So you're not satisfied with your job.

Let me rephrase that: I'm not satisfied with my job. (The "why" is a totally different conversation - there's actually a lot I love about my job - I just tend to not be equipped and/or wired to handle many of the typical tasks required on the job.) What do I do with that? For the next few minutes, take a walk with me through my brain (scenic hike? cave spelunk? mad dash? haunted house tour?) as I try to navigate the treacherous waters of personal discontentment. I'll be attempting to change course.

How do I go about deciding what to do with unsatisfaction? My first thought - laying all my options out on the table and choosing the best option or hybrid of better options - probably won't help anything. Too consumerist. It won't get me to the root of my problem.

I'd rather try to listen for God's voice concerning his will for my employment. What is he saying? How do I hear his voice in this?

I thought of a biblical image that could possibly serve as a metaphor for my current situation. Maybe this is sort of a thing where God is bringing all these "animals" (jobs) to me so I can name them and see that I don't fit with them.

Whoa there. I've got some alarms going off in my head. (Seeing as you're walking through it with me, you may have heard them. Or perhaps you don't speak nerd, so you weren't really sure what you were hearing. Either way...) This worries me some: the fact that I'm looking for the kind of fulfillment that comes from a marriage relationship from my paid employment. Just earlier this week, I read an article that said something important regarding this search for fulfillment (the article is located here - it's a historical survey of Christian understandings of vocation). One of the more contemporary understandings (Christian understandings might be a little generous - perhaps it would be better to say quasi-Christian syncretisms) involves the capitalist or Marxist stance:

...the pursuit of a vocation became an end in itself. This is true for both capitalism and Marxism. Both encourage us to look for personal fulfilment through the work of our own hands. Once people worked to live now they are living to work. ... Work once degraded, is now worshipped, and demands great sacrifices.

(This excerpt is found under section 6, the one entitled, "A New Distortion!")

'Work to live' vs. 'live to work.' How true is that? Definitely true for workaholics, I would think. And maybe what my problem is involves a lesser measure of that spirit. Both problems involve a worship of the work of my own hands: I am satisfied when I have accomplished something that has really allowed me to express my identity, to the benefit of other people. So I find myself seeking fulfillment from something other than God - to be filled by a spirit that's not the Holy Spirit.

Are there positive values in this view? Sure - helping people is a good thing. But if in my attempts to help people I keep feeding my ego through self-worship, sooner or later I will end up more self-absorbed than altruistic. (And perhaps my motives aren't really all that pure so as to only be satisfied when other people are benefitted.)

You may or may not find this convincing. I think it would be helpful to think towards an alternative to seeking personal fulfillment through work or vocation. What does it mean to 'work to live' instead of 'live to work?'

How about we start here: God is the ultimate Provider - of everything. He provided the breath that animates us. He provided the Garden to sustain us and to be the place where we lived and worked. He provided us with companionship: man and woman, becoming one flesh. I'm also thinking particularly of the blessing of imaging him (being made in his image). What's significant about working the ground? What's significant about, "be fruitful and multiply?" Both things allow us to be like him. We get to be in on the joy of creating, sustaining, and growing new life! Work the ground - get a little sweaty and see your cucumbers busting off the vines! Be fruitful - get a little sweaty (it's fun!), have children, and see your own "spittin' image" learn and grow to be a joy to God and people! The Hebrews obviously saw a connection - "be fruitful" - sounds like a garden or orchard to me.

Work to live. I think when I first read this, I actually heard, "work to survive." That couldn't be further off the mark. Work to bring the image of the Creator God to full expression in you! See Jesus's version of life (life overflowing and full) happening as you get your hands "muddy".

So I'm not satisfied with my job? Maybe I'm working to express and enhance the wrong image. Maybe my problem isn't that I'm in the wrong "garden" - it's that I'm not trying to bring God-life out of the soil I'm already in. After all, God was the one in charge of placing Adam in Eden. He doesn't seem to have any problem knowing where to put people.

What do you think? If you've got any suggestions about how even the most seemingly ill-fitting work can generate that kind of life, then I'm all ears. Unless, of course, you see me on the dance floor - then I tend to be all left feet.