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The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work

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I finished this week The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work by Darrell Cosden. Darrell was a professor of mine at the International Christian College where he taught. I recommend this book if you want to get at the theology behind our work.

His book is a personal reflection and that is what I particularly found helpful. He sketches out how our view of work has been shaped over the history of the Christian faith and then builds on that to help form a missional view of work, it's eternal value, and how we can see our work as a spiritual discipline (not necessarily in that order). I got slowed down in some of the theology in the beginning of the book but read it carefully and in the end I was compelled to take in his arguements at the end.

If you are interested in Christian ethics in the marketplace, tentmaking, mission, missional living, etc. then this is a foundational read! It really helped me reorient my thinking about work.

I enjoy this book not least because it is one among several thoughtful contributions that have taken the scholarly works of NT Wright and Richard Middleton to the streets on the *Resurrection of Christ* and the *Creation of human beings as God's image-bearers* respectively. It strongly repudiates the escapist concept of the gospel that has our heads almost exclusively buried in another world, that is to be too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. It exposes the bankruptcy of the truncated idea of Christian mission as one that is simply interested in getting people ready for heaven, and casting a disdainful eye on what one does in his daily life. In Corsden's view, the dichotomy between spiritual and secular arena is a false one. All of life is spiritual and missional if it is oriented towards the kingdom of God. So is the dichotomy between clergy and laity as if the work of the laity is second fiddle to the work of 'evangelistic ministry' and 'overseas mission', important as they are. No, the clergy's main task is to equip and join in with the whole church in doing the work of God. Whether we are preachers, homemakers, educators, office workers, builders,or cleaners and so on, we are out on a mission for Christ.

'We are not saved by works but our works are saved along with us' as he puts it. Our work will survive into eternity if it stands the test of God's judgement. Our work redeemed confirms us as God's image-bearers and there is no extinction of that holy, rejuvenating and life-affirming work in the new heaven and new earth! It is paradoxically bound up with the shalom of our final, eternal rest!

On another front, it is a wake-up call to the humanists who presume that we can build heaven here on earth without God. The disasters of the Enlightenment project (eg. the holocaust, atomic bomb, ecological disasters) are a sober reminder not to repeat the ancient error of building the tower of Babel. The Sabbatic nature of Christian work which leaves much living space for God's mighty work keeps our daily work from devolving into this promethean mindset.

Corsden's theology of work is not new, but a timely recovery of the missional nature of our daily work as participating in God's work in renewing and restoring the good earth he made. Hence, we find here a short, and highly readable exposition of what Christian work ought to be and how understanding it is foundational to our view of mission and calling as God's people recruited to do good works everyday (not just when we are in church!), to the praise of his glory! This book gets even better near the end where he spells out how this practical piece of theology gets to work.