The Things of Earth
This topic is my soapbox. If someone asked me to do a TED talk on the spot, this is what I would talk about! It’s not just something I find interesting in a nerdy way, it’s something I care deeply about.
Why? Because when you don’t understand what I’m about to share, you live your Christian life full of guilt, unreasonable expectations, you have difficulty in loving Jesus, and you constantly chase feelings to make you feel “spiritual”. When I finally understood this, it helped my faith become more real, more accessible, and more delightful. It took the poison out of my understanding and helped me to experience the beauty and delight of Jesus more fully!
To illustrate the problem, let me tell you a story…
Most Christians have heard of the author A.W. Tozer. He wrote many books that have helped people in their understanding of God and their pursuit of Him, including The Pursuit of God (1948) and The Knowledge of the Holy (1961).
Tozer wrote of God beautifully with words like:
“God never changes moods or cools off in His affections or loses His enthusiasm. His attitude toward sin is now the same as it was when he drove out the sinful man from the eastward garden, and His attitude toward the sinner the same as when He stretched forth His hands and cried, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” ― A.W. Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy
But sadly, as beautifully as Aiden Wilson Tozer could write of God, he neglected his wife and children in some very stark ways. When he died at the age of 66, his wife found out that she was not well provided for as a widow. Her late husband had given half of his salary back to the church, refused the pension offered to him, and refused royalties to his two bestselling books [1].
In his book on A.W. Tozer, Lyle Dorsett writes,
“…the Tozers had a routine. Aiden found his fulfillment in reading, preparing sermons, preaching, and weaving travel into his demanding and exciting schedule, while Ada learned to cope. She dutifully washed, ironed, cooked, and cared for the little ones, and developed the art of shoving her pain deep down inside. Most of the time she pretended there was no hurt, but when it erupted, she usually blamed herself for not being godly enough to conquer her longing for intimacy from an emotionally aloof husband.” [2]
And perhaps most sadly of all, when his wife remarried after his death, she said this:
“I have never been happier in my life. Aiden loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam loves me.” [3]
Ouch. How could a man who seems to have genuinely loved the Lord so much have failed so miserably in his home and relationships? How could he have had such a disconnect between his love of God and love of those God had given to him?
I believe that many of us have the same disconnect, though hopefully to a lesser degree!
That disconnect happens when we think that the physical world is “bad” or “unspiritual”. This creates what I call “two boxes Christianity”. When we compartmentalize our lives into the box we think God cares about and the box we think He doesn’t care about, we end up with an unbiblical divide in our lives. This is how I believe Tozer ended up thinking that he was serving and loving God: he was attending to more “spiritual” work by preaching and writing, and he didn’t bother himself with “earthly” concerns like family life.
While our understanding in the church has broadened to place more importance on family, we can still have this divide happening in our lives. We tend to think that caring for the physical world with tasks like washing dishes or cutting the grass, or even our job, is much less important than “spiritual things”.
We see this disdain for the physicality of earth in many of our hymns-
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”- Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, by Helen Lemmel
…and a lesser known hymn by Isaac Watts reads:
“How vain are the things here below; How false, and yet how fair! Each pleasure has its poison too, And every sweet a snare.”- How Vain are All Things Here Below, by Isaac Watts
While I believe many of these authors were very sincere, I think they were also misguided. How are we supposed to interact with the earth? Are earthly pleasures full of poison and snares as Isaac Watts suggested?
As entrepreneurs, this is a very important question for us to ask. Our businesses are often tied to this earth, to physicality, and most of them are not what we would think of as “ministry”. Running a business is a LOT of work and time. Is it a waste of our time and energy to build businesses? Is it wrong to work on building wealth? Should we feel guilty for not focusing on more “spiritual” pursuits?
Let’s look at what the Bible has to say about the things of this earth:
We are first introduced to the physical world in the creation narrative and we are told that it is very good:
“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31
Second, the work of dominion given to humanity is a very physical one, and tied to this physical earth:
“And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” - Genesis 1:28
Third, we are taught that good gifts come from our generous God who wants us to enjoy them.
“As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” 1 Timothy 6:17, ESV
Some translations even translate it “in God, who richly supplies us with all things for our enjoyment.” So the things of earth are gifts from God who richly or lavishly provides us with things for the purpose of our enjoyment!
Fourth, we see the goodness of physicality in the fact that Jesus took on a physical human body in his incarnation. This is not some minor point of doctrine, but is even included in basic creeds like the Apostle’s Creed because to deny the physicality of Jesus is to drift into heretical waters. He had to become physical to save us, and He will remain an embodied, physical human for the rest of eternity! A holy God could never do that if physicality were bad or lesser.
Lastly, we also see that in the New Heavens and the New Earth, we will live embodied lives! We will eat, work, and worship in renewed physical bodies, and in a renewed physical world. We will be no less physical than we are now. The whole story of Scripture is one that validates the goodness of our physical existence.
“But”, you may be thinking, “what about verses that tell us to set our minds on heavenly things?” Good question! Let’s look at those verses:
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Colossians 3:1-4
How are we to understand the “things that are on earth” here? Well, the next verse clarifies for us:
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Colossians 3:5
So “earthly” here refers to our idolatrous hearts that love our sin and our flesh more than God. “Earthly” isn’t necessarily physical, it is what is worldly and not of the Holy Spirit. The world’s systems are fleshly and reject God, they are a corruption and twisting of the dominion work God has called us to.
How can we firmly hold onto the Scriptures that take idolatry seriously while also holding firmly to the biblical truth that physical pleasures were created by God as good and for our enjoyment? I think this analogy from the book, The Things of Earth, helps us…
“My favorite dessert is pumpkin crunch cake, an autumn delight that my wife makes… Now in extolling the sweetness of the pumpkin filling, or the crispiness of the topping, or the crunchiness of the walnuts mingled throughout, it’s possible that I could come to love the dessert more than my wife. The cake and my bride could be rivals, competing for my affection. However, sweets versus spouse is not the only option. If my enjoyment of the cake is real and deep and satisfying, and if it issues forth in praise of my wife, appreciation for her efforts, and acts of love (like doing some dishes), then my love for the cake is no threat to my love for her. She wants me to enjoy the pumpkin goodness, that’s why she made it! In fact, my enjoyment of one doesn’t cancel out the other, instead they overlap… It’s good to be reminded that the giver - God - is ultimate. But then, once the supremacy of the giver is settled, the right and fitting response is to dive back into the pumpkin crunch cake and enjoy every last bite.” - Joe Rigney, The Things of Earth [4]
Where does this divide come from?
So if this disdain of the physical world doesn’t come from Scripture, where does it come from? Why is this idea that the physical is bad floating around the church?
Well, it doesn’t come from the Bible, it comes from an ancient heresy called “gnosticism”. The apostle Paul and other biblical authors spoke strongly against gnostic teaching in verses like 1 Timothy 4:1-5
“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” (emphasis mine)
The gnostics taught that physical things like sex in marriage and enjoying good food were worldly and bad. While we acknowledge that the fall has affected the physical world, Paul stood strongly against this teaching, saying that everything that God created is good, and is to be received with thanksgiving. But this gnostic heresy didn’t go away. It ended up infiltrating Greek philosophy and influenced philosophers like Plato and Aristotle in the fourth century. Early church fathers and theologians were heavily influenced by the culture of their time (just as we are today) and allowed this insidious dualism to creep into the theology of the church. Since that time, a divide between the “spiritual” and the “physical” has infected our understanding of the physical world in the church.
While this desire to forsake earthly things for God is sincere, it is also very misguided. It produces a constant guilt because we want to be entirely devoted to God, but we also want to enjoy the good gifts he’s given to us. It places before us an impossible standard of “spirituality” that isn’t the true spirituality of the Bible. And we end up acting like A.W. Tozer on some level, pursuing “spiritual” pursuits over honoring the physical gifts God has given to us to steward (Wealth, business, our physical homes and bodies, etc.)
We don’t need to have this tension! It’s not a biblical one.
Going back to the example of Tozer’s wife, most of us today would recognize the wrongness of his attitude because of how extreme it was. We understand that the calling to love his wife is not at odds with loving Jesus, it’s an avenue of loving Jesus. But we need to learn to see ALL of life this way, not just marriage! There is no box of things that God doesn’t care about.
As entrepreneurs, our work is something God has given as a good gift to be enjoyed. It is part of loving Jesus. And it is a calling that we miss out on if we ignore it. It’s actually a denial of Jesus’ lordship to say of our work, “Oh, that’s just secular. Jesus doesn’t care about that.” Its wrong for us to not love Him through it, just like it’s wrong to not love God in loving our spouse. It’s the same logic. Jesus is Lord of all, and calls us to worship Him as living sacrifices as we do EVERYTHING in our lives.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Romans 12:1
We are to present our physcial bodies as a living sacrifice, in other words, all of our living is to be done for God, and this is our “spiritual worship”! Living for God in an embodied way is true spirituality according to Scripture.
It’s not an option for us not to work, it’s part of life. And it’s a really large part of our lives, too! The average American probably spends about 8 of their 16 awake hours per day on work. Imagine what a win for the enemy it is when we think that literally HALF of our hours are hours Jesus isn’t really relevant to.
No, Jesus cares about our work. He doesn’t just care about it as a platform for “spiritual work” or personal morality, he intrinsically cares about it because he cares about the physical world He created.
“Christ followers are not merely chaplains on the job, we are partners in Christ’s work of making all things new.”- Every Waking Hour by Benjamin Quinn and Walter Strickland
Let’s commit together to stop making boxes. Jesus is Lord over EVERY area of our life. When I finally understood that I could toss out my mental boxes, it totally transformed my understanding of worship and my understanding of how all the pieces of my life become avenues of worshipping and serving God! And what a freeing and exciting truth that is! We get to live a life of full, Spirit-filled embodied Christianity in every moment of every day. There is nothing where Jesus isn’t relevant. You can be writing an email, coaching a client, creating a product, fulfilling orders, creating an opt-in flow, or working on a never-ending project. God cares about all of it. He cares how we show up in HIS world, and He cares how we serve His image bearers.
We need to press into a theology of work if we are to take Christian discipleship seriously. We cannot allow the majority of our waking hours to be divorced from our faith any longer. We must regain an understanding of the relevance of Jesus to the marketplace beyond personal morality, work ethic, and witnessing (as important as those things are!). When we do, we remove a hindrance to our worship of Jesus and learn about Him in every moment of our day, not just the seemingly “spiritual” ones. All of your life is spiritual. All of your life is worship.
Some questions for reflection:
How do you reflect the character and image of God in your work? How do you care for the physical world and for God’s image bearers?
How can you move forward this week with a greater understanding of your work’s validity to God?
What is an earthly pleasure you can choose to thank God for (and enjoy His goodness through) today?
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