In this post I want to think about how academic study fits in with the rest of our lives. I will suggest two defective models, and propose a more adequate model.
There is a very powerful contrast in the film Chariots of Fire that brings out the dangers of an defective model of any vocation, and it applies well to academia. Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell are both Olympic-class runners. But Lidell knew Jesus, and Abrahams didn’t, and that made all the difference to the way they ran. There’s a scene in the film where Abrahams is getting ready for the Olympic 100 metres final, during which he says:
“And now in one hour’s time I will be out there again. I will raise my eyes and look down that corridor; 4 feet wide, with 10 lonely seconds to justify my whole existence. But WILL I?”
Running defines who he is, and so he needs to prove himself again and again. Because it’s never enough. And if we live for our studies, however glittering our career is, it will never be enough. And it will rob God of the glory that should be his.
But these are Eric Liddell’s words:
“I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”
I love this quote, because it avoids the two opposite dangers that Christians can fall into.
- The first danger is to live for our work, like Abrahams, and thereby destroy ourselves.
- The second danger is to try and be super-spiritual by saying: my academic work is only tent-making. My real work is evangelism, and my academic work is only a pretext for evangelism.
That ALSO robs God of the glory that should be his. We are commanded to make disciples of all nations. We are also commanded (Colossians 3:23), whatever we do, to work at it with our whole hearts, as for the Lord.
And so Liddell says 2 things.
- First, he says: “I believe God made me for a purpose”. My work is not everything about me. And indeed, after winning Olympic gold, Liddell gave up athletics and went to become a missionary in China.
- He also says “but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure”. I’m not running for the sake of my identity, because my identity is in God. And I’m not just running for something to do. I’m running for God: using the gifts he has given me in a way that pleases him.
To ground this idea biblically, let’s look at the moment in Jesus’ life when he is asked about paying taxes.
So they asked him, “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. 22 Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” 23 But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, 24 “Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?” They said, “Caesar’s.” 25 He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 26 And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him in what he said, but marveling at his answer they became silent. (Luke 20:21-26)
It seems it was the same for Jesus as it is at most academic conferences: the nastiest questions always start with the kindest introductions! “I want to start by thanking for you for a really thought-provoking paper that raised a lot of interesting questions, but… have you stopped beating your wife?”
That’s the sort of question we’ve got here: Do you support the regime, Jesus, in which case you’re a traitor to your religious principles, or do you rebel against the pagan authorities you live under, and so incur the wrath of the occupying power? Have you stopped beating your wife, Jesus?
Rephrased for our context, it might read: do you try to do your secular job really well? (in which case you’re not a really keen Christian), or do you just use it to fill in time before you can do Christian things in the evenings, and if you say yes, we’re going to tell your supervisor.
As we know, the key to the exchange is verse 24: “whose likeness and inscription does it have?” The word for likeness here is eikon, the same word the New Testament uses for humankind being in the ‘image’ (eikon) of God. (1 Corinthians 11:7). So there are two ‘images’ in this passage: the one on the coin, and the one holding the coin in his hand. And Jesus’ principle is: you give the object to the one whose image it bears.
This means that giving Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s are not two equal and opposite gestures, such that we could say ‘over here is what is Caesar’s’ and ‘over there is what is God’s’. The reason is that the coin is an image of an image. The coin is in the image of Caesar, and Caesar himself is in the image of God.
So my giving to Caesar is caught up in my giving to God. Paying taxes is a giving to Caesar, but it is also at the same time a giving to God: part of my Christian duty (Romans 13:6-7). I am to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but in a way that recognizes that everything–including Caesar and my very self–is God’s. The second gesture, giving to God what is God’s, gathers up the first giving in its own transcendent offering. Part of offering my whole self to God is, under God, to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Another key point here is that my work cannot make ultimate demands on me. Caesar never owns me. He can righly demand my taxes, but he has no right to my very self. So we don’t live for our work. God, on the other hand, can rightly demand of me my very self, because I my self am in his image. And so what I give to Caesar must only ever be a subset of what I give to God, and must always be concordant with what it is right to give to God, because God demands everything, even my very self.
Giving to God doesn’t cancel out giving to Caesar, or make it a defunct category. It just transfigures it into a moment of a much greater and much more meaningful giving. And this is a liberating truth for Christian academics, I think, because it means that there is no sacred/secular divide in our lives. It is not that we do our work for the university, and then we give our Sundays to God. Our work should be part of our worship, part of our ministry, and part of our obedience to God’s commands (though not its full extent: skipping church meetings for work reasons is not being a good Christian academic).
We cannot say: ‘my work is my worship, therefore I don’t need to come to church or help lead a bible study’ or whatever, but neither can we say ‘the only thing I do that has significance for God’s kingdom is the bible study I lead’. Of course, that sounds great in theory, but the way that this works out for each of us will take more thinking than this rather theoretical and abstracted post can provide. Over to you…
