Why Pursuing Excellence at Work Matters

In my last post, I mentioned excellence as one way to express holiness. In this post, I want to delve a little bit deeper into how we should develop excellence in work, an easy pitfall that can come our way and how to avoid it.

I believe the gospel should affect every single area of our lives. This, of course, includes our jobs. It is estimated that most of us spend on average 90,000 hours at our jobs! This is more than 10 years of our lives! Ignoring these huge chunks of our lives from the light of the gospel is foolishness!

What does the gospel, and its demands for holiness, require of us in our work environment? The obvious answers can be, among others, integrity, faithfulness, and diligence. In this article, I want to focus on excellence. It is one thing to be honest, work hard and with diligence, but it is quite another to pursue excellence in our craft. Excellence asks questions like: how can I improve my craft? Am I cutting any corners that affect whatever I am working on? Do I make a less excellent product in the name of efficiency and productivity?

Excellency should be evident in our Christian endeavors. Sadly, this is not always the case in Christian circles. A cursory look at the current Christian music scene, for example, leaves one disappointed. Tune in to your local Christian music station and you will find your usual fare of formulaic, “me too”, and uninspiring songs (seriously, how many times can you include in your lyrics the phrases, “I was lost and now I’m found” or “I was blind but now I see”?).

I believe our call to holiness is also a call to excellence. And given the terrifying amount of time spent at our jobs, I believe focusing on excellence in our jobs is a vital exercise in holiness.

Spiritual Pitfalls of Working in Excellence
The gospel should affect every area of our lives because sin affects every aspect of our beings. This includes our workspaces, and our pursuit of excellency in this area can easily derail to unhealthy, damaging, and life-sucking places. This is especially true in a society that preaches self-reliance and the pulling-ourselves-up-by-our-bootstraps. The gospel according to America can lead us to a place where the ultimate goals are self-sufficiency and self-actualization, instead of reliance on God and God's grace.

Jesus warns us of this danger in Matthew 6. He begins by admonishing us:

"Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do...that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward." - Matthew 6: 1-2 ESV.

It is so easy to work in excellency at our jobs just so or mainly so our superiors and colleagues will be impressed by our work. We work with enthusiasm, anticipating anxiously the reward of recognition. It becomes our main, or worse, our only motivator. We work for our own glory. There is no holiness in this. Moreover, when we don't receive the praises we think we deserve we feel bad. Unappreciated. We grow gloomy and we sulk. We start to believe others are simply jealous of our "excellence".

Seeking the praise of others is another way to build our identities in our jobs. Our self-esteem is tied up not only to our performance but the perception of our performance from others. Our self-esteem is no longer based on who we are in God. Others are now in possession of our self-esteem. We give something precious (our self-esteem) to the feeble and shifting perceptions of others.

Also, what do we do when we are not being observed by others? Do we have a good enough reason to work with excellence?

Worse, if we do get the recognition we seek, we can easily lose humility. We might think ourselves worthy of all these praises, and lose sight of how God's grace sustains us, how our colleagues help us, and how those who have come before us have built the foundation for the work we are now doing.  We indeed start believing the myth of self-sufficiency. Since God's grace is taken out of the picture, our salvation and redemption hang in the balance. What a terrible and dangerous road this is!

The Solution: Commit your Work to the Lord
"Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established." -Proverbs 16: 3 ESV.

The only way out of this conundrum, I believe, is to commit whatever you do to the Lord. Work as if God is seeing you, because, well, God is seeing you! Do not be discouraged by this, as if you had a merciless judge watching over you.

You have a loving Father not only watching you but offering Grace at every moment; the Grace that you need to have your plans established, made firm, stable. This does not mean everything will go according to plan, or that you will experience success in all your endeavors. It does mean that, in the greater scope of things, in the great plan of God, every work committed to the Lord will bear its fruit in time, whatever that may look like.

Work to please your God in heaven, not out of fear of judgment, but out of love. When one loves someone there is joy in pleasing that someone. It is the reason we give gifts, like flowers or greeting cards, or a simple cup of coffee. We do so out of love and because the pleasure of our beloved gives us pleasure. We don't do it because we are afraid of them, at least I hope not!

Moving out of work for duty to work for desire takes time, and is nurtured in our moments of intimacy with God and our intentional work for God's glory. Take the time, and work not for yourself, or for your boss, but for the One we love. There is great joy waiting for us in that work!

"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men" Colossians 3: 23 ESV.