For many people, their job serves as their god. By immersing themselves into the work force, many people find a functional savior that fills voids in their lives. Christians, however, know that this is not an option. An equally bad option is for believers to perform their jobs in a substandard fashion–to misrepresent God by being bad employers or employees.
What then is the appropriate way for Christians to approach business and their careers? Enter Business for the Common Good, a new book by IVP that offers “a Christian vision for the marketplace.” Instead of viewing your job as either your god or your enemy, Kenman Wong and Scott Rae advocate for viewing work as ‘an avenue to win the respect of the community (46),” and have a Christian impact. Your work, they argue,
can serve as an altar–an important arena where we bring our gifts, skills and talents to offer up in service to God. When Christians go to work, we are offering ourselves up to God in service to him.
In our Christian culture many people seek to draw a hard line between the sacred and the secular. In ancient times, however, that line was very soft and often non-existent. This book helps to redraw that line, showing that even business in the secular world can be a sacred enterprise when undertaken with the purpose of impacting the world for Christ. This is a great book for anyone interested in carrying the gospel into a lost workplace.
