One of the main challenges we face in the academic life is not to make an idol out of our work or status.
I gain great satisfaction from my work and enjoy it intensely, but I know that the moment it becomes the place where I run for my consolation or for affirmation, instead of being able to say along with the psalmist that “all my fountains are in you” (Psalm 87:7), then it is an idolatrous threat to my true, ultimate and eternal status as God’s beloved child and servant. When my work becomes my functional saviour, when it becomes what I look to for my identity, peace and rest, then my work is an idol that is active in my life to destroy what is most precious to me: my trust in Christ alone as my saviour.
It’s not about despising my work, though. It’s about not loving it like I can and should love God alone. It is Colossians 3:23-24 territory:
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
In this respect, I have found a passage from Augustine’s Confessions (X, 40) very helpful:
He loves thee too little who loves anything together with thee that he loves not for thy sake.
It’s not about despising my work. In truth, idolising and despising my work are conjoined twins, just like having an inflated self-importance and self-hatred are manifestations of the same problem (see Tim Keller’s brilliant little book The Freedom of Self-forgetfulness). Wisdom is found not in playing my work off against my Christian commitment, either to its favour or to its detriment, but in fully subsuming the former under the lineaments and norms of the latter.
