Beeson podcast, Episode 323
https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2017/Every-Good-Endeavor-Connecting-Your-Work-to-Gods-Work
Tim Keller
January 17, 2017 

Announcer:	Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.  Now, your host, Timothy George.

Timothy George:	Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. This past November, we were honored to have Dr. Timothy Keller as our special guest here at Beeson Divinity School. He gave a lecture in one of our large lecture halls on campus, had several thousand people who came to hear him speak on “Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work.” We're going to get to listen to that lecture today.

	Tim Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. He has for more than 20 years led a diverse congregation there. A congregation that has grown to a weekly attendance of more than 5,000 people. He's known throughout the world, really, as a leading pastor, an articulate voice for the Christian faith, the author of many books, including, “The Reason for God”, “The Prodigal God”, “Center Church”, “Preaching”, “The Songs of Jesus”, many, many other books.

	Well, we were delighted to have Dr. Keller with us here at Beeson Divinity School, and he spoke three different times. This is one of the three occasions of which he spoke on our campus. Let's go now to the lecture of Dr. Tim Keller, “Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work.”

Tim Keller:	I'm glad to be here at all, and I'm also particularly glad to be talking to you about this subject. I'm glad to talk about the way Christian faith should integrate with work. I'm going to talk for, well, who knows exactly, but I won't take the whole time, and we do have an opportunity for questions.

	Now, it's an awfully big place, and I still want to do the questions. Now most of you I won't be able to ask questions. Those of you in the balcony, if you've got question? It doesn't really matter, because you see this little thing down here? This little mic? So I'm actually going to say, if you've got a question, we probably will take some time and have you line up until the time's up.

	Because this isn't a subject, how faith integrates with work. It's not a subject that the church has actually been working on for a long time. Yes, of course, and no. I'm going to be citing what other theologians have said, but by and large, at least in America, this is a relatively new thing.

	Just to give you an example. I often use this example:  When I started my church, Redeemer, in New York City, early on a number of people became converted, and they had these jobs in New York. I remember one guy in particular was an actor. He was a soap opera actor, was on television every day. He became a Christian, and he came in to see me, and he said, "You know, I really appreciate what the discipleship classes here at Redeemer are teaching me about how to study the Bible and share my faith and things like that, but I got questions about how to be a Christian in my work, and most of my time is in work. In other words, 80% of my waking hours is in work."

	So I said, "Well what kind of questions?" One of them was ... there were two kinds. The one kind of question was stories. I mean, basically in acting, in acting, you're telling a story. Your movie is a story. Your play is a story. And he said, "What kind of stories should a Christian artist write and act in and depict? What kind of stories? Should they always have a happy ending?"

	I said, "Well, probably not." 

	He said, "Why not?"

	I said, "Well, have you read the Book of Judges? I mean there are a lot of stories in the Bible that don't have happy endings."

	"Oh, okay. Well, then, any kind of story."

	I said, "Well, probably not." I said, "Well, wait, let me think about that."

	Then he had another category of questions, and it had to do with how he had been trained as an actor. He said the British and the American actors are usually trained differently. He says American actors are often trained in method acting, and I said, "What's method acting?" 

	He said, "Well, you don't just act angry. If the role calls for anger, you don't act angry. You get angry. You think about something in your past that made you angry, and you get angry. You don't just act sexual. You get sexual."

	"But," he says, "British actors are usually taught ... they're not taught in that direction." He laid that out, and he says, "I have a feeling that the American approach maybe doesn't fit in as well with Christian values."

	I thought, "That's probably true," and somewhere in the midst of this discussion, in which I was helping him not a bit, I suddenly realized that I'd been trained - I'd been trained well, theologically well trained - but I had been trained to disciple people by getting them out of the world into my church, or I saw them as spiritually maturing as they became more involved inside the church where I was as the minister and actually less involved in the world, less involved in their neighborhoods, less involved in their society, less involved in their vocational field. I saw them as, they spent more time at church, I saw them as maturing.

	But he had a good point. He says, "You know, even if I get more active in church," he says, "I still ... most of my time is in work. It's not the weekends. It's not the evenings. It's in work." Especially since a place New York, very often you don't have evenings. You work, and then you have weekends. That's about it.

	I came to realize I really did not know how to disciple people for their whole life, not just their private life, for every part of their life. I hadn't been taught that. Even today, there's still not a lot available. And so every time we talk about it, every time you have a lecture in a series like this, it's helping the Church begin to get the expertise necessary. But we have a long way to go.

	What I'd like to share with you are four ideas. I guess I could call them four principles and a fifth for how the Gospel transforms your work, your daily work. Four ideas and a fifth on how the Gospel transforms your daily work. And I wouldn't say, by the way, that every one of these four principles is equally applicable to every kind of job or vocation, and I'll tell you why. But let's just start going through the four. Ready?

	The first one is Christian faith gives you an identity, without which, work will sink you. Here's what I mean by that. This, by the way, is a principle especially important for white-collar work. Since this is a university, by and large you are all preparing for white-collar work or you're in white-collar work. Not all of you, but nevertheless, this is particularly for that.

	What do I mean by saying you need a new identity? David Martin Lloyd-Jones was a physician but he went into the ministry. He actually left the medical profession and went into the ministry. There's a place where he gave a lecture on the dangers of what he called the professions. He says there's a danger with professions such as high finance, medicine, law, some kinds of business.

	He says, if I was going to summarize it, I would summarize it like this: He says there's a lot of people he knew who were doctors, who were physicians, who, when they die, he says what you ought to put on their gravestone is this: Born a man, died a doctor.

	Now what he meant is you tend to ... He says this. The professions tend to give you your identity. At first, you're a man who is a doctor. After a while, you're a doctor. That's who you are. Your identity is completely bound up in your profession.

	Why do you feel good about yourself? Why do you feel that you are a significant person? Why do you have self-worth? Because I am a successful lawyer. I'm a successful doctor. I'm successful at this. This is a profession that has a knowledge base that I have mastered. I help people. I'm making good money. I'm a respected pillar of my community. Born a man, died a whatever. Born a woman, died a whatever.

	Now here's the problem. When you make your work your identity, in a nutshell, when you make your work an identity, if you're successful, it goes to your head. If you are unsuccessful, it destroys your heart. So let me circle through that.

	First of all, one of the worst things about success if your identity is your work, if you're successful in your work, success goes to your head. It's very destructive. Why? Surely you know that if you feel ... if you identify with your work and you're successful at work, you don't just feel like a good lawyer or a good doctor or a good businessperson. You feel like you're a great person.

	So it's very natural that people, by and large, who are successful in one area think that makes them experts in every area. Happens all the time. "I've made a lot of money. Therefore I know which philosophers are stupid and which ones are not." No, you don't. But, well, otherwise you have a hunch or two hunches, and you make $30 million. Then I have a hunch about philosophers or I have a hunch about who I should marry, and I start to trust my hunches because it made me $30 million over there.

	Well, you know, if your mind was normal, if your self-image was normal, if your personality was normal, if your psychology was normal, if your spiritual maturity was normal, you would say, "No, I'm just good at making money. That's it. In every other area, I'm just as stupid as everybody else. I need to work like everybody else."

	But no, not if my identity is "I'm a successful businessman or woman." Then you start to feel like, "Oh, I'm an expert in everything." It happens across the board. It also makes you overconfident about your relationships. Very often, you don't marry the right person. You don't hire the right persons. You actually don't befriend the right persons. That is to say, you go on your hunches because your success makes you arrogant. It puffs you up.

	But here's the other problem, is if you make your work your identity and things aren't going very well. Then it's far more destructive, far more emotionally draining, far more anxiety-producing, far more devastating than it ought to be. It's just work. Work is a good thing, and if you're not very good at it, money is a good thing, and it you don't have a lot of it, that's not so good. But if it becomes your identity, your very self-worth, your very self is at stake.

	A couple years ago, in the New York Times there was a guy named Benjamin Nugent. He had been an author, a writer, a novelist, and he wrote about why he had to stop writing. I'll read you what he says, but then there's one sentence he says that summarizes it all.

	He says, "When good writing was my only goal in life, it was my main goal in life, I made the quality of my work the measure of my worth." There it is. "I made the quality of my work the measure of my worth. For this reason, I wasn't able to read my own writing well. I couldn't tell whether something I had just written was good or bad, because I needed it to be good in order to feel sane. I lost the ability to cheerfully interrogate how much I liked what I had written, to see what was actually on the page rather than what I wanted to see or what I feared to see."

	You hear that? When he made the quality of his work the measure of his worth, it destroyed his work, because when he would write something, it needed to be good. He just actually couldn't admit where it wasn't good, and if somebody else critiqued it, it just devastated him.

	So he finally got out. It's almost laughable, but by the end of the article, he said he realized that he was basically building all of his self-image and all of his self-worth and meaning in life on his work, on his writing. He decided, "No, I'm not going to do that anymore."

	He says, instead, he fell in love. He says, "Now this love relationship gives me the meaning in life I was trying to get from my work, and that's so much more healthy." No, it isn't. There's another lecture on that. Okay? When what your girlfriend says about you is the measure of your worth, how will you ever be able to handle her criticism? How will you ever be able to give her criticism? You're just in as bad ...

	Anyway, I haven't been following him, so who knows where he is now? He didn't seem to get the idea, and here's the idea. This is Point One. Unless you have an identity that is rooted not in your own performance, and that's the Christian identity.

	The Christian identity is basically when the Holy Spirit comes into your life because you believe in Jesus Christ, essentially what happens to you - and Romans 8, verse 15-16 says it - is what's happened to Jesus as His baptism. God says to you, "You are my beloved child, in whom I'm well pleased. I love you not because you're perfect, but because I'm perfect. I don't love you because of your performance, but because of Jesus's performance. I don't love you for your work. It's for Christ's work's sake."

	It's the only identity, by the way. An identity rooted in romance, an identity rooted in work, an identity rooted even in pleasing your parents, or an identity rooted in your race or your tribe or your ethnicity, all of those identities are essentially achieved identities, not a received identity. Only Christianity gives you an identity not rooted in your performance.

	Only if you've got that, and only if you really have that, not just in theory, but if that's really how your heart works, only then will you be able to handle success or failure. Success won't destroy you through inflated pride, and failure won't destroy you through inferiority. Success won't destroy you through the superiority complex, and unsuccess won't destroy you through the inferiority complex. That's what you got to have.

	So first of all, especially white-collar, but everybody, white-collar workers, you have got to have: be born a woman, die a woman. Born a woman, die a Christian. Born a man, die a Christian man. Not a doctor, a lawyer, whatever.

	So first, faith gives you a new identity, without which, work can sink you. Second principle, faith gives you a new concept of the dignity of all work, without which, work will bore you.

	This is a little bit more of a blue-collar concept, but here's what I mean by that. Martin Luther did a lot of teaching about the importance of work, and much of it is actually missing today. I don't think the church has grasped what he says. But especially in his expositions of the Psalms, he says some fascinating things about work.

	So, for example, some of the Psalms say that God feeds every living thing. So if you're eating food today, Martin Luther says, God says, "I gave you that food. I feed every living thing." But he says, actually, the fact is that the food does not appear on the plates, does it? How did you get that food? Well, you say, somebody grew it. Then somebody prepared it. Then somebody drove it to the market, and so on.

	But Martin Luther says, now, think about this, though. What that means, then, is that the simplest milkmaid who is milking the cow to create the milk is doing God's work, because God says, "No, no, no. I'm the one giving you the food. I feed you." So Luther says that means that the person who's milking the cow and the truck driver who's bringing the milk to the market, they are the fingers of God.

	The most basic kinds of work, if it helps people, that's God caring for His creation through human labor. And even the most menial kinds of things, like driving a truck or pushing a broom, if it helps, then it's God's work.

	Here's another place where the psalmist says not God feeds every living thing, but it says God strengthens the bars of your gates. That's a way of saying to people back in those days that God makes your city secure. And Luther says, well, you know what that means. The policeman, the people who make laws, the people who enforce laws, all the kinds of people around making a community a safe community to walk around on the streets, that's God's work. God strengthens the bars of your city gates.

	And so Luther presses and says, "Don't you ever look at any kind of labor that actually cares, through which God is caring for creation, and not see that this is God Himself working?"

	A teacher of mine years ago used to say, "Look. You need to clean up your house. You need to vacuum. You need to wash the dishes. You need to clean up your house. You can either pay somebody to do it or you have to do it. But if somebody doesn't do it, you're going to die." You know that? If somebody doesn't clean up your house, you're going to die. Wouldn't you consider that pretty important work? Yes.

	But we call it menial work. If people do it, we pay them very little. If we do it, we just grump. Yet, this is one of the ways in which God is caring for His creation, because it's work that has to do. God, Martin Luther says, is caring for creation through human labor.

	Now, you have to grasp that. I'll tell you there's all kinds of psychological and cultural implications that are really important. First of all, we live in a culture that valorizes high-paying jobs. It valorizes high-paying jobs. But not only that, world-changing jobs.

	I mean, I talk to young people all the time. Excuse me, aren't you a bunch of young people? Sorry about this. But I talk to young people all the time. It's like, "I want to change the world. I want to wipe out poverty in Africa." On the other hand, Martin Luther's trying to say, "Yeah, but somebody's got to milk the cows, and somebody's got to clean the house. That is every bit as important, because without that, people can't live."

	All work is God's work. Even so-called menial work is God caring for His creation through human labor. If you do it or if somebody else does it, you must not look down at it. You must not disdain it. You must honor it. You must honor yourself doing it, or you should honor your own work.

	I mean, we live in a culture right now in which everybody wants to change the world and make a lot of money while they're doing it. It's a Silicon Valley thing. We're going to change the world, and we're going to make a zillion dollars. Everybody says, "That's where I want to go."

	That's so shortsighted. Not only that, here's the other great thing about Luther's approach to work. Faith gives you a new concept of the dignity of all work, without which work will bore you. A lot of people just work for the weekends. There's a certain kind of job, if it's not making you a lot of money, it's just doing something that has to be done, it doesn't seem to be changing the world, you tend to work for the weekend.

	Paul, by the way, in Ephesians Chapter 6, says that's working unto “I” service, which is another way of saying you just do what's necessary to get your check so you can get that money and go on the weekends or go on vacations and really live life, instead of saying, "I'm working for God, and I'm serving the world, and I'm doing something that God wants me to do." It gives you a sense of the dignity of what you're doing, and it makes you do it well, which is the last thing I'll just quickly say here. It's important.

	A lot of times, people say, "Well, I want to work distinctly as a Christian. I want to do my job distinctively as a Christian." I say, "Great." In a minute, I'm going to  talk about how ... that's a good thing to think about. But Martin Luther's approach is really helpful, because what he's actually saying is even the simplest tasks, if you get them done well, are achieving exactly what God wants you to do.

	So let me just ask you a quick question. What is the Christian way to fly the plane? You're a Christian airline pilot. What is the Christian way to do your job? Is it to pass out tracts on the way, say, "Hey, would you just read this"? No. I'll tell you what the Christian way is to fly that plane: Land. That's the Christian way to do your job. And, if you're really good, land the plane so that it can take off again. That's the other ... which is really good, really, really good.

	In some ways, Luther's approach - which is perfectly Biblical; it's based on what the Bible says about the dignity of work and dignity of all work - simplifies our life. Do your job well. Do your job with pride, but not your own pride, just pride in the job well done. Clean the house really, really well. Land the plane. Just do it well, and you are not only pleasing God, but you're doing His work.

	Okay, number three, the ethics. The third principle is faith gives you a moral compass, without which, work (not faith) could corrupt you - work could corrupt you, excuse me. Let me make sure I got those all right. Faith gives you a new identity, without which, work can sink you. Faith gives you a new concept of the dignity of all work, without which, work could bore you. Thirdly, faith gives you a moral compass, without which, work (not faith) could corrupt you.

	I said it again, didn't I? Thank you, thank you for, by the way, giggling and mocking me, because if you hadn't, I would've known I said it wrong again. Basically, in this case, to do my work well is to do it rightly so.

	Faith gives you a moral compass, without which, ... oh. You know, I wrote it down wrong. So I'm only following my own notes. Wait a minute. Just excuse me.

	So anyway, listen. I live in New York City, and I'm only speaking about what some people tell me about one particular area, which is the financial world. A fair number of Christians who've been in the financial world for a long time say it is not that hard to see that over a 20- or 30-year period, there were all sorts of informal ethical habits and intuitions that have gone away.

	He says there was no rule about how much, if you were a business owner, you could pay yourself and take out of the company. There was no literal law about it. There were no real laws and rules about how transparent to be with customers and shareholders. There was lots and lots of just moral intuitions about what was fair and what was honest, and most of the folks will say these things have gone away.

	These things have gone away, and essentially what is moral is only what is legal. That whole network of just ... the network of what's called a moral habitus, which is ... a moral habitus is actually a set of habits of mind and heart that just do things in a fair and honest and considerate and equitable way that are not required by the law but just create an environment in which people feel like they're not being used as tools but they're being treated as people.

	Christians have got to go into all those fields where that moral habitus is going away and where people feel it but they also don't have the inner moral compass to resist. They're under tremendous, tremendous, tremendous pressure.

	The Wells Fargo scandal, which is there were just literally millions of new checking accounts and savings accounts open without the knowledge of the client as a way of just creating fees, largely happened because people at the top were putting such pressure on the people in the middle, the people in the middle to even keep their job had to produce.

	So they went out and did things. They fudged things to produce. The people at the top said, "Look, probably they're not doing things right, but oh well. I don't want to know. Plausible deniability."

	That whole culture is not just a problem in one bank or even in the banking industry. Christianity will give you a moral compass that will help you resist that. When I say a moral compass, I mean a way of treating people, that it will be such a witness for you to simply have that moral compass, even though there will be a lot of pressure on you not to follow it.

	Let me give you just one example that's my most vivid example and the easiest one to see. Some years ago, there was a woman coming to my church who was not a believer. I saw her a couple of times and I spoke to her a couple times, and then after about the third or fourth time she came, I said, "So how did you even find out about Redeemer?"

	She says, "Well, there's a story." Here's the story she told me. She worked for one of the major networks, one of the major television networks. She had gotten a pretty good job. She'd been promoted. Not too long after she got that job, she made a really, really stupid mistake. It was really bad, and she thought she was going to lose her job.

	But her boss went in to his boss and said, "You know, I should bear the blame for that, because I really didn't train her well." That was probably true. Nevertheless, he really took a hit. He, though, was so well thought of by the people above him that it didn't jeopardize his job, but he took a hit. That is to say, he lost credibility. He definitely lost, as they say, social professional capital.

	Then he went back and he said, "You haven't lost your job. Don't worry about it. Let's do better next time. Let's figure out how we can keep this from ever happening again."

	Then she looked at him and she said, "I can't believe you did that for me."

	He said, "Oh, don't think about it."

	She said, "Why did you do that for me?"

	He says, "Don't worry about it. You're a good kid. I think you've got a lot of potential. I didn't want to lose you."

	Then she says, "No, I need to talk to you more about this." She says, "I have been in this business, and here's what I know. My superiors are constantly taking credit for what I do. They never take the blame for what I do. Never. In this business, you take credit from what the people underneath you do. You try to push those people away, and you take credit so you go up the ladder, and you kind of trample on them all the way down. That's just the way it's done. It's not illegal, but it's cruel, it's ruthless. So I've had superiors always take credit for what I've done, but I've never seen one take the blame for what I've done. Why in the world did you do that?"

	He said, "Well, you know, I really do think you've got great potential. I really didn't want to lose you."

	She says, "I don't think that's right. That doesn't account for it. Why did you do it?"

	Finally he says, "Okay, you're pushing me. I'm going to tell you once. I'm a Christian. I base my life on what Jesus Christ has done for me. He took the blame for me. That's why I'm saved. I did something wrong, and instead of Jesus just writing me off, He went to the cross and He bore the blame. Because of that, I try to apply that to my life, which means I try to bear more pain than I inflict in all of my work world, in all of my work dealings."

	Then she looked at him and she says, "Where do you go to church?"

	See, now, what's that? That's a moral compass, which is essentially, I would say that you did not have to be a strong Christian maybe 50 years ago to act the way he did. But increasingly, you're going to have to have a religious reason for it, because otherwise you're not going to have any support in the culture for that kind of behavior.

	So fourthly, okay, I hope I wrote this one down right. Fourth and last - and this might be the one you thought I would get to, and I'm actually going to speak the least about it - the Christian faith gives you a new worldview, a new world and life view, without which work will be your master, not your servant.

	Here's what I mean by that. Whenever you get out into the work world, you're going to find, if you're willing to look deep enough, that there are certain ... there's a worldview behind your field. In other words, most people in your field are working on the basis of some world and life view.

	Robert Bellah, who wrote “Habits of the Heart,” talked about two kinds of individualism. There's what he called utilitarian individualism, which was totally cost-benefit. I'll do it if I make a profit. If it costs me less than the benefits, I'll do it. He calls that utilitarian individualism. I only do things if it benefits me.

	Then there's something else called expressive individualism, which is, regardless of the cost, I need to be who I am. I need to step out and let people know who I am.

	Some places, he talks about the fact that the arts are based on expressive individualism. The business world is based on utilitarian individualism. If you learn to look, you will see that underneath almost every field of work, there are a set of tacit or implicit, never-spoken-of, assumed, a set of values, ways of deciding what is right and wrong, what you do and what you don't do.

	They're based on views of human nature, and they're based on views of what life is about. If you're a Christian with a world and life view, you come into those fields and you can actually think outside the box. Otherwise, the work will be your master, not your servant.

	So some years ago, I know, by the way, there was some Christian college professors that were called up by a guy named Max De Pree, who was the CEO of Herman Miller. They made furniture. He was a very wealthy man. He was a very powerful executive. They called up some Christian philosophy professors and brought them together and said, "We really need some help on doing our work according to a Christian world and life view."

	They said, "Really? I thought that the purpose of a business was to make money."

	This is what Max De Pree said. He says, "Money is like breathing. You have to breathe in order to live, but who in the world would want to live just to breathe?"

	Can I say that again? "Money is like breathing. You have to breathe in order to live, but who in the world would want to just live to breathe?" You can't have a business without a profit. So absolutely, the profit in a business is like breathing. But how could you ever say our business is just to make a profit? That would be like saying the purpose of life is just to breathe.

	He says, "The profit is there, but for what?" He says, "What I want to know is why are we making a profit? What is it for?"

	Then he asked another question. He says, "Is there any Christian moral imperative in designing furniture? Are there any ways in which the furniture that we make should be in line with what the Bible says about the purpose of human life?"

	You know what he was doing? He was just thinking outside the box. He was just thinking outside the box, because other furniture makers are just going to do what everybody else is doing. But if you're a Christian, you can come in and you can ask some pretty deep questions about, "Why are we doing what we're doing, and also, why are we making the money?" Not just, "Oh, that's the purpose." No, it's not the purpose. It's just like breathing. You have to breathe, but that certainly shouldn't be the purpose of life.

	Now, lastly, let me just say one last thing. In my book “Every Good Endeavor,” I say this at greater length than what I'm about to say right now. Remember, I said there's four principles and a fifth. There were the four principles. But here's the fifth, and it's not so much a principle: Christianity gives you a sophisticated kind of hope, without which I do think that ultimately work will frustrate you.

	I tell a story that comes from J. R. Tolkien. J. R. Tolkien, of course, wrote the “Lord of the Rings,” but while he was in the process of writing it over many years, he came up to a spot in the 1940s, I think it was, where he got writer's block. He'd been working on the book for a long time, but he just couldn't figure out a way forward. He was just stuck.

	One night, he had a dream. On the basis of that dream, he woke up and he wrote a short story called “Leaf by Niggle.”  “Leaf by Niggle.” He wrote it, and it kind of helped him get through his writer's block, and he went back to “Lord of the Rings” and eventually finished it.

	But the short story is fascinating. It's about an artist named Niggle. He's called Niggle because he works very slowly. But he had this vision in his head of a tree, and he wanted to paint this huge tree on the side of, I think, the library, some public building in his village. So he put up a canvas, and it was this big mural. He had this tree in his mind and he wanted to paint this tree.

	But the years went by, and he just worked so slowly, so slowly, and at one point he only got to the place where he had actually just painted one leaf. Then he died. And as he died, he even thought about it. It's a short story, a bit of a fantasy story, so Death comes to take him. He says, "No, no, I can't possibly ... I can't die now. I can't die now. I've only gotten one leaf out. I've got the whole tree to go, and I've only done one leaf."

	Death says, "Sorry." So he gets on a train, and he's going to the mountains. That's how the story goes. But as he's going to the mountains, he's died and he's going to where dead people go in this particular little short story world. He suddenly sees something off to the right. He jumps off the train. He runs up to the top of the hill, and there's his tree. There really is a tree. He looks up at it and he says, "It's a gift."

	What in the world was Tolkien trying to say? Here's what he's trying to say: If you get out of college and you have this vision for, what?--I'm going to go into criminal justice because I want to see justice done. I'm going to go into city planning because I really want to build great cities. I want to go into law because I want to  see justice done. I want to go into art because I've got a vision for something. In your entire life, you're never going to get out more than a leaf. It's just the way ... you're not talented enough to do more than a leaf, and the world won't let you.

	But if you're a Christian, here's what you know: There is a tree. The vision God's given you for great cities, for beautiful art, for justice being done, you know, someday God's going to bring that to pass. So you're on the winning side. Your tree exists. So if you only get even a leaf out, don't worry. There is a tree.

	That's a sophisticated hope. It's enough hope to keep on going but also enough hope to not be frustrated when you see, "I really haven't gotten that much done in life." At the same time, you can work with your head up.

Announcer:	You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational, evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ.  We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.