Today's Religions: Work

Work has always served as the great American barometer of worth and identity. Our occupation is the number one socially approved means of justifying our existence, and not just the type of occupation but our performance there. When we talk about success or failure in life, it’s assumed that we’re talking about work, which means that a job is never just a job but an identity. It is where we locate our enoughness, and as such, the spring from which our strictest pieties flow.
 — David Zahl, Seculosity

How hard do you work?

In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that, with all the technological advances of the modern American world, by today’s time people would be working just fifteen hours a week. I wonder what he would have thought if someone would have told him the opposite would happen. That the U.S. would be working the most in the developed world, averaging the lowest for paid vacation days and the highest for unused vacation days.

Maybe we have a problem.

But how would we stop?

And then what?

Are we willing to explore the possibility that something is going on in our relationship with work?