Faith In The Age of Remote Work And Church
*We will pick up with a New Testament book, probably Acts, later this week. Meanwhile, please enjoy a few one-off, stand-alone devotions. Hope you all had a great weekend.*
“For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.”
Nearly a third of Americans are engaged in some type of hybrid or fully remote work arrangement. According to a recent study, 43% of professionals with advanced degrees work remotely compared to just 9% of high school graduates. The most “remote” age group is between 35 and 44, and the top industries for remote work are finance, tech, and “professional services.”
Of course, there are pros and cons to remote work, which we may discuss another time. Many argue they are far more productive at home, touting the amount of time and gas money they save by working from home. Others say it’s a sham, that those who favor remote arrangements simply want to lounge around in their pajamas all day and pretend to work. There’s probably some truth to both.
Technological advancement has made it possible for a corporate team to consist of a working mum in London, a retired consultant in Huntsville, and an accountant in Tokyo, each working out of their home offices. The challenge of distance has largely been conquered.
But there’s an elephant in the room: they’re not making anything. The only reason people can work together from different continents with nothing but a MacBook and an internet connection is because there’s nothing tangible being produced. This is a luxury afforded only to “thought workers,” whose responsibilities consist of ideas, theories, words on slides, and “whiteboard sessions.”
The jokes about e-mail jobs are true; in most cases, nothing real, meaningful, or tangible is being produced until much further down the line. For every one person manning the assembly line, there are a dozen others sitting on collaborative, cross-functional task forces, heavy on words, and light on substance.
At the end of every one of these meetings, a question always lingers in the air: “Okay, so now that we’ve identified key performance indicators, and discussed our 3-month, 6-month, 12-month goals, and highlighted key metrics in accordance with our most recent quarterly business review, what do we do with that information?” This question is almost never asked out loud.
Though none of us would ever admit it, this corporate, remote, gig work economy has brought with it a massive mindset shift. All problems can be solved with our fingers; not to build or repair, but to type out 1,000 words about why it needs to be fixed, or who we need to fix it, or the timeline in which we need the work done. We do a lot of talking about the work, but spend very little time doing it.
To excel in such an environment, all one has to do is show up, think the right thoughts, ask the right questions from the Harvard Business School leadership book, listen to the right self-help podcasts, and just do a lot of deep “thinking.” What you actually produce is of little consequence; the results are far less important than the type of person you are. If you went back in time and told your grandpa that you’d be paid six figures a year to respond to a few e-mails and update a weekly PowerPoint slide, he’d probably faint (and then ask “what’s a Powerpoint slide?”).
Work has never been so easy, so unproductive, so theoretical, and yet we’re all still supposed to pretend like it’s very important, very life-changing work. We spend hours a day clicking between tabs, clearing out our inbox, rearranging logos on a slide deck, and completing mandatory online training, and when people ask, we tell them just how busy we are. I’m just so busy! Wow, what a busy week that was! And yet we have nothing to show for it apart from a throbbing lower back and eyes strained from blue-light.
For all of the certifications, degrees, awards, and fancy job titles which our culture holds up as the pinnacle of human achievement, we’ve completely disconnected ourselves from the physical world, hence why your neighbor Tim who is a Senior Director at Apple and makes your salary in a month simply walks around the driveway in circles every time his power or internet goes out; all of his marketable skills are theoretical. He’s a “thinker,” not a doer.
Up until maybe five years ago, the majority of blue-collar work was considered like unskilled labor. Working with your hands was for those who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, work with their minds. And yet any corporate accountant or consultant would likely tell you the best hour of their week is when they get to mow the lawn. There’s very little theory involved in cutting grass. Mowing the lawn doesn’t require a cross-functional task force or a 21-question survey; the grass is either cut, or it’s not, and you see the fruits of your labor in real time.
We’ve been catechized into a type of soft Gnosticism which says the physical world is inherently inferior to the spiritual (or in this case, digital). Think about the companies we exalt as the height of corporate excellence; Apple, Google, JPMorgan, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia. These corporations are concerned not with traditional manufacturing or hands-on production, but with knowledge-driven, intellectual and digital value creation, where most of the actual production is outsourced. In other words, ideas, rather than things, many of which are, admittedly, incredible, which I use on a daily basis.
And of course, computer chips, stock portfolios, and operating systems have their physical components which enable real, tangible systems way down the line, but for 99.9% of their creators, and users (us), it’s all theoretical. We’ll never see any of it, beyond the green and red numbers on the home page of our Fidelity account. I can change my family’s future, for better or worse, with the click of a button, or the tap of a finger.
Living in theoretical-land, we’ve developed an unrealistic view of the physical realm. I hear it all the time, jokes from grown men about how the greatest risks they face are paper cuts, carpal tunnel, and blue light eye strain. It’s humiliating, but at least they’re honest. It’s been said that our forefathers had tired bodies, but rested souls, whereas we have rested bodies, but tired souls. I think this is almost universally true.
In past eras, weakness meant death. One’s livelihood depended on his physical capabilities, from hunting, to building, to defending. Today, you can be morbidly obese, unable to walk under your own power, and make $1 million a day online selling Taylor Swift merch.
With work, church, and even doctor’s appointments now being “virtual engagements,” it’s easy to feel like we’re living with the scooter people in the movie Wall-E. All of our meals are prepared for and delivered to us; we can tap a button and a magic car appears to whisk us away to our next destination; we can even grocery shop from under our covers. Consider how the world has changed in the span of a century. Today, the word “strength” is either used pejoratively, or stripped of its meaning and reduced to therapeutic gobbledy-gook. No, you see, strength isn’t about actual strength, it’s about the courage to be vulnerable!
God put Adam in the Garden of Eden, before the entrance of sin into the world, “to work it and keep it.” Work is not a result of the fall, but a good and glorious part of God’s design for mankind. This is not to say that we should all be gardeners or landscapers, but that physical work is in our DNA, hence why the best sleep you’ve ever had likely came after the hardest day of physical labor you’ve ever done. Stone masons probably don’t have to drug themselves to fall asleep at night, but I know many corporate accountants who do.
The point here is not that we all need to quit our jobs and become tradesmen, but that the church has let this “remote work” view of life, where “high performance” equates to simply sitting at a computer during the prescribed times, and “productivity” means undisciplined busyness, creep into its ethos.
If I just show up to church on time, sit through the sermon even as I’m thinking about a thousand other things, read the right books, repeat the right lines, wear the right clothes, and listen to the right podcasts, then I’m doing something. If I can recite the correct doctrine, quote the right pastors and theologians, and debate the most controversial topics online, as long as I play the game, it doesn’t really matter what I produce. For many of us, our faith has become remote work, devoid of any real, tangible fruit, which is more about appearing to be the right type of person than with true and lasting faith. Punch the time card, smile and nod for 30 years, and retire with a sweet 401(k).
It’s easy to be fully occupied with doing things in the orbit of Christ and His church without ever getting fully to the center. We can pack our schedules with things where we talk, think, and ideate about the work of God, and never get around to actually doing it. This is where the touch grass internet bros have a point; one day spent in the real world, really praying, talking with a friend about Christ, or serving the old, homebound church ladies, is worth 1,000 days arguing about infant baptism online or texting your friend for the millionth time about all those things you want to do for God someday.
The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power, and where there are many words, sin never stops. We should be far more concerned with what we’re doing, than with what we’re saying (and e-mailing, and posting, and sharing to Teams, and sending via Slack).
We will be judged by the One who searches the heart and tests the mind, but who also gives to each according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds. It’s not enough to spend our lives spinning our wheels, planning, coordinating, briefing, polishing. At some point, we must pack up the MacBook, take out the AirPods, and get to work.
We must be men of action, asking ourselves, if I had no cell phone, no e-mail inbox, no digital platform, what would the fruit of my life be? Is all of my righteousness tied up in this device in my hand? Is my faithfulness all theoretical? Am I just a digital Christian, or am I actually doing the work of the Lord, both with body and soul? And am I living as an in-person servant of Christ, or a remote worker, just checking off the day’s obligations?
It’s a question worth asking.
Another one worth asking: “if not me, then who?”, for the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. The kingdom has plenty of supervisors, planners, and project managers. What it needs is doers, men ready to pound the pavement and go where He calls. Who knows what He’s calling you to?
If we would be ready when He calls, let us:
Cultivate physical strength; pursue holiness; keep our eyes open.
Lord willing, we will discuss a few practical ways to do this in the days to come.
God bless you,
T
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’