Three types of work during wartime

During wartime, there are three types of work, broadly speaking. 

First, there is the ordinary work that everyone was doing before the war broke out. In part, it is the goodness of these jobs that makes the war worth fighting. Communities can only function when people do good, ordinary work. "Look at the chair you are lounging in...Could you have made it for yourself?...How [would you] get, say the wood? Go fell a tree? But only after first making the tools for that, and putting together some kind of vehicle to haul the wood, and construing a mill to do the lumber and the roads to drive on from place to place? In short, a lifetime or two to make one chair!...If we...worked not forty but one-hundred-forty hours per week we couldn't make ourselves from scratch even a fraction of all the goods and services that we call our own. [Our] paycheck turns out to buy us the use of far more than we could possibly make for ourselves in the time it takes us to earn the check...Work...yields far more in return upon our efforts than our particular job puts in. Imagine that everyone quits working, right now! What happens? Civilized life quickly melts away. Food vanishes from the shelves, gas dries up at the pumps, streets are no longer patrolled and fires burn themselves out. Communication and transportation services end, utilities go dead. Those who are survive at all are soon huddled around campfires, sleeping in caves, clothed in raw animal hides. The difference between [a wilderness] and culture is simply, work."¹ If such work were not present in a society, such a society would hardly be worth defending in a time of war. During wartime, this work must continue if society is to function. The amount of time that can be devoted to it may well be reduced, but it needs to continue. It should continue not simply so that food and ammunition can be supplied to the troops, but  in order for there still to be a society when the war is over.

Second, there is ordinary work that is applied specifically toward the war effort rather than toward the development of culture. For example, engineers that used to build commercial aircraft may now put their skills to use building bombers and fighter jets; clothes designers designing military uniforms; doctors treating injured soldiers; marketing strategists designing army recruitment adverts. 

Third, there is the specific work of engaging with and killing the enemy. This work is the full-time occupation of the infantry, air force pilots, artillery and other front-line service men and women. This is the work that only takes place because the nation is at war. 

Once the war is over, the third type of work will cease and those who were engaged in the second type of work will redirect the application of their skills, so that the only type of work that remains is the first. 

At Avenue Community Church, we have just started a new series on work and the Gospel. As I was listening to the sermon this morning it struck me that the church is always on a wartime footing until Christ returns, and so there are three types of work that any Christian can be involved in. 

First, most Christians will be engaged in ordinary work, directed to the "ordinary" purpose of fulfilling God's command to, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:28). For most Christians, following Christ does not mean doing "Christian work," but involves the high calling of doing ordinary work in a Christ-like way: recognising that work is a good gift from God, through which we worship him and benefit our neighbours. Most Christians are called to the great privilege of putting Genesis 1:28 into practice in the context of knowing as our Father the God who has called us to this task: becoming a responsible adult who can bless others, finding a spouse with whom to have children and, in cooperation with others, using the skills he has given to us to develop the world that God has made and build civilisations. 

Second, some Christians will do ordinary work that is applied specifically to the war effort. These are the office workers and administrators who run mission agencies, the engineers who maintain the planes used by the Missionary Aviation Fellowship, the architects who work exclusively in designing meeting places for churches, and many others. This is the type of work I do as I provide legal advice to churches and Christian charities through FIEC Practical Services. 

Third, there are the some whose full time work will be prayer and the ministry of the word. (Acts 6:4). This is the work that only exists because of the war and that will end when the war is over. This is the war declared by Satan against God that affects every human being. The end of the war is already known. Christ, who has defeated Satan through his death and resurrection will return to cast Satan into a lake of burning fire, together with all of his followers. Those who have swapped sides from following Satan to following Christ will then live with Christ in a renewed and purified world. The second and third type of work will no longer be needed and everyone will be joyfully engaged in worshiping God through the ordinary work of ruling the world and the universe with Christ and all his people. 

Some Christians will be engaged in some of all of these types of works, and many who do the first type effectively do two or three jobs as they engage in the second and third types in their spare time. 

1 Lester DeKoster, Work: The Meaning of Your Life (Christian Library Press, 1982), 5, 7, 9-10 as cited in Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavour (Hodder and Soughton, 2012) 75-76^↩