What looks like bad work to you? It can be a very personal thing – I was surprised when I told people about leading Redeem the Commute, and they said, “I’m glad someone is doing it, but especially glad it’s not me.”
I watched a TV show lately about a tow truck driver – it showed him going about his work in the middle of the night, doing a job many wouldn’t want. But he said he’d tried multiple jobs, hated them all – and then found the towing business and it just fit. He’d found his passion for work, even though other people would hate it working those late nights, alone, at risk and dealing with mechanical work.
There are definitely bad jobs out there – some are really awful, which became apparent with media coverage, for example, of the textile industry in Bangladesh.
Some jobs aren’t terrible themselves, they are just a bad fit.
And there are some good jobs that we see in the wrong light – something about us means they are less than they should be. We might think they’ll be much more than they are, or we might think too highly of ourselves to do certain kinds of work, even though they are good.
Question: What’s the worst job you ever had? What made it so bad? Was it bad for everyone, or just you?
Acknowledgements: Tim Keller, Every Good Endeavour and Work & Rest
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I know a PHd student who asked this question on Facebook: "How do you cite Facebook?"
Researchers like her live and breathe citations. It's critical that they learn how to quote someone properly. There are whole books written about referencing sources properly.
Good teaching in Jesus’ day was the same. Rabbi Hirschel says this. Rabbi Hillel says that. At best, a good teacher might come up with some creative parallel, paradox or new insight into those ancient words.
But to say something original, that was risky. Maybe you could get away with it at end of your career, or maybe after you'd died, people would say it about you.
The Jewish people have such a long history – to make up your own stuff was as if you thought you were better, and could ignore the past.
If you did, people would ask, "Who is this guy?" In this case, he was Jesus, a carpenter from a small town. He never went to the advanced schools of Judaism. Lucky he was literate.
He was not where you’d expect original, profound teaching to come from. You might expect teaching that was original and trite, or profound and dated, but not original and profound at once.
Yet, everyone, even his enemies, saw this profound, original teaching in Jesus. They said the same as these crowds. “He teaches as one with authority” meaning he wasn’t quoting the great teachers of the past, like other Jewish Rabbis always did. He just taught, and people recognized his words as good and true, despite his lack of citations.
He hadn’t followed another rabbi, he just gathered a school of students around him.
He doesn’t need to cite, because he is the source of all truth. He is called the "Word" of God - the "Word" being a Greek concept of the truth with personality.
Question: How is Jesus different from other teachers in your life? What did he teach that no one else said before, or has ever improved upon since?
We meet for coffee every Wednesday night at Starbucks in the Chapters Store in Ajax, in Durham Region just East of Toronto. Maybe we'll see you there?
