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Summary
Can you really "do what you love"? What about the people who hate their jobs? How should I consider a new opportunity, or should I remain faithful where I am now? Jeff Haanen, Brian Gray, Joanna Meyer and Dustin Moody explore these questions and more on the latest episode of The Faith & Work Podcast.
Takeaways
On a Christian view of "calling":
"In the Christian worldview, 'calling' rarely means doing what you love. More often than not, calling means a call to suffer. First, to take up your cross and follow Jesus and follow His ways. A lot of people resonate more in terms of suffering than they do in terms of 'this is my passion that I'm living out in my workplace today.'"
On reframing our thinking about work:
"I think the 'do what you love' ethos is really unhelpful for a lot of folks who really don't love what they're doing, but 'love whom you do it for' is very different."
Questions to ask when considering a new company:
"The idea of culture, the place in which we're going to be working, is a really significant thing. 'What's the type of environment in which I'm going to work? How do other people talk about their company? Are the values just words on a wall or kind of niceties, or do they actually get operationalized? Do they work themselves all the way down? Are those values the type of things that I can give my life to?'"
Resources
Listen to the follow-up podcast episode of Common Questions About Work.Check out Steve Jobs' commencement address (Stanford University, 2005).Read "In the Name of Love" by Miya Tokumitsu.Books mentioned in this episode*:
- Bullsh*t Jobs by David Graeber.
- Working by Studs Terkel.
Read "Saving More Than Souls," by Brian Gray, and "How to Choose a Career: Advice from a Puritan Pastor," by Jeff Haanen.Take a look at "Redefining Work with Tim Keller" at Scatter.org.Download the episode transcript.
*–Purchase with purpose. Amazon donates to Denver Institute when you shop at smile.amazon.com.