Article October 23, 1995 Issue

A higher view of employment

Lyle R. Young

Considering how many hours most people work over a lifetime, it's worthwhile to ask ourselves how we perceive our jobs and careers. And it can be helpful to view work from a spiritual perspective. One way to do this is to see our real job as reflecting God's qualities. Applying this concept provides a more satisfying and secure sense of employment and of supply.

In thinking about this subject, I've found useful the two stories of creation in the Biblical book Genesis. In the first, found in the first chapter and first three verses of the second chapter, man is created in the image and likeness of God and given dominion over creation. In the second, which begins in chapter two, verse four, man—in this story called Adam—is created from dust and given life when the Lord God breathes "into his nostrils the breath of life." Later, after eating the forbidden fruit, Adam is expelled from the garden of Eden and made to till the ground.

In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy explains these accounts: the first describes how God created the universe, including man, as spiritual, to reflect His nature as infinite Spirit; but the second illustrates, by allegory, that thinking of man as material and mortal is ultimately painful and afflictive (see pp. 502-539). The book says of this second story, "The history of error or matter, if veritable, would set aside the omnipotence of Spirit; but it is the false history in contradistinction to the true" (pp. 521-522).

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Faith ... never out of fashion!