Of all the questions I’m ever asked when I meet someone, I think one of them sticks out like a sore thumb as by far my least favorite. I don’t use the word “hate” often (outside of referring to Georgia summers), but I might even go so far as to say it’s how I feel about this question:
“So what do you do?”
It’s a question so repulsive to me that when I talk to people for the first time, I avoid it at all costs. I prefer the question, “So what’s your story? Who is Alex Gapud, (or John Doe, or etc.)?” Basically, what you do doesn’t matter so much to me. What I want to know is who you are. What matters to you? Where have you been, where are you now, where are you going in this journey called life? What are your hopes, your dreams? What are you passionate about? What makes you come alive?
Unsurprisingly, instead of the response I hope for, I’m often met immediately after that question with, “Well, I work at so and so and do such and such,” to my occasional frustration. Not at the person I meet so much as what it says about our culture, and in turn, what our culture says about God and our relationship with Him.
It seems to me that the reason this question is asked so often, or the reason it’s the automatic response out of folks is because in our Western culture, somehow, doing has been the thing that defines us. It’s not so much about what type of person we actually are, what our values and morals are, or any of that these days, but it’s what we do.
Think about it this way. If and when you ever ask the average non-believer if they think they’re going to heaven when they die and why, the typical response is more or less, “Well, I’m a good person. I didn’t cheat on my spouse, kill anyone, steal from people, etc.”
Their goodness, as they define it, is completely based on what they do or don’t do, as opposed to who they are. (Or at best, who they are is, in their eyes, established by what they do.) And at that, in our present-day context, “goodness” is based more on relative terms (and therefore, more self-defined) rather than absolute.
It’s a far cry from, “I am a sinner, forgiven and redeemed by the blood of Jesus,” which uses absolute terms based on nothing I’ve done or nothing of my own merit. We know from Romans 3:23 that “all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God” and this is absolute. By absolute truth and measures (and there is ample evidence in my life, to be sure) I am not a good person. I am a sinner. And there is nothing I can do except to accept Jesus as the propitiation for my sin and confess Him as Lord and Saviour that will resolve my crisis or change my identity.
So I come to find more and more that my walk with Christ is even less and less about not only what I do, but what I am because of what He did. My identity at the core of my being is changed because of Him—not because of anything I have done.
But even in that, it seems as though our culture’s emphasis on value and worth is based on doing. I know a number of recent college graduates that are having a hard time with this measuring stick, as a lot of well-talented, educated, intelligent young people are struggling to find employment. On the other side of the spectrum, I’ve met and talked to a number of people who have had successful careers for the past 20 years, only to be recently laid-off. How then, do these folks fit into the system and define themselves? Are we therefore implying their limited and relatively lower worth and value as people because of “what they do”?
It just seems to me in my idealistic, 25-year old mind, that our Western system of defining ourselves on doing not only doesn’t work—if it ever has—but in our changing world and rough economy, I don’t think it can anymore. Go a step further and throw in how many Eastern cultures in our globalized world don’t have a worldview focused on what we do, and it adds further complication to our changing world.
May we be a people as followers of Jesus who define ourselves and establish our identity more on who we are in Him as opposed to measuring ourselves, our worth, and each other and establishing a false identity based on what we do.
