The term work is surprisingly difficult to define. Is it an activity for which you’re paid? What about housework? What about homework? In an important book on working theology, Miroslav Volf, professor of theology at Yale and director of their Center for Faith and Culture, wrote that “work is one of those things in our daily life ‘whose meaning is hidden in the mystery of their familiarity.’”†
The rest of this book, Work in the Spirit, reframes work as a pneumatological activity. That is, it’s an activity that is inspired and aided by the Holy Spirit.
But there’s an interesting section on work’s alienating properties. This is even more real in the age of automation. Keep in mind that this book was first published in 1991.
Work is alienating.
When we’re talking about alienating work, Volf refers to “a significant discrepancy between what work should be as a fundamental dimension of human existence and how it is actually performed and experienced by workers.”††
We’ve all had jobs like this. You might feel like you’re at a job where your purpose is deeply dis-integrated with the company’s purpose. You might feel like you missed your “calling,” if that’s the word I want.
Recent discussion on automation highlights this point. According to a Bain report called “Labor 2030,” economists estimate that 20 to 25% of current jobs will be eliminated by the end of the next decade, hitting middle- to low-income work the hardest. These employees may feel dis-integrated from any purpose at all.
These ideas were expressed at length by Adam Smith and Karl Marx, among many other thinkers in history. Even Plato’s Republic has passages on the division of labor when he separates his guardians from other workers in the ideal state.
Many companies, especially in the employee engagement category, are working to solve this. For example, Culture Amp uses modern psychology to increase job satisfaction, tying together employees’ values with the company’s values, creating a more sustainable workplace culture, thus giving employees a sense of meaning.
Volf argues this doesn’t go far enough. One can be alienated while still being satisfied.
“A theory of alienation,” he continued, “that concentrates on work satisfaction cannot make this necessary step beyond people’s feelings and preferences.”†††
Christianity reduces alienation wherever possible.
I won’t linger on this point because you understand what I mean by “alienating work,” and this is supposed to be a short newsletter. You’ve also heard before how companies try to make work more human, whether it’s through company values, a mission statement, HR team-building exercises, and so on.
However, I do want to quote Volf in full on a particularly important passage that proved very helpful in thinking about everyday work and its purpose.
As I have argued earlier, in Christian anthropology it is God’s personal relation to human beings, not human work (or any other human activity), that constitutes human beings as human beings. Consequently, the fundamental form of alienation cannot be alienating work, but alienation from God. Stated in traditional theological language, sin against God has ontological (though not necessarily temporal) priority over all other forms of human sin and misery. The various forms of alienation in human relations to oneself, one’s fellow human beings, and nature are ultimately consequences of the fundamental alienation from God.
The priority of alienation from God over alienation in work has three important implications. First, one should not expect too much from any success one might have in overcoming alienating work. Such success does not reach deep enough into the human predicament to be able to thrust human beings to the heights of universal emancipation. Second, even attempts to humanize work with more modest goals will be less successful than they could be if they concentrate on humanizing work without paying attention to alienation in other spheres of human life; in particular, alienation from God. Since there is a necessary spillover from alienation from God to alienation in work, the full humanization of work requires overcoming alienation from God. For work to be humanized, the working person herself must be “humanized,” not least by nurturing her right relation to God. Third, since alienation from God will be overcome only in the new creation, all attempts to humanize work will be crowned with only partial success.
A Christian will strive to reduce alienation in work, because all success in humanizing work anticipates—on a small scale and under the conditions of history—the eschatological new creation.††††
I hope this gives you both hope and humility in humanizing your work today.
Thanks for reading.
Notes
† Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 8.
†† Ibid., 157.
††† Ibid., 159.
†††† Ibid., 163.