And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Mark 12:28-31 

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As we continue in our Why Work series, it’s crucial that we understand who we’re serving in our work. And Dorothy Sayers believes that serving the community well requires us to first serve God well.

Sayers refers to Mark 12 when she explains how “much of our present trouble and disillusionment have come from putting the second commandment before the first. If we put our neighbor first, we are putting man above God, and that is what we have been doing ever since we began to worship humanity and make man the measure of all things.”

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When we work to serve the people around us, we aren’t able to serve them to our full capacity. Rather if we want to serve the people around us with excellence, we’re required to serve God first and foremost. In other words, Sayers shares that “There is, in fact, a paradox about working to serve the community, and it is this: that to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work; the only way to serve the community is to forget the community and serve the work.”

Thus, we can conclude that only when we serve God first will we be capable of serving our community well. So when it comes to our jobs, we must work with a mindset of glorifying God if we ever hope to satisfy the people around us.

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We’d love for you to share your thoughts with us on this topic of Why Work. Feel free to leave a comment below!