Work and Pray

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

“. . . work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (NASB Php 2:12b–13)

Does having a business plan, using marketing strategies, or taking lessons on how to raise funds for a mission on ministry mean that we are not living in faith and trusting God? Several times in the last month, I have heard Christians indirectly talking about this question. I know people who land on both the positive and the negative side of the answer to this question. A new missionary wants to practice his “spiel” on me to see how it flows and if it will be effective in getting financial commitments. We have a discussion among faculty, and one faculty member asserts that marketing strategies demonstrate a lack of faith that we are engaged in God’s ministry and that he will provide. What are we to believe about this?

When I was a brand-new Christian, before I had read this passage in Philippians, my spiritual mentor encouraged me to “work as if everything depended on me and pray as if everything depended on God.” When I read Philippians, I had an aha! moment. I can work as if everything depended on me because God is working in me, both giving me the desire to fulfill his will and enabling me to do the work to accomplish his good pleasure.

So many times, Christians argue about whether the ultimate is one thing or another (for example, God’s sovereignty versus human responsibility, or here, works versus faith). When I read scripture, it becomes clear to me why it’s so difficult for us to reduce it to one ultimate thing. It is because the Bible teaches both. God is sovereign and we are responsible. Our salvation is by faith and we must do works as evidence of and response to that faith and salvation provided by God. We must resist the temptation to seek a single ultimate, bottom line assertion.

This verse is a great comfort to me because it assures me that I can step out in faith and use all of the gifts, resources, skills, and education that God has given me to plan, strategize, and execute these plans and strategies, knowing that it is a God at work in me, giving me these gifts, resources, skills, and education so that I may follow the desires he has implanted in me to accomplish his good pleasure. Of course, one of the gifts we must always exercise is discernment. I believe God guides us into what he would have us do, but also when and how and with whom. But as I plan and move forward, I pray and I trust God that I am moving forward in his plan.

When Dr. Sid Bradley, former dean at Charlotte and founder of the counseling program of which I’m the director, talked about utilizing psychology as a Christian counselor, he talked about the Exodus, and how the Israelites when they left Egypt, at God’s command, “plundered the Egyptians.” When we learn strategies and approaches from the world (compatible with biblical principles of living), we are plundering the Egyptians. We are taking the gold, silver, and precious jewels of the world and utilizing them for Kingdom work. So may I also encourage you to “work is if everything depends on you and pray as if everything depends on God.”

What The Adjustment Bureau Could Learn from The Last Temptation (and from Christ Himself)

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

The Adjustment Bureau, the new film starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, presents an image of a world with a curious religious perspective that will annoy many and presumably inspire some. The film presents a world that functions much as Deism would suggest: one in which the plan of a very distant and normally uninvolved god more or less mechanically unfolds as people fulfill their destinies. In this case the occasional deviance from the plan is corrected by angel-like characters with the power (usually) to put the plan back on track. Matt Damon’s figure falls in love with someone he is not supposed to be with and that leads him to fight against his destiny according to “the plan” to have the freedom to choose his own destiny rather than have to follow that which had been established for him by “the chairman” (the god figure).

So far I’m sure most people will find (as they are supposed to) the religious vision unappealing. They will identify with the protagonist and reject the impersonal and oppressive nature of the religious vision being portrayed. But perhaps more subtle is the way in which Damon’s character and that of his new girlfriend end up being portrayed as martyrs with Christ-like attitudes. They impress some key angelic figures by their willingness “to sacrifice everything” for what they consider most important. [Spoiler alert…] He is destined not only to be elected to the US senate, but also, it is strongly implied, to be elected as the President of the United States. And she is destined to be an internationally renowned dancer and choreographer. But they are willing “to sacrifice everything.” For what though? For their own personal happiness. They can’t imagine any life in which they would be as happy as they would be together and they can’t imagine settling for anything other than the happiness they feel when they are together.

Neither they nor we know what kinds of disasters Damon might prevent as president, nor what kinds of breakthroughs for world peace and prosperity. We don’t know what kinds of ways his girlfriend might have changed the world for the better if she were to play a leading role in her field. We just know they are willing “to sacrifice everything” on the altar of their own commitment to their personal happiness and their perception that it is worth sacrificing everything else to be with this one person. The most troubling part is the suspicion that many people will watch the film and see their own idol of personal happiness at all expenses being held up as a self-sacrificing and noble thing.

That, of course, is where key to The Last Temptation of Christ comes in. In that film Christ’s last temptation on the cross is to come down from the cross and “to sacrifice everything” for the sake of having a normal life, marrying and raising a family with Mary Magdalene. It was to choose his personal happiness over the salvation of the world and thus to come down from the cross and pursue the happiness that could otherwise be his. The Adjustment Bureau is The Last Temptation turned on its head. It is the exaltation of the contemporary idol of personal happiness disguised as noble, self-sacrificial martyrdom. For all the issues with the portrayal of Christ in The Last Temptation, the ideology of The Adjustment Bureau could learn a lot from that film about what sacrifice really looks like.

How much damage has been done in this world in the pursuit of personal happiness and at the expense of other values? We all (or many of us) know marriages that have broken up because one spouse or the other has become infatuated with someone new and has come to believe that they would find greater personal happiness with this new person than they have been able to find with their present spouse. And they could easily interpret all religious and social pressure to remain faithful to their present spouse as a reflection of an oppressive world ideology bent against their personal happiness and committed to some impersonal plan in which they are not interested (like the seemingly impersonal “chairman” and his lieutenants). It is not that personal happiness has no value or should not be a serious consideration in making life decisions, but it makes a poor idol. Luke 9:23-25 (and parallel passages) reminds us that Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. ²⁵ What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” (NIV). As Paul puts it, Christ “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor. 5:15 NIV).

May our gracious God and loving Father “adjust” our hearts and minds in order that we, undeserving beneficiaries of Christ’s sacrifice, might commit ourselves to loving God and others by reflecting the selfless life of Christ in this world.