Weekend Reads: Workaholics and witnesses

Work, Play, Love: A Visual Guide to Calling, Career, and the Mission of God

By Mark Shaw

The sphere of work—complete with huge teeth—attempts to chomp down on the frightened little spheres of play and love in a cartoonish but highly effective drawing by Mark Shaw. Never before has workaholism seemed such a threat to relaxation and relationships. Similar moments of illustration-fueled insight recur constantly in Work, Play, Love: A Visual Guide to Calling, Career, and the Mission of God (IVP Books, 2014). The book starts by claiming that it will tell you how to keep your work and life in balance. Then it vastly overdelivers.

Shaw is a seminary professor, after all, and though he cites business books, Work, Play, Love is really a theology book that describes how God is putting the entire world right.

Beginning with Proverbs 8, Shaw describes wise living in a single word: play. Alternatively translated as “delight” or “rejoicing,” this is what Wisdom was doing with the Father before creation, and this is what all of life should be. Meanwhile, the woman Folly from Proverbs 9 is introduced. She’s the one who took the spheres of work, play, and love and turned them into greed, defiance, and lust. But this folly is in the heart of every human, and it will permanently destroy not only work-life balance but also all life. The good news is that Divine Wisdom has come into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. In relationship to Him and His called-out community, we can transform relaxation, relationships, and work itself by believing God (like Abraham), worshiping God (like Isaiah), experiencing God’s deliverance (like Israel), and witnessing to God (like the church in Acts). But that’s not the end of the story: “The final rest for believers is standing on that fully alive earth, wind in our faces, sun in our eyes, warm resurrected bodies of those we love all around us, feeling the full force of Eden for the first time.”

The Insanity of Obedience: Walking with Jesus in the Tough Places

By Nik Ripken, with Barry Stricker

When doing missions, is it our calling to guess about God’s decrees or follow His commands? The Insanity of Obedience: Walking with Jesus in the Tough Places (B&H Books, 2014) wants to have it both ways. Author Nik Ripken asks whether, in extracting new believers from persecution, we are letting Joseph out of prison too early. Maybe God wants Joseph to stay in prison! But Ripken rightly points out that mission work is about obedience—i.e., faithful sowing.

This bifurcation stems, I think, from Ripken’s inability to decide whether worship or witness is more important. He leans pretty heavily on witness as the ultimate priority, and most of his arguments seem to depend on this assumption. At times, though, he gestures toward the dominance of worship. That’s good, because heaven shows us that witness exists for the sake of worship, and not vice versa.

Ripken’s ultimate point is that every culture and people group needs to start from scratch: You cannot reliably graft a new church out of an existing one; you must allow the gospel to spontaneously produce house churches that ordain their own leaders, administer their own sacraments, and develop their own polity over time. Churches sustained by Western leaders and money, he says, fall apart when the money stops.

The book is packed with fascinating information, and it mounts a strong challenge to many of our favorite convictions about our own comfort. Across all denominations, there are seven single women on the mission field for every unmarried man. Is God really calling more women to overseas witness? Other questions strike home: Are you a sheep among wolves, or a sheep among sheep? Why do we often thank God for freedom to worship, but almost never for freedom to witness?

Whatever your theological background, Ripken will make you squirm.