What does it mean if you consistently have dreams about being Jason Bourne?  Yeah, that's me.  Dreaming away in my sleep that I'm running away from bad guys, doing amazing superhuman things, and jumping off buildings and through windows.

Am I in search of a new identity?  I don't know.  Is my life really boring?  Not really, but maybe I'm not 'operating' in the right sphere.  But with so many new things coming upon me in my life, I ask again, "Who am I?"

If you happen to peruse your television to the Discovery Channel, there is an immensely interesting and humourous show called ‘Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.’  The brave host of the show, Mike Rowe, searches out and participates in some of the filthiest and most disgusting jobs that one can be employed in, bringing the viewer into intimate visual (thankfully, not olfactory) contact with the interesting people that do the jobs that most of us would not want to do – from sewer pipe cleaning, to casting church bells using an ancient recipe that uses a cow dung recipe, to digging sand worms in New England mud flats, to fixing and emptying septic tanks.  Most if not all of these jobs are difficult, monotonous, and undesirable – not something that I would want to do.

Yet for these workers, regardless of the desirability of what they do, their jobs are an important source of income and livelihood.  The stark reality is that most people in the world do not have a choice in what they do.  They do not have a ‘chosen’ profession, but work in jobs that they can find and be trained in, or have been handed down by their parents.  The idea of ‘finding a job you like’ is not reality for most people in the world, because for them it’s simply a matter of survival.  So when many of us as privileged North Americans speak of searching for ‘job satisfaction,’ it does not register in the minds of those that have little or not choice in what they ‘do’ for a living.  But for us lotus-land dwellers in Vancouver, I have observed that it is one of the highest priorities of life in our community.  We desire and look at opportunities for more satisfying jobs.

But is job satisfaction, or happiness at our work, an appropriate priority or orientation for followers of Christ?  It seems most everyone pursues the best opportunity for advancement, best paying jobs, best benefits, best work conditions, and best co-workers/superiors.  But I would suggest that for followers of Christ, we need to evaluate our pursuit of job satisfaction because it is an idol that keeps us from the happiness and satisfaction of a growing relationship with God.

If you would look at the stark realism of the teaching of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, you would find a mostly negative view of work.  Even the choice of word to represent the idea of work is negative – amal, which can be translated trouble, toil or labour.  The Teacher proposes that our toil is meaningless (Ecc 2:11), that nothing is accomplished by it; and then the Teacher goes on to present his case for its meaninglessness.  First of all, our toil is left to those that come after us, for others to enjoy regardless of whether they deserve it or not (Ecc 2:17-21); then, that our toil comes from our desire to be better off than our neighbours (Ecc 4:4); and finally, that no tangible result of our work can be taken with us when we die (Ecc 5:15-16).

From this purely practical view, there seems to be little meaning in work, and thus little satisfaction to be found in the things we labour in – so why pursue it?  But we are to remember that the Teacher in Ecclesiastes teaches out of a worldview of cynicism and cynical wisdom.  Just like us most of the time, the teacher works out of the question, “What can I get out of this?”  And in answering that question, the Teacher portrays work as immensely unsatisfying in that regard.  You get paid for your work (hopefully!) but that doesn’t last.  And it allows you to survive, but we all eventually die anyway.  And if you work only to have more than your neighbour, there will always be someone that always has than you!  It’s a vicious cycle of meaninglessness, so it seems.

What the Teacher presents is an argument that works if we view the world only through strict realism – that all there is in life is what you can see plainly.  And from that viewpoint, job satisfaction is a myth in this sin-filled world.  But as followers of Christ, I would argue that we have a better lens to see the world, that we have the lens of our hope and faith in Jesus Christ.  We see the world not through strict realism but through faith.  Our worldview includes the question of ‘What has God created me for?’  The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us of this as he responds to the viewpoint of the Teacher by saying, “The end of the matter; all has been heard.  Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecc. 12:13, ESV).  Our purpose is to bring all of life under a relationship with God and his words to us.  Without this, everything else is absolutely meaningless, including our work.

Going back to Genesis, we see that God was the first worker.  God’s act of creation was a labour that he undertook and man was created to be a co-worker with God as he was called to ‘fill the earth and subdue it.’  The first man was put in the Garden of Eden ‘to work it and keep it.’  And all this is before the fall, meaning that work is a good thing!  Yet, given the proposed meaninglessness of work from Teacher of Ecclesiastes, what are we to make of God giving us this work to do?  The best Biblical conclusion is that God works and we are to work in concert with Him in a relationship that results in glory to God.  So when we think about the question of job satisfaction, we need to realize that we were not created for job satisfaction, but for God satisfaction first.  We are not to use our work/labour/toil/efforts to find meaning in our lives and our purpose, but we are to use these things as the playing field to cultivate our satisfaction and contentment with God first and foremost.  Work is a place to develop our relationship with God by trusting Him more, by learning an attitude of gratitude for what we do have, and by using our gifts and abilities in the best way possible to serve Him.  “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.  You are serving the Lord Christ” (Col 3:23-24, ESV).

There are times, that a job is just a job, that work is deeply unsatisfying, and the pressures and demands of work are hard on the body, mind, and soul.  Many of us, and most of the world, work not in the dream jobs and conditions we would choose, but in work that we have to do in order to live and support our families.  In these instances, we could pray to God to change our circumstances, to give us better conditions and work, and to liberate us from the daily toil.  This is to trust in God’s goodness and providence.  But pursuing job satisfaction first gets in the way from us experiencing the most important satisfaction we were created to have – satisfaction in God.  The prayer that takes priority is not that we would have more job satisfaction and more happiness in our work, but that God would mature us so that we can have more contentment and satisfaction in Him above all else, because ultimately our first desire is to be for God himself and the enjoyment of that relationship.