God and Man at Work: Doing Well and Doing Good in the Bible’s View of Life

In God and Man at Work Udo Middelmann argues that our ideas about daily activities are linked directly to our conception of the world. It is acquired by habit from the surrounding community as well as by reflection and personal preference. A person’s attitude about the world explains the reason for most choices they make in work, love, and life. The biblical view of reality clarifies such empirical observations and frees them from sentimental assent. Communal faith may be colorful, but is mostly light in answers and repetitive in form. It lacks the substance to convince and to encourage. Religious cultural habits bind people through poetry and symbols. Many pastors, development workers, and business leaders are often long on devotional fervor but short on holistic connections to the whole of Scripture and rarely address intellectual fear and human suffering. God and Man at Work counters that with an appeal to the Bible’s uniquely reasoned discourse and practical encouragement for people in the imago Dei to argue with nature and culture, and do well by doing good in every manual and intellectual endeavor. That moral effort will free them from religious enslavement and nature’s indifference towards social and material improvement.

Udo Middelmann is the President of the Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation and currently the International Scholar at the Center for Global Engagement, Nyack College in New York. He is the author of Neither Necessary nor Inevitable: History Needn’t Have Been Like That.