I see a trend in my generation—and myself—that frustrates me.

I call it occupational apathy.

We punch a clock, go home, eat, sleep, and repeat, all the while not giving two #@$!s about our work. I don’t have a problem with factory work, or those who work by the hour. Many of those kinds of jobs are noble work that people do out of necessity, or love for their families, or maybe because they truly enjoy the work. The problem is that we don’t care about our work. I have a problem with how we do our work. And yes, the gun is pointed at me too.

Occupational apathy isn’t a new problem. People have been apathetic in every generation. Some generations may be more guilty than mine. The impulse to merely get by is too easy to follow. It’s not a generational problem it’s a human problem–as is usually the case.

What is even more frustrating is that Christians are just as guilty of occupational apathy as non-Christians. It’s frustrating because we, along with some other Theistic traditions, are the only people with any real reason—outside of self-interest—to care about our work. Sure you can subscribe to a naive kind of secular humanism and find some arbitrary reasons to work for some vague idea of the “greater good” of man, but in the end the reasons are just that: arbitrary! (my use of the word “some” should show you just how vague and unreasonable this stance really is)

The biblical narrative begins with God creating the world and giving a man a job. He gives the man a responsibility, something to take care of, something to subdue. Despite how you read the Genesis poem—I tend to think the modern literal interpretation is dubious at best—it is plain to see that work is part of what it means to be human. Work is part of who we are. We find a piece of God’s truth in creating, in focusing our wills toward construction.

This is why I love the idea in the Genesis poem that God put man in charge of a garden. He put the man in a place full of possibility and said,” Now make something beautiful!”

But most of the time we treat out work like a chore. We view working as striving. After all, being a Christian is all about being really “spiritual”, about leaving this world, right?

In the words of Paul in Romans 6, “Hell no!”

All people bear the image of God—a term that refers to carrying the authority of a king. As image-bearers we carry the authority and responsibility of God to order creation, to bring creation into alignment with God’s character. Because after all, we want to be just like our dad, our Abba, our kyrios, our Lord. We do this because we believe reality has been set up a certain way, and when we go against the grain of reality it hurts.

We know we fail at this primal mission every day, and we need to remind each other to pursue this purpose. So, Christians, think about how you do your work, or, do the rest of us a favor and don’t tell people you’re a Christian. The same goes for me.