IT is said that a visitor at a certain commercial enterprise, in order to make conversation, asked the elevator operator, "About how many persons work here?" The operator cocked his head to one side, thought only a moment, then replied, "Oh, about half of them, guess."
This bit of wry humor perhaps overdraws the picture of the lack of commitment to a task or cause that characterizes our day, but unfortunately, the picture is recognizable. How far off would the elevator man's appraisal be where you are employed?
Paul wrote to the young minister, Timothy: "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2:15). Many lessons and sermons have been drawn from this text. Our study and labor should be done to please God; they should be designed to permit His approval; they should leave us with no sense of shame, because we have studied and labored with a sense of discrimination, sensitive to divine directives, so that we know how to put first things first. All this, and more, is in the text.
One word in this passage I should like to consider particularly. I have never heard it emphasized in a lesson or sermon, probably because it would be considered faulty exegesis to do so. I doubt that Paul himself intended to give it special emphasis, but I cannot help thinking that it deserves emphasis, especially in view of the manner in which the great apostle lived and labored. It is the word "workman."
Now, I know that the Greek word ergales, rendered "workman" in the King James Version, may be, and was elsewhere, rendered either "workman" or "worker." Thus I suppose I have not an exegetical leg to stand on in making a distinction between a "workman" and a "worker." Yet that is precisely what I wish to do, and if the difference is not inherent in the text, I believe that in our minds there should exist a clear distinction between two classes of individuals, each of which has been given a task and charged with responsibility.
Are you a workman, or just a worker? A worker works—at a job; he puts in time; he does what someone else tells him to do, nothing more, perhaps less. The observation is well made that there are two kinds of workers in an organization that will never get far: the first, those who cannot do what they are told to do; the second, those who cannot do anything else. Perhaps a common species of worker is a kind of combination of these.
A workman also works, but with initiative; he works to a plan; he is a self-starter, able and willing to do something without being told to do it. Often a workman does more than is expected of him. He has vision; he is constructive, creative; he is a builder. A workman is fully committed to a task, to a plan, to a cause.
A few months ago I was behind the iron curtain for a few days in the country of Yugoslavia. I was heartened and stimulated to find there in Belgrade and Zagreb a ministerial group of unusual keenness, stimulating vigor, with evident intensity of interest and of purpose, willing to work hard and to suffer if need be for the cause they had espoused. Most of the group had suffered; they know what hardship, persecution, and imprisonment are. I would say these are workmen.
In the Belgrade hotel where we stayed was a rather modern elevator. I noted inside the elevator instructions in several languages, neatly engraved on brass plates. The one which I read the most easily was in quaint English as follows:
Attention
- To move the cabin press the button of wishing floor.
- If the cabin enter more persons, each one should press the button of wishing floor. Driving is then going automatically by natural order.
- Button retaining pressed position shows received command for wishing station.
- Glowing red signal "overloaded" shows the elevator is overloaded and one person should leave the cabin. Unintentionally, some phrases in these elevator instructions reflect the common philosophy of our age: Depend on pressing buttons to get where you are going—to your "wishing floor." The easy, automated, push-button era we have entered affects our thinking. Even most of the automobiles sold nowadays are "shiftless." So we think of a certain "wishing floor" where we want to be, and somehow we believe we can push the button and "driving is then going automatically by natural order." Many become frustrated if it doesn't work out that way.
This is an age of "instant" this and that. There is a growing array of instant foods and instant drinks. A "liquid meal in a can" may be a boon in an emergency or for a serious dieter under competent medical direction. But it is disastrous to think that spiritual needs can be met similarly or that spiritual service can be rendered in this fashion. Because in our day things can happen and be enjoyed without delay in the material realm, we learn to be too impatient. We want to arrive now—or a little sooner than that. Medical men insist that we bring on ourselves premature disablement or death by not getting enough exercise. Yet we cannot take the time or effort to walk across the room to control the TV set; a little electronic gadget in the hand saves all that.
Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! This is the order of the day. One cannot ride horseback through an apple orchard at full gallop and pick many apples in the process. Yet our study, meditation, and communion are too often like that, and we miss the rich, ripe fruit that more time, deeper interest, and greater concentration would bring.
Too often, those who are bidden to "study to shew" themselves "approved" do little reading and even less study. Headlines are perused, pictures are scanned. Life moves by in the noisy blur of the television screen. And so we want food for the body and food for the soul prepared, processed, precooked, packaged, ready to open, heat, and serve. Somehow we expect to get by on mental and spiritual TV dinners.
Just press the button for the "wishing floor" you have your heart set on. The old homely bit about starting at the bottom and working up is definitely passé. Those entering the labor market of the world, and sometimes the church, seem to want to start at the top—and to keep on working up! I do not wish to be cynical, but it seems we deceive ourselves if we do not recognize the trend of certain common attitudes and the likelihood that even those who labor directly in the cause of God may be infected by these attitudes.
Don't commit yourself to anything in particular—it ties you down too much. Why knock yourself out for someone else, especially if he gets the credit for it? Cut out the sweat; do as little as possible to get by; never mind the production. Pull wires to get a scholarship or a sponsorship; make sure you get job security whether you earn it or not. Concentrate on the fringe benefits. Does this sound familiar?
I do not relish the role of shattering illusions; it is too negative an approach for me really to enjoy. But if there should be someone in the ranks of those called to the work of God, or in preparation, who is tempted to feel that it is playing i t smart to look at life from some of the angles mentioned above, I must in sincerity say, It doesn't work that way. In this far-out age of computerized business and orbiting spacecraft it still doesn't really work out that way—if we are to remain honest Christians, working directly, or even indirectly, for God.
The apostle Paul was certainly not a button-pushing, wire-pulling, apple-polishing, get-by-easy sort of laborer, and such was not his counsel. He taught the virtues of thorough study and honest, vigorous work, and he lived as he taught. Paul achieved the pinnacle as a teacher-preacher the hard way, but it was the right way, the only true way. There is no simple, easy, and still right way to reach the top in the work of the Lord. Every road to the summit is by way of toil, self-sacrifice, earnest study, and sometimes severe trial, all backed by a firm, undeviating commitment.
Paul was not just a worker, he was a workman. One cannot read the record of his life and ministry without feeling a glow of admiration, a stirring of the heart to seek to emulate the heroic qualities of his service. His was a full and unreserved commitment. I like his vigorous and wholehearted approach to life. In his writings one finds the little word "all" literally scores of times. It seems to me to be most significant. The "all" was in his writings because the "all" was in his life. This all-out quality in his experience gave unusual authority to his preaching and effectiveness to his ministry. Paul found, and left for us, the secret of success: "I can do all things through Christ."
"My God shall supply all your need." "And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work."
So, "study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman!" God has a plan for your life; make certain yOu have found it, and commit yourself to it. God has a work for you to do; make sure you have discovered it and commit yourself to it. Be more than a worker; be a workman. There is no greater heresy in these days of destiny, when a bewildered world is spinning rapidly to its doom, than nominally to espouse the cause of God and enter the ranks of His laborers, and yet remain uncommitted to anything in particular. Sara Henderson Hay neatly sums up the heresy of the uncommitted in the following verses:
It is a piteous thing to he
Enlisted in no cause at all,
Unworn to any heraldry,
To By no banner from the wall,
Own nothing you would sweat or try for,
Or bruise your hands or bleed or die for.
This were a greater sin again
That hostage of your living breast,
Than to rouse all the world incensed
At something you believed your quest,
And stormed the skies and suffered pain for,
And fell and prayed and fought again for.
To take the smooth and middle path.
The half-heart interest, the creed
Without extremes of hope or wrath,
Ah, this were heresy indeed
That all God's pity will not stay for,
And your questing soul will pay for.
