Christian Faithfulness In Secular Work: Clarification and Caution

By William Edison - Posted at The Heidelblog:

I work at a forklift dealership.

No matter how meticulously I try to craft that sentence to sound cooler in small talk introductions, the reality remains: I am about as common man in the common realm as it gets.

Though I spend my workdays around the likes of turret trucks, I often spend my off-hours with the likes of Turretin. You can imagine that trying to produce a forklift term that sounds like a quintessential Reformed theologian was not the first time I contemplated how these worlds connect. The perennial question of what it looks like to be a faithful Christian in a secular workplace is immensely personal for me, as it surely is for every believer in similar life circumstances.

In seeking counsel on the topic, however, one may find that guidance can sometimes come as abstract art, painted with strokes of ambiguous Christianese. If you are anything like me, you may be initially inspired to frame your secular job as something like “kingdom” work, or workplace “ministry” that is “transforming” your employer; but the next day of ordinary service in your industry, without mention of Christ, leaves you either unclear about that framework’s tangible outworking at best, or questioning matters of your fidelity to God at worst.

My hope in writing this article is to provide some clarification to the believer struggling with what it looks like to be faithful in their secular occupation, while also cautioning against some of the language surrounding the topic, which may unintentionally cause confusion or even put believers under a new law—a covenant of work, as it were. Before proceeding, it should be noted that the term secular is used here to describe that which is common to believers and unbelievers—something that is not set apart for Christians alone.1 Secular, in this context, does not refer to that which is inherently opposed to Christianity, as the term is sometimes used in other contexts.

Continue here.