A few months ago, I attended a weekend-long spiritual retreat for men. One of the ground rules was a strict prohibition on any discussion of work, occupation, career, etc. Talking about myself at length without even a passing reference to my work turned out to be quite difficult, and I frequently caught myself trying to mentally guess the occupations of my fellow attendees. At the same time, there was certainly something refreshing about not categorizing people, or being categorized myself, by what I happen to do for a living.
Shortly after the retreat, I began reading up on the so-called “lying flat” movement that originated in China in early 2021. “Lying flat,” essentially the rejection of a career and the acceptance of lower income, is a form of protest against the widespread expectation that Chinese millennials should lead a “996” lifestyle — working from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, six days a week. It’s no longer taken for granted that a career is either a key component to one’s identity or necessary for the Good Life.
The movement has made inroads outside of China as well. In a 2021 opinion piece for the New York Times entitled “Work is a False Idol,” former NPR producer Cassady Rosenblum described quitting her job to escape the “cacophony of the 24-hour news cycle.” She cited further examples of exhaustion and burnout from across the socioeconomic spectrum, including a Goldman Sachs investment analyst who found the unrelenting pressure of his job even more painful than his time in foster care. In general, she diagnoses a widespread “spiritual malaise” caused by an idolatry of work. For Rosenblum, the cure is simple enough: “Sit on the porch.”
There is some irony in Rosenblum’s use of religious language to advocate “lying flat,” since the very attitude she rejects — namely, that a career is necessary for a life well-lived — is itself rooted in a religious idea. Such is the influential thesis of sociologist Max Weber’s landmark work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905). The book opens with the observation that only relatively recently have large numbers of human beings considered it virtuous to organize their whole lives around their careers. Famously, Weber finds the origins of this shift in the Protestant Reformation, specifically in John Calvin’s doctrine of predestination — the idea that God has unconditionally chosen individuals for salvation from before the foundation of the world.
The twist of predestination, however, is that neither the elect nor the reprobate can ultimately alter their fate. Naturally, this produced a great deal of anxiety amongst Calvin’s early followers, who searched for evidence that God had chosen them. Eventually, the Calvinists decided that the best evidence for one’s election is a life lived systematically to advance the glory of God. And since God had given each individual believer a specific calling in life (an idea taken from Luther), the best way to glorify God in the world is by discharging that calling to the utmost of one’s ability. Coupled with an ascetic tendency — “spontaneous enjoyment” of life actually wasted time that could otherwise be devoted to God’s glory — the early Calvinists created a worldview that made the “spirit of capitalism” possible.
The cultural influence of Calvinism per se has long since receded, but the work ethic it inspired took on a life of its own in Europe and North America. Perhaps no one has expressed this secularized “Protestant ethic” more succinctly than Steve Jobs in his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.” Unwavering dedication to a calling (even if the Caller is left unspecified) is the key to transcendence.
That is, unless it turns out to be a “false idol” that leaves its adherents feeling dehumanized. Weber himself felt this. Toward the end of his book, he complains that “The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so.”
But is sitting on the porch a long-term solution to the malaise caused by an over-emphasis on career? Even Rosenblum acknowledges that porch-sitting is temporary, that we have to go to work sometime, if only for physical survival. And human beings have never mixed particularly well with long-term stasis. As evidenced by even our earliest ancestors, we have an ineradicable itch to make things, to cultivate, to add beauty.
A better solution would be a careful revisiting of the theology of calling. For Luther, God’s calling on the believer’s life included occupation, certainly, but occupation was not the sole or even primary aspect of calling. Rather, God has called the Christian to a particular set of relationships; the Christian glorifies God in the world through acts of service to his or her neighbors. Even those who work a “dead-end” job, but who at the same time beautify the community, or who contribute to the arts, or who take care of children or the elderly, might be carrying out their calling more faithfully than the most successful professional alive.
It’s very likely that scaling back in one’s work life will lead to a materially lower standard of living, and this should not be simply shrugged off. But I’m more and more convinced that it’s an equitable price to pay to explore (and enjoy!) the other aspects of God’s calling: most importantly, the people whom he has placed in our lives. It is finally our relationships, not our occupations, that define us.
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