Category: Gospel and Culture

Listen. Enough said.

With Kanye’s latest album due out Tuesday, NYTimes John Pareles offers an insightful lyrical critique of Graduation. Pareles offers two main critiques of the album: 1) Kanye’s former sense of humor had dissipated in the 2) looming presence of his larger than life ego.

One has to wonder if the two are related. The ability to laugh in one’s art can often display a light-heartedness about oneself, not taking yourself too seriously. Perhaps Kanye has swung the opposite direction, but his lyrics from “Can’t Nobody Tell Me” offer personal reflections on his journey through wealth and fame and recollections of his religious roots.

On one hand he waxes self-absorbed: “let the man get cash, let the man get cash…excuse me was you sayin somethin? You can’t tell me nothin.” Critiquing the polished morality of the Cosby’s, he claims: “if the devil wears prada and adam and eve wear nada then im inbetween but way more fresher, wit way less effort…”

Despite Kanye’s self-absorption, I have to take issue with Pereles’ interpretion of, at least, “Can’t Nobody Tell Me.” To this non-hip-hop fan, the beats are strong and so are the lyrics. They chronicle a personal journey with honesty, perhaps even regret.

As for music, it sounds like we have a lot to look forward too, which will likely win the day despite ego-centric, materialist lyrics. Pareles writes: “Nearly every song on “Graduation” is memorable for both its hooks and its overall sound.”

Though Kanye’s music deserves attention, does he deserve this much applause? Again, Pareles: “Every rapper needs a strong ego, and Mr. West deserves his. But where he used to identify with everyday dreamers and strivers, now he seems happy to stay in his V.I.P. zone: all dressed up and behind that velvet rope.”

Has Kanye graduated? Sure, but the question is how will he use his degree? Actions always speak louder than lyrics.

One of the most prominent and controversial themes in Kuyper’s theology is that of common grace. Kuyper maintained a distinction between common grace and special grace, both of which originate with God’s divine grace. While special grace is that redeeming and transforming grace of God limited to those who have faith in Jesus, common grace extends to all people, restraining evil and encouraging human beings to perform actions beneficial to others. Common grace is the reason that unregenerate men and women care for one another, reconcile marriages, sacrifice for others, give to the poor, etc. Total depravity, our inherited sin nature a result of the fall of Adam, accounts for the evil in society. Common grace is the residual good present in creation after the Fall that suffuses everything from science to society. All men benefit from God’s common grace. No man or society is as bad as it could be.

Though all men receive God’s common grace, not all men have the same response to God. As a result, there are considerable differences between the worldviews of the recipients of common versus special grace. This difference between Christians (special and common grace) and non-Christians (common grace only) Kuyper called antithesis. Since antithesis permeates all spheres of society and across all academic disciplines, one might be inclined to think that agreement between Christians and non-Christians in any field would be impossible.

However, God’s bestowal of common grace bridges the unregenerate mind with regenerate mind, enabling them together to apprehend common truth, facilitating agreement between both groups. As a result, Christians and non-Christians can vote together on moral issues, work together on medical cures, and teach in the academy together. Because common grace permeates all the disciplines, God’s glory is refracted in them. Hence Art for Art’s sake is eternally empty, but Art for God’s sake is worship. Kuyper traced his views on common grace back to John Calvin asserting that his own thinking was not truly original, but truly Calvinistic. As a result, he argued that Calvinism is more than a soteriology or theological system, it is an entire world and life view.

Carrying his mature Calvinism with him to America, Kuyper traveled across the States speaking in major cities, churches, and schools. At Princeton he delivered the famous Stone Lectures on Calvinism and was awarded an honorary doctorate. Kuyper continued to write, reform, and teach up until his last days. His writing extended from intensely theological, such as Sacred Principles of Theology, to deeply devotional, as reflected in his devotional writings in Near Unto God. Although Kuyper is remembered as an astounding scholar and statesman, his contributions to society and the church flowed from the deep well of his personal communion with God. In Near Unto God he writes:

The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality, in the full and rigorous prosecution of life. It must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking our imagining our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes through our whole existence.

Kuyper’s contributions to Society, Academia, and Christianity are legion. It is shameful that so much of his work in the Netherlands has been overturned and dominated by secular modernist and post-modernist thought. However, Kuyper’s legacy lives on in the hearts and minds of innumerable saints who have sought to embrace the Reformed tradition as a way of life, Coram Deo. Telling of Kuyper’s radical dependence upon God, when asked on his deathbed if God had been his Refuge and Strength to the end, Kuyper replied distinctly, “Yes, altogether.” On November 8, 1920, Kuyper fell asleep in Jesus.

**This complete article is now available at Boundless.

In washing windows in the towns of East Texas, managing an Italian café in a quaint neighborhood of metropolitan Minneapolis, working security for a top advertising firm in Boston (no, I didn’t have to wear a goofy uniform or ‘get’ to carry a gun), and providing online customer support for a successful bowling dot com business (and I don’t even bowl), I have struggled to find my identity as a Christian in the workplace.

In all these jobs, I have faced challenges to integrating my faith with my work. Consistently, questions have pressed my faith such as: How excellent is excellent enough? Where should I draw the lines in ethical situations? Where does evangelism fit into my vocational responsibilities? Is there eternal meaning in my work? How can work become more worshipful?

When washing widows, I aimed for excellence—no streaks and clean ledges—something I never did perfectly. As a remote worker for an online company, I am trusted to manage my hours ethically; something I take seriously. Managing at D’Amico & Sons, I did my best to maintain a ‘good witness’ among my co-workers, but found myself in the awkward position of being told I was an arrogant Christian, by a furious, foul-mouthed employee I had to fire. As a night-shift security guard, whose primary responsibility was to lock doors and turn off lights, I struggled to see the significance of my work. In all these struggles I have groped to find my identity as an employee and a Christian, a worker and a worshipper of the triune God.

A Theological Framework for Work

Currently, I work a forty hour work week during the day and plant a church by lunch breaks and nights. My weekends include writing, preaching and playing. On all days, I fight to be a wise, loving husband and father to my wife and two children. I am not alone in the demands of work. Most Americans spend the majority of their days working. One study reports an average 46 hour work week in the U.S., with 38% of laborers working over 50 hours a week. Chances are that if we aren’t sleeping, we’re working.

With all these demands, it is much easier to keep my work separate from my worship, to compartmentalize my life—family / church / work—but biblical faith won’t let me, and for good reason. Is there a theological framework for work that will inspire us through the demands of the 9 to 5? If so, how should we then work?

In recognition of God’s sovereign and creative work and the importance of “living before God in all of life,” Francis Schaeffer sought to answer the question, “How should we then live?” In his book by the same title, Schaeffer explores the intersection of the ideas and beliefs of Western culture with those of the Christian worldview, in order to advance whole Christian living in the whole of life—in Art, Science, Literature, Philosophy and Film—to name a few.

Primarily an historical-theological reflection on the rise and fall of Western culture, How Should We Then Live? sets the philosophical stage for living christianly in all of life. What it does not do (though Schaeffer did this elsewhere) is connect the worldview stage with the dramatic details of everyday work.

In many respects, work is the engine of civilization. Without work societies would not perpetuate. Furthermore, if as Schaeffer argues, the rise and decline of civilization is intimately intertwined with the strength and weakness of the Christian worldview, then the labor of everyday citizens, which contributes to the quality of human flourishing, should be given serious attention. If indeed theological ideas have practical consequences it becomes us to inquire, “How should we then work?”

In response to this important question, I can think of at least four main approaches to work that should frame our theologically informed response. First, Christian work should be excellent work. Second, Christian work should be ethical work. Third, Christian work is a platform for evangelism. And fourth, Christian work should be done in reflection upon its essence, how it may or may not reflect the nature and character of God. The rest of this article will critically explore these approaches in an attempt to redemptively answer the question: How shall we then work?

Christian Work is Evangelistic

Others consider work to be Christian when they can use the workplace as a platform for soul-winning. This approach to labor sees work primarily as the context for evangelistic contact with unbelievers. While evangelism is important, it should not take place at the expense of our employer or our work.

The movie The Big Kahuna starring Danny DeVito and Kevin Spacey comes to mind. Industrial lubricant salesmen, DeVito, Spacey and their Baptist co-worker, Bob, all host a party intended to win over an important client—the Big Kahuna. When Bob gets their only chance to pitch their product, he elects to neglect his job and just tell the client about Jesus. He chooses evangelism over work. Bob looses their only opportunity to make the deal but justifies it by saying he did the right thing, the eternal thing. There is no doubt that Christian work can and should be evangelistic, but bad or neglectful work with a soul-winning glaze will win no one to Christ. We must be careful to not compromise excellence and ethics amidst evangelistic pursuits in the workplace.

The Big Kahuna approach to work operates on a narrow view of the gospel. The gospel is not merely for soul-conversion but also for life, culture, and city transformation. Jesus came to set the spiritual prisoner free as well as heal the physical paralytic. The announcement of Jesus’ arrival in Isaiah 61 prophesied that he would bring a gospel for the poor, the broken-hearted, for the repair of cities and the renewal of vineyards. If we are to be truly evangelistic in our work, we will need to take into account the whole person and the whole of society, working with empathy, excellence, and ethics.