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Acouple of years ago, I spoke with a church member who explained with a pained expression that he might have to lose his job. His only other job prospect would involve moving his family to another city and getting paid only two-thirds of his current salary. He agonized over the fact that his corporate HR department was circulating a statement for all managers to sign. He understood the language in the statement as championing marriage unions and lifestyle choices that are blatantly contrary to God’s Word. As a Christian, how could he in good conscience sign on to a celebration of sin? And yet if he didn’t, his opportunities to provide for his family would be stifled and under constant threat.
Christians have faced decisions about persevering in their professions since the early days of the church. The Apostolic Tradition of the third or fourth century states that those seeking baptism had to learn the boundaries of acceptable trades. Some of these prohibitions seem in line with a profession of faith in Christ, such as requiring that pimps and prostitutes, astrologers, and gladiators cease their work. Other imposed limitations from that era raise eyebrows today, such as forbidding baptism to those who worked as sculptors, actors, soldiers, and rulers who donned purple robes.
The Protestant Reformation restored the biblical notion of God’s calling every believer, not just the clergy, into a vocation. Martin Luther argued that while God saves us by the work of Christ in our justification, He also sends us out into the world to work for the love of our neighbor and the glory of God. No longer was the monastic life held in higher esteem than ordinary work as bakers, farmers, or mothers. This revolution in the perception of God’s calling has led Christians to understand that there are broad fields of endeavor for the believer not only to make a living but to give honor and glory to God in the doing of one’s work.
In our generation, there are fresh challenges, though they are not brand-new. The Apostle Peter wrote to a congregation whose experience was being “grieved by various trials” (1 Peter 1:6). Many scholars point to local and sporadic persecution from the governing authorities but also the discrimination faced by believers in the trade guilds that dominated the employment sector. To belong to a trade guild often meant paying homage to the god of the guild. In this light, Peter highlights the endurance of Christ in His persecution and how Jesus entrusted Himself to His Father rather than revile His persecutors in return (2:23). The Christian must always look to Christ’s example when leaving a job and must do so with integrity.
God’s callings on the lives of Joseph and Moses are instructive with respect to how they both lived and worked in Egypt. Through the providence of God and great suffering, Joseph rose up through the ranks in Egypt. While working under the Egyptian official Potiphar, “Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had” (Gen. 39:4). After Joseph endured more suffering through Potiphar’s wife’s false accusations and his subsequent imprisonment, God called him to use his gifts in discerning the meaning of Pharaoh’s dreams. He so impressed Pharaoh that his administrative acumen catapulted him into managing the vast granaries of drought-stricken Egypt. This outsider in Egypt, through the Lord’s favor, stood firm in his faith while serving amid pagans and the false worship of Egypt.
Later, Moses would live in a time in Egypt when the “king over Egypt . . . did not know Joseph” (Ex. 1:8). After being plucked from the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, he grew up in the courts of Egypt. But life as an outsider did not go smoothly for Moses. His strong sense of injustice while watching an Egyptian assault a Hebrew led him to kill the perpetrator and flee to Midian. Famously, God called Moses to confront Egyptian power and the oppression of God’s people (3:7–12). In Hebrews 11:24–26, we read:
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.
In the providence of God today, some Christians find God’s favor in difficult vocations, as Joseph did. I know a man who has navigated various ethical challenges in his large corporation for decades through prayer and wisdom and has found God’s great blessing there. On the other hand, some Christians are in the position of Moses, finding that their firm convictions collide with workplace mandates. None that I know of have been tempted to kill anyone, yet they would rather take a stand for Christ’s sake and suffer loss and reproach than compromise their deeply held convictions.
Meanwhile, as the current workplace pressures persist, our churches must tune in to the struggles Christians face in the workplace. We must hear the cry from those who strongly desire godly counsel and prayer for the difficult choices they encounter. We have an opportunity to help fellow believers discern whether a company demand is legitimate or is a mandate to compromise one’s faith. Our deacons should consider the likelihood of families’ being caught in such struggles and should heed Paul’s admonition to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2). As we do so, may God turn the current workplace adversity into a shining light of Christian love, so that the world might know that we are His disciples.