Very often, when we talk about faith and work, we talk about vocation. We encourage people to find and follow their calling, not just to pursue wealth or worldly success. Vocation is a very good thing and those are very good conversations.
But not everyone finds their vocation. And while vocation is also closely tied to the idea of fulfillment, sometimes our work is unfulfilling.
As a result, conversations about faith and work can be hard for some people to enter and the ideas surrounding faith and work can even be a bit alienating. When we talk about faith and work, we should also be talking about sanctification.
Work can be a place where we find great fulfillment and meaning, but work can also be a source of great disappointment and frustration. We distinguish between work and toil, but even if the work we do is more than toil, we are not guaranteed good bosses or ideal circumstances. You might not get the promotion or raise you expect, even the one you deserve. You may do great work and your company may still go under. You may be called upon to make personal sacrifices for the greater good and never see that rewarded. These are all normal work experiences.
Work can lead to burnout. Though “job burnout” is not a medical condition, it is taken seriously by medical professionals. The Mayo Clinic identifies the causes of burnout as: lack of control, lack of clarity about what’s expected of you, conflicts with others, too much or too little to do, lack of support, and problems with work-life balance. The American Psychological Association is also concerned with worker burnout, which is linked to psychological conditions like depression, insomnia, and psychological distress and to physical conditions like heart disease, headaches, and musculoskeletal pain. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, in 2024, as many as 44 percent of workers felt burned out, 45 percent felt “emotionally drained” by work, and 51 percent felt “‘used up’ at the end of the workday.” At the end of 2024, Pew Research reported that: “Half of U.S. workers say they are extremely or very satisfied with their job overall. Another 38% say they are somewhat satisfied, and 12% are not too or not at all satisfied with their job.”
Many people are somewhat miserable at work or are sometimes made miserable by work. “Dream jobs” are elusive. Even seemingly great and desirable jobs might require long hours or great effort. The Bible establishes that work is good, but the experience of work can be frustrating as often as it is fulfilling. It can be hard to make sense of this reality, especially considering how many hours of our lives are spent at work, whether or not we love it. We all want meaningful work, but we also have to make sense of the meaning of the hard work we do and what it takes from us.
When we think about our work and our faith, we should be considering what to draw from the difficult parts and what it means that so many of us will end up feeling like we have given more than we have received at work. Viewing work as a means of sanctification can help people derive more meaning from work, even when the job and the results do not align with dreams or vocation. Sanctification is understood as the process of making something or someone holy, associated with spiritual growth and increased alignment of our will with God’s. Sanctification involves smoothing our rough edges and slowly dying to ourselves.
While the home is central to our existence, many of us spend more of our awake hours at work than at home, which means something in terms of how we should evaluate the significance of how we experience, and are experienced at, work. Many of the exhortations of the New Testament can relate directly to workplace experiences. Consider Jesus’ admonition not to worry, given in Matthew 6 and Luke 12. It is human to worry, because we lack control and our future is uncertain. Our lack of control exists in many parts of our lives, but it can be exceptionally stressful at work, where we are often dependent on our co-workers and bosses and even the whims of the economy. We have all the parts of our lives to learn to trust God more when we experience a lack of control, but we have an average of almost eight hours per weekday to do that at work.
Many people have a “work bestie,” but most of us do not choose all, or even most, of our co-workers. The question of “who is my neighbor?” is a pressing one at work. As in the parable, our neighbors are not necessarily the people we select, they are the people in the neighboring cubicles, or down the hall, or on the same presentation team. We have no genetic predisposition to love our co-workers and, often, no familial ties to secure our affection. The people we work with are, outside of family, the people whose lives we can do the most to improve. Even if your work is about benefiting specific, other people, it is unlikely you spend more time with the target population than you do with your co-workers.
Day after day, year after year, we work alongside people whose strengths and weaknesses and personal struggles we can come to know intimately. We have the opportunity to love and serve these people, not as benefactors but as neighbors. Some of us may have leadership roles, but most of us will make our most meaningful contributions to the lives of others as peers or even as subordinates. Caring for our co-workers has less glory than a missions trip and co-workers will know better than most people how well developed we are in the fruits of the Spirit. Work gives us the opportunity to love our neighbors—the ones we are gifted, not the ones we choose—as our most human, exhausted, overworked selves.
Sometimes work is miserable. Who has not labored in a bad workplace situation? Who has not waited to be recognized or promoted or even paid? Who has not been challenged by confusing processes or silly protocols? What good comes of this? Much good can come of this. Work is a place where we learn to increase our patience and restrain our tempers. We are not at liberty to say or do whatever we feel or please when we are unhappy, not if we want to remain employed.
A challenging workplace can be a context we can use to practice and integrate many virtues. Wages stagnate, bonuses do not always arrive, co-workers have different compensation for the same jobs. How will we handle ourselves and how will we evaluate our worth when compensation might be unfair or our efforts seem underappreciated? Can we understand our work as being “unto the Lord” as Paul advised in Colossians? Even when the pay is good but the effort is exhausting, we must build a narrative around what is required of us—will we see it only in terms of our exhaustion or exploitation or can we transmute that into something more meaningful?
One reason we are so often inclined to narrate our workday at home is because that is the only way we can be the center of the story of the workplace. We are rarely even the center of the floor we work on. Whatever work we do, it goes beyond us and is not built exclusively around our wants and desires. We can resist the lessons in this reality, or we can use it as a reminder that we are not in the center of the universe and that is a very good thing.
There are many goods we can derive from work even when work does not always seem good. The ideal is work that is fulfilling, but we can be well-formed even by work that is not. Arguably, the workplace struggles we experience are some of our best opportunities for sanctification. Thinking about work and sanctification can help us toward a richer understanding of the ways that work is a blessing, even when it does not feel especially satisfying. Bringing sanctification into the conversation around work can help us move toward a more robust theology of work.