Gary Friesen’s Decision Making and the Will of God. He found obsession over finding God’s perfect will, fear of missing it, and belief that we have what it takes to discern it with confidence to be seriously problematic. By his account, the biblical examples of a Macedonian Call and such are not normative for us. Besides, we have all the guidance we need in the Bible’s moral guidelines and general admonitions found the Culture Mandate of Genesis 1, the Great Commission in Matthew 28, and a host of other universal directives. We shouldn’t worry over missing the “dot,” the precise course whereby we face some level of woe if we miss it.

While I believe firmly in Romans 8:28 and so don’t torture myself with fear of utterly wrecking myself by saying yes or no to the wrong or right projects in particular moments, I’m not inclined join Friesen in jettisoning appreciation for particular leadings, with yes, some measure of mystical help. (As you can imagine, this is a matter of lively concern in the class. Indeed, I’ve been to a number of conferences where the breakout groups dealing with this issue drew the biggest crowds.) 

7. The Final Paper.

The syllabus reads,

This single document has three sections of a thousand words each: 1. A summary or transcript of an interview with a non-NSA person in a local church about the role of work/leisure in their life; 2. An analysis of two or more obituaries along the lines of matters raised in this course; 3. A personal statement on these matters with reference to their own lives, to include reflections on things past, things current, and things envisioned. 

Here's where theory meets the road—in leading a neighbor to think through their own stewardship of gifts and opportunities (In this vein, NSA’s book store manager, Adam Walters came to class to offer us observations about the difference between working in a large secular store, namely Powell’s in Portland, and managing Sword and Shovel’s selection on campus.); in reflections on a total life (with a Biblical assessment of what the obituary writer chose to celebrate); in applying the notions we surfaced to sort out personal callings and prospects so far as possible at this point.