… or am I just doing my job?
Two verses less than a chapter apart in John’s gospel have got me thinking a bit about why and how I use my gifts/abilities (for want of more self-effacing terms) in my work.
The thought has occurred to me before that when I “serve” others , particularly in the context of work, my mixed motives include high doses of “self-’s”, chief among which are probably self-esteem (from the approval of others) and self-gratification (from the enjoyment of wrestling with a challenging problem). I doubt my motives will ever by anything other than mixed, but I wonder if serving others should feature a little more prominently in that mix?
As usual it’s tempting to leave it there and go off and feel guilty for a while (and make a few other Christians feel guilty for good measure) about not doing everything out of a pure desire to serve others, but that’s not a very satisfactory, effective or maybe even Jesus-like result.
So, back to John and these two verses you’ve been waiting for:
John 12:43 “for they loved praise from men more than praise from God.”
John 13:14 “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.”
Tah-dah! Okay, perhaps the meandering machinations of my mind require a little unravelling: The first verse describes me too well, too often and not just in work. The latter struck me harder as I tried to understand what Jesus says next, not just about following his example, but about a servant not being above his master. “Are you better than me? above washing feet?” Thus the option of performing a sophisticated theoretical side-step of the whole “serving others” thing seems to be ruled out, almost as if he knew I’d try.
So, how to pull these vaguely connected threads together? (I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go along. Can you tell?) Perhaps the words at the beginning of the twelfth chapter of John provide a key: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.” There’s something slightly odd about describing this most extraordinary act of foot-cleansing as an act of extreme love. Humility perhaps, but love? Then another little bell sounds in the dim recesses of my mind, something about the cure for my love of the “praise of men” lying in knowing how much God loves me as I am… the “love” word again.
Perhaps in receiving the fulness of God’s love for me there is not only freedom from the addiction to approval but also freedom to focus on others and in that place a genuine desire to serve them, to love them, using the gifts and abilities God has given me. If I am fortunate enough to find many opportunities to do this in my daily work, then great! Could this mean job-satisfaction independent of self-satisfaction?
Here endeth the ramble (pending much-needed refinement… through further deliberation of course, not practice!).
